A Place of Greater Safety (52 page)
Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
I don’t wish to suggest that Brissot’s people are anything so definite as a party. Yet they see a good deal of each other—salon life, you know. Last summer they used to meet at the apartment of an aging nonentity called Roland, a provincial married to a much younger woman. The wife would be passably attractive, if it were not for her incessant fervor. She is the type who always wants to surround herself with young men, and play them off against each other. She probably cuckolds the old husband, but I doubt if that is the point for her—it’s not her body that she wants to gratify. Well, so I suppose. To my relief, I don’t know her very well.
Robespierre used to go to supper there, so I gather they’re a high-minded
lot. I asked him did he contribute much to the conversation; he said, “Not a word do I speak, I sit in a corner and bite my nails.” He has his moments, does Maximilien.
lot. I asked him did he contribute much to the conversation; he said, “Not a word do I speak, I sit in a corner and bite my nails.” He has his moments, does Maximilien.
He called on me in early December, soon after he got back from Arras. “Am I distrubing you?” he asked—anxious as usual, peering into our drawing room to make sure there was no one he didn’t wish to meet. I waved him in airily. “Only, do you mind the dog?”
I hastily removed the hand I had placed on his shoulder.
“I don’t mean to take him everywhere,” he said, “but he will follow.”
The dog—which was the size of a small donkey—disposed itself at his feet, its head on its paws and its eyes on his face. It was a great brindled creature, and its name was Brount. “He is my dog at home,” he explained. “I thought I should bring him because—well, Maurice Duplay wants me to have a bodyguard, and I don’t like the idea of people following me about. I thought the dog—”
“I’m sure it will,” I said.
“He’s very well behaved. Do you think it’s a good idea?”
“Well, after all,” I said, “I have Legendre.”
“Yes.” He moved uneasily, causing the dog to twitch its ears. My wit is lost on Maximilien. “Is it true that there was an assassination plot against you?”
“More than one, I understand.”
“But you don’t let them intimidate you. Danton, I have great respect for you.”
I was nonplussed: I had not expected a testimonial. We talked a little about his visit to Arras. He told me about his sister Charlotte, who is his warmest supporter in public, but tiresome in private. It was the first time he had spoken to me about his personal life. What I know of him, I know from Camille. I suppose that, returning to find Paris full of new men running things, he looks on me as an old comrade-in-arms. I comforted myself that he had forgiven me for the jokes I made at his expense when he broke off his engagement to Adèle.
“So what do you make of the new Assembly?” I asked him.
“I suppose they’re an improvement on the last lot.” A lack of warmth in his tone.
“But?”
“These people from Bordeaux—they have a great opinion of themselves. I wonder about their motives, that’s all.” Then he began to talk about Lazare Camot, a military man he’s known for years, who is now a deputy; Carnot was the first soldier I heard him praise, and probably the only one. “And Couthon,” he said, “have you met him?”
I had. Couthon is a cripple, and has an attendant who wheels him
about in a special chair; when there are steps, the attendant lifts him onto his back and carries him, his withered legs trailing. Some helpful person brings the chair up, the poor man is dropped back in and off they go. Despite being crippled he has enjoyed, like Robespierre, a sparkling career as a poor man’s lawyer. Couthon’s spine is diseased, he has constant pain. Robespierre says this does not embitter him. Only Robespierre could believe this.
about in a special chair; when there are steps, the attendant lifts him onto his back and carries him, his withered legs trailing. Some helpful person brings the chair up, the poor man is dropped back in and off they go. Despite being crippled he has enjoyed, like Robespierre, a sparkling career as a poor man’s lawyer. Couthon’s spine is diseased, he has constant pain. Robespierre says this does not embitter him. Only Robespierre could believe this.
He was worried, he said, about the warmongers—in other words, “Brissot’s people.”
“You’ve just come from England, Danton. Do they mean to fight us?”
I was able to assure him that only extreme provocation would bring them to it.
“Danton, war would be disastrous, wouldn’t it?”
“Beyond doubt. We have no money. Our army is led by aristocrats whose sympathy might well be with the enemy. Our navy’s a disgrace. We’ve political dissension at home.”
“Half our officers, perhaps more, have emigrated. If we have a war, it will have to be fought by peasants with pitchforks. Or pikes, if we can stand the expense.”
“It might benefit some people,” I said.
