The Palais de Justice: “You seem unhappy, cousin,” Camille said.
Fouquier-Tinville shrugged. His dark face was morose. “We’ve been in court for eighteen hours. Yesterday we started at eight in the morning and finished at eleven at night. It is tiring.”
“Imagine what it’s like for the prisoner.”
“I really can’t imagine that,” the Public Prosecutor said truthfully. “Is it a fine night?” he asked. “I could do with some fresh air.”
He had no feelings, one way or the other, about trying women on capital charges; he was sensitive, however, to the questions it raised in some minds. The guillotine allowed some dignity in death; the ordeal came beforehand. He liked his prisoners in better condition than this one—scruffy, in need of medical attention. He had organized a man to stand by and fetch her glasses of water, but so far water had not been needed, and neither had the smelling salts. It was after midnight now; a jury retiring at this hour was unlikely to agonize over their verdict.
“Hébert, yesterday,” he said abruptly. “Terrible mess. What he has to do with it, why I had to call him, God knows. I take a pride in my work. I’m a family man—I don’t want to hear that sort of thing. The woman showed dignity in her replies. She got sympathy from the crowd.”
Hébert had alleged yesterday that, in addition to her other crimes, the woman prisoner had sexually abused her nine-year-old son; that she had taken him into bed beside her, and taught him to masturbate. His guardians had caught him at it, Hébert said, and—tut-tut, where did you learn such behavior? Mama taught me, said the shifty, frightened little boy. Hébert adduced documentary evidence—the child had freely signed a statement about it. The child’s writing—the ancient, wavering hand—had given Citizen Fouquier a moment’s disquiet. “One has children oneself,” he murmured. Citizen Robespierre had done more than murmur. “That fool Hébert!” he said, enraged. “Has any more unlikely allegation come before a court in our lifetime? Depend on it—he’ll save the woman yet.”
I wonder, Fouquier thought, what sort of a lawyer was Citizen Robespierre, when he practiced? A bleeding heart, I’ll be bound.
He was turning back to his cousin when President Hermann appeared, crossing the hall from the darkness into the pool of candlelight that bathed the lawyers, the prisoner’s chair and the empty place where the witnesses stood. The president held up one finger for Fouquier to follow him.
“Have a word with Chauveau-Lagarde,” Fouquier said. “Poor devil, he defended the Marat girl too. I doubt his career will ever recover.”
Lagarde looked up. “Camille—what are you doing here? I wouldn’t be here if I could be anywhere else.” Still, he was glad to see him. He was tired of trying to talk to his client. She was not forthcoming.
“Where else should I be? Some of us have waited a long time for this day.”
“Yes—well, if it suits you.”
“I should think it suits us all to see treason punished.”
“You’re pre-judging. The jury is still out.”
“There’s no chance the Republic will lose this case,” Camille said. He smiled. “They do give you all the best jobs, don’t they?”
“No lawyer in Paris has more experience of impossible defenses.” Lagarde was twenty-eight years old; he tried to put the best face on things. “I asked for mercy,” he said. “What else could I do? She was accused of being what she was. She was charged with having existed. There was no defense to the charges. Even if there had been—they gave me the indictment on Sunday night, and said you’re in court tomorrow morning. I asked your cousin for three days. No chance. When her husband was tried, those were more leisurely times. And when she goes to her death, she’ll go in a cart.”
“The closed carriage was somewhat undemocratic, I feel. This is something the people have a right to see.”
Lagarde looked at him sideways. “Hard bastards they breed in your part of the country.” Yet one could understand them, he thought, one could find them—it was a sign of the times—quite reassuring: deadpan Fouquier, lawyer’s lawyer, and his volatile, highly placed relative who had got him the job. One could find them preferable to some of the Republic’s servants—preferable to Hébert, with his obscene mouthings, his maggot whiteness. There had been times during yesterday’s session when he had felt physically sick.
“I know who you’re thinking of,” Camille said. “That expression commonly crosses people’s faces. I suspect that Hébert has laid his paws on War Office money, and if I find the proof he’ll be one of your next big clients.”
