“What has that to do with me?”
“Saint-Just has been at Robespierre, every day for a week. You have to understand that Robespierre has respect for him—Saint-Just never puts a foot wrong. We think that in the long run they may have some divergence of opinion, but we’re not concerned with theory now. Saint-Just’s attitude is, if Hébert goes, Danton must go. He talks of—balancing out the factions.”
“They wouldn’t dare. I’m not a faction, Lindet, I’m at the Revolution’s core.”
“Look, Danton, Saint-Just believes you are a traitor. He is actively seeking proofs of your involvement with the enemy. How many times must I tell you? However ludicrous it seems, this is what he believes. This is what he is saying to the Committee. Collot and Billaud-Varennes back him up.”
“But Robespierre,” Camille said quickly. “He’s the important one.”
“I suppose you must have quarreled, Danton, last time you met. I’m afraid he has the air of a man who is trying to make his mind up. I don’t know what it would take—some small thing. He doesn’t speak against you, but he doesn’t defend you as he used to. He was very quiet, in today’s session. The others think it is because he’s not over his illness yet, but it’s more than that. He made a note of everything that was said. He watched all the time. If Hébert falls, you must go.”
“Go?”
“You must get out.”
“Is that the best advice you have for me, friend Lindet?”
“I want you to survive. Robespierre’s a prophet, he’s a dreamer—and I ask you, what record have prophets, as heads of government? When he’s gone, who will maintain the republic, if you do not?”
“Dreamer? Prophet? You’re very persuasive,” Danton said. “But if I thought that whey-faced eunuch had any designs on me I’d break his neck.”
Lindet dropped back in his chair. “Well, I don’t know. Camille, can you make him understand.”
“Oh … my position is somewhat … ambivalent.”
“That’s a damn good word for you,” Danton observed.
“Saint-Just spoke against you in the Committee today, Camille. So did Collot, so did Barère. Robespierre let them get through with it, then he said that you were led astray by stronger personalities. Barère said that they were sick of hearing that, and here was some evidence from the Police Committee, from Vadier. Robespierre took the papers and put them under his own on the table, and sat with his elbows on them. Then he changed the subject.”
“Does he often do things like that?”
“Surprisingly often.”
“I shall appeal to the people,” Danton said. “They must have some idea what sort of government they want.”
“Hébert is appealing to the people,” Lindet said. “The Committee calls it projected insurrection.”
“He has not my status in the Revolution. Nothing like it.”
“I don’t think the people care anymore,” Lindet said. “I don’t think they care who sinks or swims, you, Hébert, Robespierre. They’re exhausted. They come to the trials as a diversion. It is better than the theater. The blood is real.”
“One might think you despaired,” Camille said.
“Oh, I don’t have any truck with despair. I just keep an eye on the food supplies, as the Committee has told me to do.”
“You have your loyalties to the Committee.”
“Yes. So I won’t come again.”
“Lindet, if I come out on top of this, I’ll remember your good offices.”
Robert Lindet nodded—made, in fact, a sort of humorous, half-embarrassed bow. He was of another generation; the Revolution had not made him. Dogged and clear-headed, he made it his business to survive from day to day; Monday to Tuesday was all he asked.
Some violent rhetoric in the Sections: a minor demonstration at City Hall. 23 Ventôse, Saint-Just read a report to the Convention, alleging a foreign-inspired plot among certain well-known factionalists to destroy representative government and starve Paris. 24 Ventôse, in the early hours, Hébert and his associates were taken away from their houses by the police.
ROBESPIERRE: I am at a loss to see what purpose our friends thought this meeting would serve.
DANTON: How is the trial going?
ROBESPIERRE: No problems really. We hope it will be over tomorrow. Oh, perhaps, you don’t mean Hébert’s trial? Fabre and Hérault will be in court in a few days’ time. The exact date escapes me, but Fouquier will know.
DANTON: You wouldn’t be trying to frighten me, by any chance? All this relentless laboring of the point.
ROBESPIERRE: You seem to think I have something against you. All I have asked you to do is to disassociate yourself from Fabre. Unfortunately there are people who say that if Fabre is on trial you should be too.
DANTON: And what do you say?
ROBESPIERRE: Your activities in Belgium were not perhaps above reproach, However, I chiefly blame Lacroix.
DANTON: Camille—
ROBESPIERRE: Never speak to me again of Camille.
DANTON: Why not?
ROBESPIERRE: The last time we met you spoke abusively of him. With contempt.
DANTON: Suit yourself. The point is, in December you were ready to admit that the Terror should be mitigated, that innocent people—
ROBESPIERRE: I dislike these emotive phrases. By “innocent” you mean “persons of whom for one reason or another I approve.” That is not the standard. The standard is what the court finds. In that sense, no innocent person has suffered.
DANTON: My God! I don’t believe what I’m hearing. He says no innocent person has suffered.
ROBESPIERRE: I hope you’re not going to produce anymore of your tears. It is the kind of talent Fabre and the actors have, and not becoming to you.