“Yes, the Court. Because they think that the chaos war brings will force us to turn back to the monarchy, and that when our Revolution is crippled and brought to its knees we’ll come crawling to them, begging them to help us forget that we were ever free. If that were attained, what would they care if Prussian troops burn our homes and slaughter our children? It would be meat and drink to them to see that day.”
“Robespierre—”
But he could not be stopped. “So the Court will support war, even if it is against Antoinette’s own people. And there are men who sit in the Assembly, calling themselves patriots, who will grasp any chance to distract attention from the real revolutionary struggle.”
“You mean Brissot’s people?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you suppose that they want to, as you put it, distract attention?”
“Because they’re afraid of the people. They want to contain the Revolution, hold it back, because they’re afraid of the real exercise of the people’s will. They want a revolution to suit their own ends. They want to line their pockets. I’ll tell you why people always want war—it’s because there’s easy money to be made out of it.”
I was amazed at this grim conclusion: not that I had not come to it,
but that Robespierre should come to it, Robespierre of the clean mind and the noble motive.
but that Robespierre should come to it, Robespierre of the clean mind and the noble motive.
“They talk,” I said, “of a crusade to bring liberty to Europe. Of how it’s our duty to spread the gospel of fraternity.”
“Spread the gospel? Well, ask yourself—who loves armed missionaries?”
“Who indeed?”
“They speak as if they had the interests of the people at heart, but the end of it will be military dictatorship.”
I nodded. I felt he was right, but I didn’t like the way he spoke; he spoke, if you follow me, as if it were beyond dispute. “Don’t you think,” I said, “that Brissot and his friends might be given credit for good intentions? They think a war would pull the country together and make the Revolution secure and get the rest of Europe off our backs.”
“Do you thing that?”
“Personally, no.”
“Are you a fool? Am I?”
“No.”
“Isn’t the reasoning clear? With France as she is, poor and unarmed, war means defeat. Defeat means either a military dictator who will salvage what he can and set up a new tyranny, or it means a total collapse and the return of absolute monarchy. It could mean both, one after the other. After ten years not a single one of our achievements will remain, and to your son liberty will be an old man’s daydream. This is what will happen, Danton. No one can sincerely maintain the contrary. So if they do maintain it, they are not sincere, they are not patriots and their war policy is a conspiracy against the people.”
“You are saying, in effect, they are traitors.”
“In effect. Potentially. And so we must strengthen our own position against them.”
“If we could win the war, would you favor it?”
“I hate all war.” A forced smile. “I hate all unnecessary violence. I hate quarrels, even dissension among people, but I know I am doomed to live with that.” He made a small gesture, as if putting the controversy aside. “Tell me, Georges-Jacques—do I seem unreasonable?”
“No, what you say is logical …it’s just …” I couldn’t think how to finish my sentence.
“The Right try to present me as a fanatic. They’ll end up by making me one.”
He got up to go, and the dog jumped up and glared at me when I took his hand.
“I should like to talk to you, informally,” I said. “I’m tired of speaking at you in public places, of never getting to know you any better. Come to supper tonight?”
“Thank you, but,” he shook his head, “too much work. Come and see me at Maurice Duplay’s.”
So he went downstairs, the reasonable person, with his dog padding after him and growling at the shadows.
I felt depressed. When Robespierre says he dislikes the whole idea of war, it is an emotional reaction—and I am not immune to those. I share his distrust of soldiers; we are suspicious, envious perhaps, as only pen pushers can be. Day by day, the movement for war gains momentum. We must strike first, they say, before we are stricken. Once they begin to beat the big drum, there’s no reasoning with them. Now, if I have to stand against the tide, I would rather do it with Robespierre than anyone. I may make jokes at his expense—no, not “may,” I do—but I know his energy, and I know his honesty.
And yet … he feels something, in his heart, and then he sits down and works out the logic of it, in his head. Then he says that the head part came first; and we believe him.
I did visit him at Duplay’s, but first I let Camille reconnoiter. The master carpenter had hidden him when he was in danger, and we all assumed that when things got back to normal, etcetera—but he stayed.
Once you shut the gate from the rue Saint-Honoré, the place seems quiet, almost rural. The yard is full of Duplay’s workmen, but the noise is muted and the air is fresh. He has a room on the first floor, plain but pleasant enough. I did not notice the furniture, I suppose it is not anything special. When I called on him he waved at a large bookcase, new and well finished if not stylish. “Maurice made that for me.” He was pleased with it. As if he were pleased someone would take the trouble.