Fouquier hurried over. “The jury is returning,” he said. “My commiserations in advance, Lagarde.”
The prisoner was helped across the hall to her chair. One moment she was in darkness; the next moment, light struck her lined and shattered face.
“She seems old,” Camille said. “She seems hardly able to see where she’s going. I didn’t know her eyesight was so poor.”
“I can hardly be blamed for that,” the Public Prosecutor said. “Though no doubt,” he added with foresight, “when I am dead, people will blame me for it. Excuse me, cousin, please.”
The verdict was unanimous. Leaning forward, Hermann asked the prisoner if she had anything to say. The former Queen of France shook her head. Her fingers moved impatiently on the arm of her chair. Hermann pronounced the death sentence.
The court rose. Guards moved forward to take the prisoner out. Fouquier didn’t watch her go. His cousin hurried to help him with his pile of papers. “Easy day tomorrow,” Fouquier said. “Here, take these. Somehow you’d think that the Public Prosecutor would have a clerk available.”
Hermann nodded civilly to Camille, and Fouquier bade the president good night. Camille’s eyes were on the widow Capet’s shuffling withdrawal. “It hardly seems much, really, to be the summit of our ambitions. Cutting some dreary woman’s head off.”
“I swear you are changeable, Camille. I’ve never known you to give the Austrian a good word. Come. I usually preserve my dignity in my official carriage, but I need some air. Unless you are reporting to Robespierre?”
He was always proud of his cousin, when they were together in public. Especially when he saw him with Danton—he noted those private allusions they shared, the jokes, the sidelong glances, and he saw, as often as not, Danton’s beefy arm draped around his cousin, or his cousin in some late-night public assembly close his dangerous eyes and lean comfortably against Danton’s shoulder. With Robespierre, of course, it was not like that. Robespierre almost never touched anyone. His face was distant, aloof. But Camille could conjure onto it an expression of lively amiability; they shared memories, and possibly too they shared private jokes. People said—though this felt like a heresy—that they had seen Camille make Robespierre laugh.
Now his cousin shook his head. “Robespierre will be asleep now. Unless the committee is still sitting. It’s not as if there was any chance of your losing, is it?”
“God forbid.” Fouquier put his arm into his cousin’s, and they stepped out into the frosty early hours. A policeman saluted them. “The next big one is Brissot—and all of that crew we’ve managed to lay hold of. I base my prosecution on your writings—your ‘Secret History,’ and the other article you wrote about Brissot after you had that row about your gambling case. Good stuff: I’ll lift some of your phrases if you don’t mind. I hope you’ll be in court to take the credit.”
Think now of those post-Bastille days: Brissot in Camille’s office, perched on the desk. Théroigne swishing in and planting a big kiss on his dry cheek. He was my friend, Camille thinks; then along came the gambling case, and we were suddenly on opposite sides, he made it personal, and I can’t stand criticism. He knows this about himself; he either flares up or folds up, he takes some kind of offensive or—or what? “Antoine,” he says to his cousin, “I seem to know all forms of attack. But I seem to know no forms of defense at all.”
“Come now,” the Prosecutor said. He did not understand in the least
what his cousin was talking about, but that was nothing new. He put out a hand, ruffled his cousin’s hair. Camille flicked his head away as if a wasp had touched him. Fouquier took it quietly. He was in a good humor—looking forward to the bottle of wine he had promised himself when it was all over; he tried not to drink during the big cases. He felt, however, that sleep might elude him: or bring his nightmares back. Perhaps his cousin, with whom he really spent too little time, would like to sit up and talk. For two boys from the provinces, he thought, we are doing extremely well these days.
Soon after eleven the next morning Henri Sanson entered her cell for the preparations. He was the son of the man who had executed her husband. She wore a white dress, a light shawl, black stockings and a pair of high-heeled plum-colored shoes, which during her imprisonment she had carefully preserved. The executioner tied her hands behind her back and cut off the hair which, according to her maid, she had thought it proper to “dress high” to meet her judge and jury. She did not move, and Sanson did not allow the steel to touch her neck. Within a few seconds the long tresses, once the color of honey and now streaked coarsely with gray, lay on the floor of the cell. He scooped them up to be burned.
