A Place of Greater Safety (103 page)
Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
Annette and Claude arrived soon afterwards. Annette looked wary and withdrawn, but Claude looked as if he were working up to a big speech. “Ah yes,” he said, addressing the air a foot above his son-in-law’s head. “I have not been lavishly complimentary, have I, in the past? But now I will congratulate you, from the heart. It is an act of great courage.”
“Why do you say that? Do you think they will want to cut off my head?”
A silence, sudden and complete and prolonged. No one spoke and no one moved. For the first time in years Claude found it possible to focus his gaze. “Oh, Camille,” he said, “who could want to hurt you?”
“Plenty of people,” Camille said remotely. “Billaud, because I’ve always laughed at him. Saint-Just, because he has a rage for leadership and I won’t follow. All the members of the Jacobins who’ve been after my blood since I defended Dillon. Ten days ago they brought up the business of Brissot’s trial. What right had I to pass out without informing the club? And Barnave—they wanted to know how I dared to go to the Conciergerie to speak to a traitor.”
“But Robespierre defended you,” Claude said.
“Yes, he was very kind. He told them I was given to emotional outbursts. He said that he had known me since I was ten years old and I had always been the same. He nodded and smiled at me as he came down from the tribune. His eyes were very sharp. He had engraved a valuation on me like a goldsmith’s mark.”
“Oh, there was more than that,” Lucile said. “He praised you very warmly.”
“Of course. The club was touched, flattered. He had allowed them a little insight into his private life—you know, touching evidence of his human nature.”
“What can you mean?” Claude said.
“Well, I revert to my former conviction. Quite clearly he is Jesus Christ. He has even condescended to be adopted by a carpenter. I wonder what he will do at the next meeting, when they demand my expulsion?”
“But nothing can happen to you while Robespierre is in power,” Claude said. “It’s not possible. Come now. It’s not possible.”
“You mean I have protection. But it is irksome, to be protected.”
“I won’t have this,” Danton said. He put down his glass, leaned foward. He was quite sober, though a few minutes earlier he had seemed not to be. “You know my policies, you know what I am trying to do. Now that
the pamphlets have served their purpose, your job is to keep Robespierre in a good humor, and other than that keep your mouth shut. There is no need to take risks. Within two months, all moderate opposition will have crystalized around me. All I have to do is exist.”
the pamphlets have served their purpose, your job is to keep Robespierre in a good humor, and other than that keep your mouth shut. There is no need to take risks. Within two months, all moderate opposition will have crystalized around me. All I have to do is exist.”
“But that is problematical, in my case,” Camille muttered.
“You think I can’t protect my followers?”
“I am sick of being protected,” Camille yelled at him. “I am tired of pleasing you and placating Robespierre and running between the two of you smoothing things over and ministering to your all-devouring egos and your monstrous, arrogant self-conceits. I have had enough of it.”
“In that case,” Danton said, “your use for the future is very limited, very limited indeed.”
T
he Committee of Justice which Robespierre had proposed fell victim next day to Billaud-Varennes’s revolutionary thoroughness. He told the Jacobins quite bluntly, in Robespierre’s presence, that it had been a stupid idea from the start.
he Committee of Justice which Robespierre had proposed fell victim next day to Billaud-Varennes’s revolutionary thoroughness. He told the Jacobins quite bluntly, in Robespierre’s presence, that it had been a stupid idea from the start.
That night Robespierre didn’t sleep. It was not a defeat he brooded upon; it was a humiliation. He could not remember a time when his express wishes had been flouted; or rather, he could remember it, but like some dim intimation from a past incarnation. The Candle of Arras had illuminated another world.
He sat alone at his window, up at the top of the house; watched the black angles of the rooftops, and the stars between. He would have liked to pray; but no words he could formulate seemed likely to move or even reach the blindly purposive deity that had taken his life in hand. Three times he got up to see if the door was barred, the bolt firmly drawn and the key turned in the lock. The darkness shifted, waned; the street below seemed peopled with shades.
