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Authors: Hilary Mantel

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“Yes, why not?”
Jean-Nicolas took his son’s arm. Not very dignified to drag him to the meeting, but he’d do it if necessary. He could feel the damp wind penetrating his clothes and stirring aches and pains in every part. “Come on,” he snapped, “before they give us up for lost.”
“Ah, at last,” the de Viefville cousins said. Rose-Fleur’s father looked
Camille over sourly. “I had rather hoped not to see you, but I suppose you are a member of the local Bar, and your father pointed out that we could not very well disenfranchise you. This may, after all, be your only chance to play any part in the nation’s affairs. I hear you’ve been writing,” he said. “Pamphleteering. Not, if I may say so, a gentleman’s method of persuasion.”
Camille gave M. Godard his best, his sweetest smile. “Maître Perrin sends his regards,” he said.
After the meeting nothing remained except for Jean-Nicolas to go to Laon to collect a formal endorsement. Adrien de Viefville, the Mayor of Guise, walked home with them. Jean-Nicolas seemed dazed by his easy victory; he’d have to start packing for Versailles. He stopped as they crossed the Place des Armes and stood looking up at his house. “What are you doing?” his relative asked.
“Inspecting the guttering,” Jean-Nicolas explained.
By next morning everything had fallen apart. Maître Desmoulins did not appear for breakfast. Madeleine had anticipated the festive chink of coffee cups, congratulations all round, perhaps even a little laughter. But those children who remained at home all had colds, and were coddling themselves, and she was left to preside over one son, whom she did not know well enough to talk to, and who did not eat breakfast anyway.
“Can he be sulking?” she asked. “I didn’t think he’d sulk, today of all days. This comes of aping royalty and having separate bedrooms. I never know what the bastard’s thinking.”
“I could go and find him,” Camille suggested.
“No, don’t trouble. Have some more coffee. He’ll probably send me a note.”
Madeleine surveyed her eldest child. She put a piece of brioche into her mouth. To her surprise, it stuck there, like a lump of ash. “What has happened to us?” she said. Tears welled into her eyes. “What has happened to you?” She could have put her head down on the table, and howled.
Presently word came that Jean-Nicolas was unwell. He had a pain, he said. The doctor arrived, and confined him to bed. Messages were sent to the mayor’s house.
“Is it my heart?” Desmoulins inquired weakly. If it is, he was about to say, I blame Camille.
The doctor said, “I’ve told you often enough where your heart is, and where your kidneys are, and what is the state of each; and while your heart is perfectly sound, to set out for Versailles with kidneys like those
is mere folly. You will be sixty in two years-if, and only if, you take life quietly. Moreover—”
“Yes? While you’re about it?”
“Events in Versailles are more likely to give you a heart attack than anything your son has ever done.”
Jean-Nicolas dropped his head back against the pillows. His face was yellow with pain and disappointment. The de Viefvilles gathered in the drawing room below, and the Godards, and all the electoral officials. Camille followed the doctor in. “Tell him it’s his duty to go to Versailles,” he said. “Even if it kills him.”
“You always were a heartless boy,” said M. Saulce.
Camille turned to break into a clique of de Viefvilles. “Send me,” he said.
Jean-Louis de Viefville des Essarts, advocate, Parlementaire, surveyed him through his pince-nez. “Camille,” he said, “I wouldn’t send you down to the market to fetch a lettuce.”
 
 
A
rtois: the three Estates met separately, and the assemblies of the clergy and the nobility each indicated that in this time of national crisis they would be prepared to sacrifice some of their ancient privileges. The Third Estate began to propose an effusive vote of thanks.
A young man from Arras took the floor. He was short and slightly built, with a conspicuously well-cut coat and immaculate linen. His face was intelligent and earnest, with a narrow chin and wide blue eyes masked behind spectacles. His voice was unimpressive, and halfway through his speech it died momentarily in his throat; people had to lean forward and nudge their neighbors to know what he said. But it was not the manner of his delivery that caused them consternation. He said that the clergy and the nobility had done nothing praiseworthy, but had merely promised to amend where they had abused. Therefore, there was no need to thank them at all.
Among people who were not from Arras, and did not know him, there was some surprise when he was elected one of the eight deputies for the Third Estate of Artois. He seems locked into himself, somehow not
amenable;
and he has no orator’s tricks, no style, nothing about him at all.
 
 
“I
notice you’ve paid off your tailor,” his sister Charlotte said. “And your glove maker. And you said he was such a good glove maker too. I
wish you wouldn’t go around town as if you’ve decided to leave for good.”
“Would you prefer it if I climbed through the window one night with all my possessions done up in a spotted handkerchief? You could tell them I’d run away to sea.”
But Charlotte was not to be mollified: Charlotte, the family knife. “They’ll want you to settle things before you go.”
“You mean about Anaïs?” He looked up from the letter he was writing to an old schoolfriend. “She’s said she’s happy to wait.”
“She’ll not wait. I know what girls are like. My advice to you is to forget her.”
“I am always glad of your advice.”
She threw her head up and glared, suspecting sarcasm. But his face expressed only concern for her. He turned back to his letter:
 
Dearest Camille,
I flatter myself you won’t be very surprised to learn I’m on my way to Versailles. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward …
 