The tumbrel waited in the courtyard. It was an ordinary cart, once used for carrying wood, now with planks across it for seats. At the sight of it, she lost her composure; she gaped in fear, but she did not cry out. She asked the executioner to untie her hands for a moment, and when he did so she squatted in a corner, by a wall, and urinated. Her hands were tied again, and she was put into the cart. Under the shorn hair and the plain white cap, her tired eyes searched for pity in the faces around her. The journey to the place of execution lasted for an hour. She did not speak. As she mounted the steps, paid, indifferent hands kept her balanced. Her body began to shake, her limbs to give way. In her blindness and terror, she stepped on the executioner’s foot. “I beg your pardon, Monsieur,” she whispered. “I did not mean to do it.” A few minutes after noon her head was off: “the greatest joy of all the joys experienced by Père Duchesne.”
CHAPTER 10
The Marquis Calls
Both the monarchs are dead, the he-tyrant and the she-tyrant. You’d think there’d be a feeling of freedom, a feeling inside; Lucile finds she doesn’t have it. She had pressed Camille for details of the Queen’s last hours, anxious to know whether she had been worthy of a place in history; but he seemed reluctant to talk about it. In the end he said that, as she very well knew, nothing would induce him to attend the execution. Hypocrite, she said. You ought to go and see the results of your actions. He stared at her. I know how people die, he said. He made her an old regime bow, very fulsome and ironic, picked up his hat and went out. He seldom quarreled with her, but revenged himself by mysterious absences, of between ten minutes and several days in duration.
He was back within the hour: could they give a supper party? The notice was very generous, Jeanette said tartly. But good food in sufficient quantity can always be procured if you have money and know where to go. Camille disappeared again, and it was Jeanette, out shopping, who found out what there was to celebrate; the Convention had heard that afternoon that the Austrians had been defeated in a long and bloody battle at Wattignies.
So that night they drank to the latest victory, to the newest commanders. They talked of the progress against the Vendee insurgents, of success against the rebels of Lyon and Bordeaux. “It seems to me the Republic is prospering immensely,” she said to Hérault.
“The news is good, yes.” But he frowned. He was preoccupied; he had asked the Committee to send him to Alsace in the wake of Saint-Just, and he was to leave soon, perhaps tomorrow.
“Why did you do that?” she asked him. “We’ll be dull without you. I’m pleased you could come tonight, I thought you might be at the Committee.”
“I’m not a lot of use to them these days. They tell me as little as possible. I learn more from the newspapers.”
“They don’t trust you anymore?” She was alarmed. “What’s happened?”
“Ask your husband. He has the ear of the Incorruptible.” A few minutes later he rose, thanked her, explained that there were last-minute preparations. Camille stood up, and kissed Hérault’s cheek. “Come back soon. I shall so much miss our regular exchange of veiled abuse.”
“I doubt it will be soon.” Hérault’s voice was strained. “At least, at the frontier I can do useful work, and I can see the enemy, and know who they are. Paris is becoming a place for scavengers.”
“I apologize,” Camille said. “I can see I’m a waste of your time. Can I have my kiss back?”
“I swear,” someone said lazily, “that if you two were to mount the scaffold together you’d quarrel over precedence.”
“Oh, I fancy I’d have the advantage,” Camille said. “Though I cannot imagine which way it lies. My cousin decides the order of execution.”
There was a choking sound, and somebody put his glass down hard. Fabre stared at them, red-faced. “It’s not funny,” he said. “It’s in the worst taste imaginable, and it’s not even funny.”
There was a silence, into which Hérault dropped his good-byes. After he had gone the conversation resumed with a forced hilarity, which Fabre led. The party broke up early. Later, lying in bed, Lucile asked, “What happened? Our parties never fail, never.”