In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius
… The ghosts of souls departed begged their admittance, with faces of clay; they trailed the covert, feral odors, the long, slinking shadows of circus beasts.
In the reign of the Emperor Tiberius
… The ghosts of souls departed begged their admittance, with faces of clay; they trailed the covert, feral odors, the long, slinking shadows of circus beasts.
N
ext day Camille went to the Duplay house. He asked after Eléonore’s health, and about her work. “Lucile was saying she would come and see you, but she doesn’t know when it would suit you, because of your classes. Why don’t you ever come and see us?”
ext day Camille went to the Duplay house. He asked after Eléonore’s health, and about her work. “Lucile was saying she would come and see you, but she doesn’t know when it would suit you, because of your classes. Why don’t you ever come and see us?”
“I will,” she said, without conviction. “How’s the baby?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Marvelous.”
“He’s like you, Camille. He has a look of you.”
“Oh, how sweet of you, Cornélia, you’re the first person in eighteen months to say so. May I go up?”
“He’s not at home.”
“Oh, Cornélia. You know that he is at home.”
“He’s busy.”
“Has he been telling you to keep people out, or just to keep me out?”
“Look, he needs time to sort things out in his mind. He didn’t sleep last night. I’m worried about him.”
“Is he very angry with me?”
“No, he’s not angry, I think he’s—shocked. That you should hold him responsible for violence, that you should blame him in public.”
“I told him I reserved the right to tell him when the country became a tyranny. Our consciences are public property, so how else should I tell him?”
“He is alarmed, that you should put yourself in such a bad position.”
“Go and tell him I’m here.”
“He won’t see you.”
“Go and tell him, Eléonore.”
She quailed. “All right.”
She left him standing, with a dragging ache in his throat. She paused when she was halfway up the stairs, to think; then she went on. She knocked. “Camille’s here.”
She heard the scraping of the chair, a creak: no answer.
“Are you there? Camille’s downstairs. He insists.”
He pulled the door open. She knew he’d been standing right behind it. Absurd, she thought. He was sweating.
“You mustn’t let him come up. I told you that. I told you. Why do you take no notice of me?” He was trying to speak very calmly.
She shrugged. “Right.”
Robespierre had rested one hand on the doorknob, sliding it over the smooth surface; he swung the door back and to, in an arc of six inches.
“I’ll tell him,” she said. She turned her head and looked down the stairs, as if she thought Camille might run up and shoulder her aside. “It’s another matter whether he accepts it.”
“Dear God,” he said. “What does he think? What does he expect?”
“Personally I don’t see the sense in keeping him out. You both know he’s put you in a very difficult position. You know you’re going to defend him, and I think he knows it too. It’s not a matter of whether you’ll smooth over your disagreements. Of course you will. You’ll risk your own reputation to vindicate him. Every principle you’ve ever had goes out of the window when you’re faced with Camille.”
“That is not true, Eléonore,” he said softly. “That is not true and you are saying it out of twisted jealousy. It is not true and he must be made to realize it. He must be made to think. Listen,” the agitation crept back into his voice, “how does he look?”
Tears had sprung into her eyes. “He looks as usual.”
“Does he seem upset? He’s not ill?”
“No, he looks as usual.”
“Dear God,” he said. Wearily, softly, he took his perspiring hand from the doorknob, and wiped it, stiff-fingered, down the sleeve of his other arm. “I need to wash my hands,” he said.
The door closed softly. Eléonore went downstairs, scrubbing at her face with her fist. “There,” she said. “I told you. He doesn’t want to see you.”
“I suppose he thinks it’s for my own good?” Camille laughed nervously.
“I think you can understand his feelings. You have tried to use his affection for you to trap him into supporting you when you put forward policies he disagrees with.”
“He disagrees with them? Since when?”
“Perhaps since his defeat yesterday. Well, that is for you to work out. He doesn’t confide in me, and I know nothing of politics.”