DANTON: I appeal to you for the last time. You and I are the only people capable of running this country. All right—let’s admit it Dnally—we don’t like each other. But you don’t really suspect me, any more than I suspect you. There are people around us who would like to see us destroy each other. Let’s make life hard for them. Let’s make common cause.
ROBESPIERRE: There’s nothing I’d like better. I deplore factions. I also deplore violence. However, I would rather destroy the factions by violence than see the Revolution fall into the wrong hands and be perverted.
DANTON: You mean mine?
ROBESPIERRE: You see, you talk so much about innocence. Where are they, all these innocent people? I never seem to meet them.
DANTON: You look at innocence, but you see guilt.
ROBESPIERRE: I suppose if I had your morals and your principles, the world would look a different place. I would never see the need to punish anyone. There would be no criminals. There would be no crimes.
DANTON: Oh God, I cannot stand you and your city for a moment longer. I am taking my wife and my children to Sèvres, and if you want me you know where to find me.
Sèvres, March 22: 2 Germinal. “So here you are,” Angélique said. “And you can enjoy the fine weather.” She kissed her grandsons, ran her eyes down Louise and found occasion to put an arm round her waist and squeeze her. Louise kissed her cheek dutifully. “Why didn’t you all come?” Angélique asked. “I mean, Camille and family? The old people could have come, too, there’s plenty of room.”
Louise made a mental note to pass on the description of Annette Duplessis as an old person. “We wanted some time to ourselves,” she said.
“Oh, did you?” Angélique shrugged; it was a desire that she couldn’t comprehend.
“Has my friend Duplessis recovered from his ordeal?” M. Charpentier asked.
“He’s all right,” Danton said. “He seems old, lately. Still, wouldn’t you, if you had Camille for a son-in-law?”
“You’ve not spared me gray hairs yourself, Georges.”
“How the years have flown by!” Angélique said. “I remember Claude as a handsome man. Stupid, but handsome.” She sighed. “I wish I could have the last ten years over again—don’t you
, daughter?”
“No,” Louise said.
“She’d be six,” Danton said. “But Christ, I wish I could have them! There’d be things to do different.”
“You wouldn’t neccessarily have hindsight,” his wife said.
“I remember an afternoon,” Charpentier said. “It would be ’86, ’87? Duplessis came into the café and I asked him to supper. He said, we’re up to our eyes at the Treasury—but we will sort out a date, as soon as the present crisis is over.”
“Well?” Louise said.
Charpentier shook his head, smiled. “They haven’t been yet.”
Two days later the weather broke. It turned gray, damp and chilly. There were draughts, the fires smoked. Visitors from Paris arrived in a steady stream. Hasty introductions were made: Deputy So-and-so, Citizen Such-a-one of the Commune. They shut themselves up with Danton; the conversations were brief, but the household heard voices raised in exasperation. The visitors always said that they had to get back to Paris, that they could by no means stay the night. They had about them the air of grim irresolution, of shifty bravado, that Angélique recognized as the prelude to crisis.
She went to ask the necessary questions. Her son-in-law sat in silence for some time, his broad shoulders slumped and his scarred face morose.
“What they want me to do,” he said finally, “is to go back and throw my weight about. By that, I mean … they have plans to rally the Convention to me, and also, Westermann has sent me a letter. You remember my friend, General Westermann?”
“A military coup.” Her dark aging face sagged. “Georges, who suffers? Who suffers this time?”
“That’s it. That’s the whole point. If I can’t remedy this situation without bloodshed, I’ll have to leave it to someone else. That’s—just how I feel these days. I don’t want any more killings at my door, I don’t want them on my conscience. I no longer feel sure enough of anything to risk a single life for it. Is that so hard to understand?” Angélique shook her head. “My friends in Paris can’t understand it. They think it’s some fanciful scruple, some whim of mine or some kind of laziness, a paralysis of the will. But the truth is, I’ve traveled that road, and I’ve reached the end of it.”
“God will forgive you, Georges,” she whispered. “I know you have no faith, but I pray every day for you and Camille.”
“What do you pray for?” He looked up at her. “Our political success?”
“No, I—I ask God to judge you mercifully.”
“I see. Well, I’m not ready for judgement yet. You might include Robespierre, when you’re petitioning the Almighty. Although I’m sure they speak privately, more often than we know.”
Mid-afternoon, another carriage rumbling and squeaking into the muddy courtyard, the rain streaming down. In an upstairs room the children are screaming at the tops of their voices. Angélique is harassed; her son-in-law sits talking to the damp dog at his feet.
Louise rubs a windowpane to look out. “Oh, no,” she breathes. She leaves the room with the contemptuous twitch of her skirts which she has perfected.
Runnels of water pour and slither from Legendre the butcher’s traveling clothes: oceans, fountains and canals. “Will you look at this weather?” he demands. “Six paces and I’m drowned.” Don’t raise my hopes like that, says the sodden shape behind him. Legendre turns, hoarse, pink, spluttering, to compliment his traveling companion: “You look like a rat,” he says.