“Oh,” Camille said, “no doubt it is the end of civilization as we know it.” Then he added, tiredly, “It’s probably because Georges is away.” He turned away from her, but she knew that he was lying awake, listening to the sounds of the city by night: black eyes staring into black darkness.
Something’s amiss, she thought. At least, since Saint-Just left Paris, Camille was more with Robespierre. Robespierre understood him; he would find out what was wrong and tell her.
Next day she called on Eléonore. If it was true that Eléonore was Robespierre’s mistress, it didn’t make her any happier, certainly no more gracious. She was not slow to bring the conversation round to Camille.
“He,” she said with disgust, “can make Max do anything he wants, and nobody else can make him do anything they want at all. He’s just always very polite and busy.” She leaned forward, trying to communicate her distress. “He gets up early and deals with his letters. He goes to the Convention. He goes to the Tuileries and transacts the Committee’s business. Then he goes to the Jacobins. At ten o’clock at night the Committee goes into session. He comes home in the small hours.”
“He drives himself very hard. But what do you expect? That’s the kind of man he is.”
“He’ll never marry me. He says, as soon as the present crisis is over. But it never will be over, will it Lucile, will it?”
A few weeks ago in the street Lucile and her mother had seen Anne Théroigne. It had taken them both a moment to recognize her. Théroigne was no longer pretty. She was thin; her face had fallen in as if she had lost some teeth. She passed them; something flickered in her eyes, but she didn’t speak. Lucile thought her pathetic—a victim of the times. “No one could think her attractive now,” Annette said. She smiled. Her recent birthdays had passed, as she put it, without incident. Most men still looked at her with interest.
Once again, she was seeing Camille in the afternoons. He often stayed away from the Convention now. Many of the Montagnards were away on mission; many of the right-wing deputies, those who had voted against the King’s death, had abandoned their public duties and fled Paris. More than seventy deputies had signed a protest about the expulsion of Brissot, Vergniaud and the rest; they were in prison now, and only Robespierre’s good offices kept them out of the hands of the Tribunal. François Robert was in disgrace, and Philippe Égalité awaited trial; Collot d’Herbois was in Lyon, punishing rebels. Danton was enjoying the country air. Saint-Just and Babette’s husband, Philippe Lebas, were with the armies; the burden of the Committee’s work often kept Robespierre at the Tuileries. Camille and Fabre grew tired of counting the empty places. There was no one they muc
h liked, and no one they much wanted to shout down. And Marat was dead.
Théroigne turned up at the rue des Cordeliers a few days after the supper party. Her clothes hung on her; she looked unwashed and somehow desperate. “I want to see Camille,” she said. She had developed a way of turning her head away from you as she spoke, as if she were engaged in a private monologue into which you mustn’t intrude. Camille heard her voice; he had been sitting doing nothing, staring into space. “Well my dear,” he said, “you have deteriorated. If this is all you can do by way of feminine charm, I think I prefer the way you were before.”
“Your manners are still exquisite,” Théroigne said, looking at the wall. “What’s that? That engraving? That woman’s going to have her head cut off.”
“That is Maria Stuart, my wife’s favorite historical personage.”
“How strange,” she said tonelessly.
“Sit down,” Lucile said. “Do you want something? A warm drink?” She was overwhelmed by pity; someone ought to feed her, brush her hair, tell Camille not to speak to her like that. “Would you rather I left you?” she said.
“No, that’s all right. You can stay if you want. Or go. I don’t mind.”
As she moved slowly into a better light, Lucile saw the scars on her face. Months ago, she knew, she had been beaten in the street by a gang of women. How she has suffered, Lucile thought; God preserve me. Her throat tightened.
“What I want won’t take long,” Théroigne said. “You know, don’t you, what I think?”
“I don’t know that you do,” Camille said.
“You know where my sympathies lie. Brissot’s people go on trial this week. I’m one of them, Brissot’s people.” There was no passion in her voice. “I believe in what they stand for and what they’ve tried to do. I don’t like your politics and I don’t like Robespierre’s.”
A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel Page 78