A blank misery had dropped into his eyes. “Very well,” he said. “I can exist without his approbation.” He walked ahead of her to the door. “Good-bye, Cornélia, I don’t think I’ll be seeing much of you from now on.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
In the open doorway he turned suddenly: pulled her towards him, slipped a hand under her breast and kissed her on the lips. Two of the workmen stood and watched them. “Poor you,” Camille said. He pushed her gently back against the wall. Watching him go, she put the back of her hand against her lips. For the next few hours she could feel the phantom pressure of his cupped hand beneath her breast, and she kept it in her guilty thoughts that she had never really had a lover.
A
letter to Camille Desmoulins, 11 Nivôse, Year II:
letter to Camille Desmoulins, 11 Nivôse, Year II:
I am not a fanatic, or an enthusiast, or a man to pay compliments; but if I should survive you I mean to have your statue, and to carve on it: “Wicked men would have had us accept liberty kneaded together of mud and blood. Camille made us love it, carved in marble and covered in flowers.”
“It isn’t true, of course,” he said to Lucile, “but I shall put it away carefully among my papers.”
“I
see you make a very splendid effort to come and speak to me,” Hérault said. “You could have turned and gone the other way. I shall begin to think I am a case for your charity, like Barnave. By the way, did you know Saint-Just is back?”
see you make a very splendid effort to come and speak to me,” Hérault said. “You could have turned and gone the other way. I shall begin to think I am a case for your charity, like Barnave. By the way, did you know Saint-Just is back?”
“Oh.”
“Perhaps there is a case for not going so far to antagonize Hébert?”
“My fifth pamphlet is in preparation,” Camille said. “I shall rid the public of that posturing, mindless obscenity, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“It may well be that.” Hérault smiled, but not pleasantly. “I know you enjoy a privileged position, but Robespierre doesn’t like defeat.”
“He favors clemency. Very well, there’s been a reverse. We’ll find another way.”
“How? I think it will seem more than a reverse to him. He has no power base, you know—except in patriotic opinion. He has very few friends. He has placed some old retainers of his on the Tribunal, but he has no ministers in his pocket, no generals—he’s neglected all that. His power is entirely in our minds—and I’m sure he knows it. If he can be defeated once, why not twice, why not continuously?”
“Why are you trying to frighten me?”
“For my amusement,” Hérault said coolly. “I’ve never been able to understand you, quite. You play on his feelings for you—yet he always says we should leave our personal feelings aside.”
“Oh, we all say that. It is the only thing to be said. But we never do it.”
“Camille, why did you do what you did?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I have really no idea. I suppose you wanted to be running out in front of public opinion again.”
“Do you? Do you think that? People say it is a work of art, that I have never written anything better. Do you think I am proud of my sales?”
“I would be, if they were mine.”
“Yes, the pamphlets are a great success. But what does success matter to me now? I am sick of the sight of all this accumulated injustice and ingratitude and wrong.”
A nice epitaph, Hérault thought, should you need one. “Tell Danton—for
what it’s worth—and I realize that it may be a liability—the campaign for clemency has my sympathy and support.”
what it’s worth—and I realize that it may be a liability—the campaign for clemency has my sympathy and support.”
“Oh, Danton and I are not on good terms.”
Hérault frowned. “How not on good terms? Camille, what are you trying to do to yourself?”
“Oh …” Camille said. He pushed his hair back.
“Have you been rude about his wife again?”
“No, not at all. Good heavens—we always leave our personal feelings aside.”
“So what’s your quarrel? Something trivial?”
“Everything I do is trivial,” Camille said, with a sudden savage hostility. “Don’t you see that I am a weak and trivial person? Now Hérault—is there any other message?”
“Only that I think he’s carrying the time biding to excess.”
“You are afraid the policy of clemency will come in too late for you?”
“Every day it is too late for someone.”
“He probably has good reasons. All these obscure coalitions … Fabre thinks I know everything about Georges, but I don’t. I don’t think I could take knowing everything, do you? Actually, I don’t think anyone could.”
“Sometimes you sound exactly like Robespierre.”
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