 
M
aximilien Robespierre, 1789, in the case of Dupond:
The reward of the virtuous man is his confidence that he has willed the good of his fellow man: after that comes the recognition of the nations, which surrounds his memory, and the honors given him by contemporaries … . I should like to buy these rewards, at the price of a laborious life, even at the price of a premature death.
P
aris: on April 1, d‘Anton went out to vote at the church of the Franciscans, whom the Parisians called the Cordeliers. Legendre the master butcher walked down with him—a big, raw, self-educated man who was in the habit of agreeing with anything d’Anton said.
“Now a man like you …” Fréron had said, with careful flattery.
“A man like me can’t afford to stand for election,” d’Anton said. “They’re giving the deputies, what, an eighteen-franc allowance per session? And I’d have to live in Versailles. I’ve a family to support, I can’t let my practice lie fallow.”
“But you’re disappointed,” Fréron suggested.
“Maybe.”
The voters didn’t go home; they stood in groups outside the Cordeliers’ church, gossiping and making predictions. Fabre didn’t have a vote because
he didn’t pay enough taxes; the fact was making him spiteful. “Why couldn’t we have the same franchise as the provinces?” he demanded. “I’ll tell you what it is, they regard Paris as a dangerous city, they’re afraid of what would happen if we all had votes.” He engaged in seditious conversation with the truculent Marquis de Saint-Huruge. Louise Robert closed the shop and came out on François’s arm, wearing rouge and a frock left over from better days.
“Think what would happen if women had votes,” she said. She looked up at d‘Anton. “Maître d’Anton believes women have a lot to contribute to political life, don’t you?”
“I do not,” he said mildly.
“The whole district’s out,” Legendre said. He was pleased. He had spent his youth at sea; now he liked to feel he belonged to a place.
Mid-afternoon, a surprise visitor: Hérault de Séchelles.
“Thought I’d drop down to see how you Cordeliers wild men were voting,” he said; but d’Anton had the impression he’d come to look for him. Hérault took a pinch of snuff from a little box with a picture of Voltaire on the lid. He turned the box in his fingers, appreciatively; proffered it to Legendre.
“This is our butcher,” d’Anton said, enjoying the effect.
“Charmed,” Hérault said, not a flicker of surprise on his amiable features; but afterwards d‘Anton caught him surreptitiously checking his cuffs to see if they were free of ox-blood and offal. He turned to d’Anton: “Have you been to the Palais-Royal today?”
“No, I hear there’s some trouble … .”
“That’s right, keep yourself in the clear,” Louise Robert muttered.
“So you’ve not seen Camille?”
“He’s in Guise.”
“No, he’s back. I saw him yesterday in the company of the ineffably verminous Jean-Paul Marat—oh, you don’t know the doctor? Not such a loss—the man has a criminal record in half the countries in Europe.”
“Don’t hold that against a man,” d’Anton said.
“But he has, you know, a long history of imposing on people. He was physician to the Comte d’Artois’s household troops, and it’s said he was the lover of a marquise.”
“Naturally, you don’t believe that.”
“Look, I can’t help my birth,” Hérault said, with a flash of irritation. “I try to atone for it—perhaps you think I should imitate Mlle. de Kéralio and open a shop? Or your butcher might take me on to scrub the floors?” He broke off. “Oh, really, one shouldn’t be talking like this, losing one’s
temper. It must be the air in this district. Be careful, Marat will be wanting to move in.”
“But why is this gentleman verminous? You mean it as a figure of speech?”
“I mean it literally. This man abandoned his life, walked out, chooses to live as some sort of tramp.” Hérault shuddered; the story had a horrible grip on his imagination.
“What does he do?”
“He appears to have dedicated himself to the overthrowing of everything.”
“Ah, the overthrowing of everything. Lucrative business, that. Business to put your son into.”
“What I am telling you is perfectly true—but look now, I’m getting diverted. I came to ask you to do something about Camille, as a matter of urgency—”
“Oh, Camille,” Legendre said. He added a phrase he had seldom used since his merchant navy days.
“Well, quite,” Hérault said. “But one doesn’t want to see him taken up by the police. The Palais-Royal is full of people standing on chairs making inflammatory speeches. I don’t know if he is there now, but he was there yesterday, and the day before—”
“Camille is making a
speech
?”
This seemed unlikely: and yet, possible. A picture came into d‘Anton’s mind. It was some weeks ago, late at night. Fabre had been drinking. They had all been drinking. Fabre said, we are going to be public men. He said, d’Anton, you know what I told you about your voice when we first met, when you were a boy? I told you, you’ve got to be able to speak for hours, you’ve got to fetch up your voice from here, from here—well, you’re good, but you’re not that good yet. Courtrooms are one thing, but we’re growing out of courtrooms.
Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d‘Anton’s temples. “Put your fingers here,” he said. “Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.” He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. “I’ll teach you like an actor,” he said. “This city is our stage.”
Camille said: “Book of Ezekiel. ‘
This city is the cauldron
,
and we the flesh’ .
..”
Fabre turned. “This stutter,” he said. “
You don’t have to do it.
”
Camille put his hands over his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said.
“Even you.” Fabre’s face was incandescent. “Even you, I am going to teach.”
He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re going to talk properly,” Fabre said. “Even if it kills one of us.”
Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.
Now, in bright sunlight, on an April morning, he wondered if this scene could really have occurred. Nevertheless, he began to walk.
 
 
T
he gardens of the Palais-Royal were full to overflowing. It seemed to be hotter here than anywhere else, as if it were high summer. The shops in the arcades were all open, doing brisk business, and people were arguing, laughing, parading; the stockbrokers from the bourse had wrenched their cravats off and were drinking lemonade, and the patrons of the cafés had spilled into the gardens and were fanning themselves with their hats. Young girls had come out to take the air and show off their summer dresses and compare themselves with the prostitutes, who saw chances of midday trade and were out in force. Stray dogs ran about grinning; broadsheet sellers bawled. There was an air of holiday: dangerous holiday, holiday with an edge.

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