I looked at his books. Jean-Jacques Rousseau by the yard; few other modern authors. Cicero, Tacitus, the usual: all well-thumbed. I wonder—if we go to war with England, will I have to hide my books of Shakespeare, and my Adam Smith? I guess that Robespierre reads no modern language but his own, which seems a pity. Camille, by the way, thinks modern languages beneath his notice; he is studying Hebrew, and looking for someone to teach him Sanskrit.
He had warned me what to expect of the Duplays. “There … are … these … dreadful … people,” he had said. But that day he was engaged in pretending to be Hérault de Séchelles, so I did not take him too seriously. “There is, first, the paterfamilias Maurice. He is fifty or fifty-five, balding and very, very earnest. He can bring out only the
worst in our dear Robespierre. Madame is a homely sort, and can never have been even tolerably good-looking. There is a son, also called Maurice, and a nephew, Simon—these last both young, and apparently quite witless.”
worst in our dear Robespierre. Madame is a homely sort, and can never have been even tolerably good-looking. There is a son, also called Maurice, and a nephew, Simon—these last both young, and apparently quite witless.”
“But tell me about the three daughters,” I said. “Are they worth calling on?”
Camille gave an aristocratic groan. “There is Victoire, who cannot easily be distinguished from the furniture. She never opened her mouth—”
“Not surprising, if you were in this mood,” Lucile said. (She was, however, vastly entertained.)
“There is the little one, Elisabeth—they call her Babette—who is tolerable, if you like goose-girls. And then the eldest—words fail me.”
They didn’t, of course. Eléonore, it appeared, was an unfortunate girl, plain, drab and pretentious; she was an art student under David, and preferred to her own perfectly adequate name the classical appellation “Cornélia”: this detail, I confess, I found risible.
To dispel any remaining illusions, he opined that the bed curtains in Robespierre’s room were made out of one of Madame’s old dresses, because they were just the kind of ghastly fabric she would choose for her personal adornment. Camille goes on like this for days on end, and it’s impossible to get any sense out of him.
They are good people, I suppose; have struggled to get to their present comfortable position. Duplay is a staunch patriot: goes in for plain speaking at the Jacobins, but is modest with it. Maximilien seems at home there. It probably, when I think of it, helps him financially to live with them. He gave up his post as Public Prosecutor as soon as he decently could, saying that it interfered with his “larger work.” So he has no office, no salary, and must be living on savings. I understand that wealthy but disinterested patriots send him drafts on their bankers. And what do you think? Yes, he writes polite notes and sends them back.
The daughters—the shy one is nothing worse than that, and Babette has a certain schoolroom appeal. Eléonore, I admit …
They do their best to make him comfortable: God knows, it’s time somebody did that. It is a rather spartan comfort, by our refurbished standards; I’m afraid it brings out the worst in us when we sneer at the Duplays, with what Camille calls their “good plain food and good plain daughters.”
Later, I became aware of something odd in the atmosphere of the house. Some of us began to jib when the family began to collect portraits of their new son to decorate their walls, and Fréron asked me if I did
not think it was prodigiously vain of Robespierre to allow it. I suppose we have all had our portrait made: even I, at whom any artist might balk. But this was different; you sat with Robespierre in the little parlor where he sometimes received visitors, and found him meeting your eyes not just in person but in oils, in charcoal, three-dimensionally in terra-cotta. Every time I called—which perhaps was not often—there was a new one. It made me uneasy—not just the portraits and busts, but the way all the family looked at him. They’re grateful he turned up on their doorstep at all, but that’s no longer enough. They fasten their eyes on him, Father, Mother, young Maurice, and Simon, Victoire, Eléonore, Babette. In his place I should ask myself: what do these people really want? What will I lose if I give it them?
not think it was prodigiously vain of Robespierre to allow it. I suppose we have all had our portrait made: even I, at whom any artist might balk. But this was different; you sat with Robespierre in the little parlor where he sometimes received visitors, and found him meeting your eyes not just in person but in oils, in charcoal, three-dimensionally in terra-cotta. Every time I called—which perhaps was not often—there was a new one. It made me uneasy—not just the portraits and busts, but the way all the family looked at him. They’re grateful he turned up on their doorstep at all, but that’s no longer enough. They fasten their eyes on him, Father, Mother, young Maurice, and Simon, Victoire, Eléonore, Babette. In his place I should ask myself: what do these people really want? What will I lose if I give it them?
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