Angélique reaches up to take Camille’s face in her hands, and puts her cheek against his drenched black curls. She whispers something meaningless or Italian, breathing in the scent of wet wool. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him,” he whispers back, in a kind of horror. She slides her arms around his shoulders and sees suddenly, with complete vividness, the sunlight slipping obliquely across the little marble tables, hears the chatter and the chink of cups, smells the aroma of fresh coffee, and the river, and the faint perfume of powdered hair. Clinging to each other, swaying slightly, they stand with their eyes fixed on each other’s faces, stabbed and transfixed with dread, while the leaden clouds scud and the foggy dismal torrent wraps them like a shroud.
Legendre sat himself down heavily. “I want you to believe,” he said, “that Camille and myself don’t go jaunting about the countryside together without good reason. Therefore what I’ve come to say, I’m going to say. I am not an educated man—”
“He never tires of telling us,” Camille said. “He imagines it is a point not already impressed.”
“This is a business you have to face head-on-not wrap it up and pretend it happened to Roman emperors.”
“Get on then,” Danton said. “You may imagine what their journey has been like.”
“Robespierre is out for your blood.”
Danton stood in front of the fire, hands clasped behind his back. He grinned.
Camille took out a list of names and passed it to him. “The batch of 4 Germinal,” he said. “Thirteen executions in all. The Cordeliers leadership, Hérault’s friend Proli, a couple of bankers and of course Père Duchesne. He should have been preceded by his furnaces; they could have turned it into a sort of carnival procession. He was not in one of his great cholers when he died. He was screaming.”
“I dare say you would scream,” Legendre said.
“I am quite sure I should,” Camille said coldly. “But my head is not going to be cut off.”
“They had supper together,” Legendre said meaningfully.
“You had supper with Robespierre?” Camille nodded. “Well done,” Danton said. “Myself, I don’t think I could eat in the man’s presence. I think I’d throw up.”
“Oh, by the way,” Camille said, “did you know that Chabot tried to poison himself? At least, we think so.”
“He had a bottle in his cell from Charras and Duchatelle, the chemists,” Legendre said. “It said ‘For External Application Only.’ So he drank it.”
“But Chabot will drink anything,” Camille said.
“He’s survived, then? Botched the job?”
“Look,” Legendre said, “you can’t afford to stand there laughing and sneering. You can’t afford the time. Saint-Just is nagging at Robespierre night and day.”
“What does he propose to charge me with?”
“Nothing and everything. Everything from supporting Orléans to trying to save Brissot and the Queen.”
“The usual,” Danton said. “And you advise?”
“Last week I’d have said, stand and fight. But now I say, save your own skin. Get out while there’s time.”
“Camille?”
Camille looked up unhappily. “We met on good terms. He was very amiable. In fact, he had a bit too much to drink. He only does that when he’s—when he’s trying to shut out his inner voices, if that doesn’t sound too fanciful. I asked him, why won’t you talk about Danton? He touched his forehead and said, because he is sub judice.” He turned his head away. “You might think of going abroad.”
“Abroad? Oh no. I went to England in ’91, and you stood in the garden at Fontenay and berated me.” He shook his head. “This is my nation. Here I stay. A man can’t carry his country on the soles of his shoes.”
The wind howled and rattled in the chimneys; dogs barked across the countryside from farm to farm. “After all you said about posterity,” Camille muttered. “You seem to be speaking to it now.” The rain slackened to a gray penetrating drizzle, soaking the houses and fields.
In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don’t need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days’ time it will be the very thing he needs.
Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he
feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task.
His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page.
CHAPTER 13
Conditional Absolution
Cour du Commerce: March 31, 10 Germinal: “Marat?” The black bundle moved, fractionally. “Forgive me.” Danton put his hand to his head. “A stupid thing to say.”
He moved to a chair, unable to drag his eyes from the scrap of humanity that was the Citizeness Albertine. Her garments were funereal layers, an array of wraps and shawls, belonging to no style or fashion that had ever existed or ever could. She spoke with a foreign accent, but it was not the accent of any country to be found on a map.
“In a sense,” she said, “you are not mistaken.” She raised a skeletal hand, and laid it somewhere among her wrappings, where it might be supposed her heart beat. “I carry my brother here,” she said. “We are never separated now.”
For several seconds he found himself unable to speak. “How can I oblige you?” he said at last.
“We did not come to be obliged.” Dry voice: bone on bone. She paused for a moment, as if listening. “Strike now,” she said.
“With respect—”
“He is at the Convention now. Robespierre.”
“I am haunted enough.” He got up, blundered across the room. Superstitious dread touched him, at his own words. “I can’t have his death on my hands.”
“It’s yours or his. You must go to the Convention now, Danton. You must see the patriot walk and talk. You must judge his mood and you must prepare for a fight.”
“Very well, I’ll go. If it will please you. But I think you’re wrong, Citizeness, I don’t think Robespierre or any of the Committee would dare to move against me.”
A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel Page 89
