A Place of Greater Safety (69 page)
Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
“Don’t you mind? Don’t you mind what we’ve done?”
“Perhaps I mind—but I know I’m part of it. Gabrielle, you see she can’t bear it—she thinks you’ve damned your soul and hers too. But for myself—I think possibly that when I first saw Camille, I was twelve then, twelve or thirteen—I thought, oh, here comes hell. It doesn’t become me to start squealing now. Gabrielle married a nice young lawyer. I didn’t.”
“You can’t persuade me of that—you can’t say you knew what you were getting.”
“One can know. And not know.”
He took her hand, her wrist, gripped it hard. “Lolotte, this cannot go on for much longer. I am not Fréron, I am not Dillon, I am not a man you flirt with, I will not allow you to enjoy yourself at my expense.”
“So, then?”
“And I do mean to have you, you know.”
“Georges, are you threatening me?”
He nodded. “I suppose I am,” he said thoughtfully. “I suppose I must be.” He stood up.
“Well, this is quite a new phase of my existence,” she said. She looked up at him, with a sweet, confident smile. “But you have neglected all the orthodox arts of persuasion, Georges. Is this the best you can do by way of seduction? All you do is glare at me and make the occasional grab. Why don’t you languish? Why don’t you sigh? Why don’t you write me a sonnet?”
“Because I’ve seen where it gets your other beaux,” he said. “Oh, dammit all, girl, this is ridiculous.”
He thought, she wants me really, the bitch. She thought, it takes his mind off things.
He picked up his papers, and went back to his own suite. The cat crept back, and jumped onto her knee and curled up; Lucile stared into the hearth, like an old spinster lady.
Perhaps fourteen hundred people are dead. Compared to the average battlefield, it is a trifle. But think (Lucile does): one life is everything to its possessor, one life is all we have.
T
he elections for the National Convention were conducted by the usual two-tier system, and, as the nine hundred second-stage Electors walked to their meeting in the hall of the Jacobins, they passed heaps of fresh corpses piled in the street.
he elections for the National Convention were conducted by the usual two-tier system, and, as the nine hundred second-stage Electors walked to their meeting in the hall of the Jacobins, they passed heaps of fresh corpses piled in the street.
There were repeated ballots, until a candidate got an absolute majority. It took a long time. A candidate could offer himself for election in more than one part of the country. It was not necessary to be a French citizen. The variety of candidates was so great that the Electors might have become confused, but Robespierre was always ready to offer guidance. He embraced Danton, tentatively, when Danton was returned with a 91 percent poll in his favor; at least, if you could not say he embraced him, you could say he patted his sleeve. He relished the applause when he himself defeated Pétion in a direct contest, and forced him to seek a provincial seat; it was important to him that the Paris deputies form a solid anti-Brissotin bloc. He was both pleased and anxious when the Paris electors returned his younger brother Augustin; he worried a little in case his family name carried undue influence, but after all, Augustin had worked hard for the revolution in Arras, and it was time for him to make the move to the capital. Help and support for me, he thought. He managed a dazzled smile at the way things were going. He looked younger, for a minute or two.
The journalist Hébert did not receive more than six votes in any one ballot; again Robespierre’s face seemed to open, the tense muscles of his jaw relaxed. Hébert has a certain sansculotte following, although he is known to keep a carriage; Hébert
in propria persona
is not so important as the image he shelters behind, and thankfully, Père Duchesne the furnace maker will not be puffing his democratic pipe on the Convention’s benches.
in propria persona
is not so important as the image he shelters behind, and thankfully, Père Duchesne the furnace maker will not be puffing his democratic pipe on the Convention’s benches.
But not everything went smoothly … . The English scientist Priestley seemed to be gathering support, in an elector’s rebellion against Marat. “The need now is not for exceptional talent,” Robespierre advised, “and not for foreign talent. It is for men who have hidden in cellars for the sake of the Revolution. And,” he added, “for butchers even.”
He intended no irony. Legendre was safely elected next day. So was Marat.
His protégé Antoine Saint-Just would be in Paris at last, and the Duke of Orléans would be sitting beside the men he had once paid and patronized. Having cast about for a surname, the Duke had adopted the one the people had stuck on him, half in mockery; he was now Philippe Égalité.
A hint of trouble on September 8: “Some jumped-up Brissotin intellectual,” Legendre said, “this Kersaint, has polled enough votes to stop Camille coming through on the first ballot. What are we going to do about it?”
“Don’t upset yourself,” Danton said soothingly. “Better the jumped-up intellectual you know, eh?” He had quite expected the Electors to resist handing the nation’s affairs over to Camille. Kersaint wasn’t, anyway, what he called an intellectual; he was a naval officer from Brittany, had sat in the last Assembly.
Robespierre said, “Citizen Legendre, if there is a conspiracy to stop Camille’s election, I shall quash it.”
“Now wait a minute …” Legendre said. His objection tailed off, but he looked uneasy. He hadn’t mentioned a
conspiracy;
but Citizen Robespierre has this hair-trigger mechanism. “What will you do?” he asked.
conspiracy;
but Citizen Robespierre has this hair-trigger mechanism. “What will you do?” he asked.
“I shall propose that until the elections are over, an hour a day be given to a public discussion of the candidates’ merits.”
“Oh, a discussion,” Legendre said, relieved. For a moment he’d thought Robespierre might be planning to put a warrant out for Kersaint. Last week, you’d known what kind of a man you were dealing with; this week, you didn’t know. It put him up in your estimation, in a way.
Danton grinned. “You’d better make a list of Camille’s merits, and circulate it. We aren’t all so inventive as you. I don’t know how you’d justify Camille, except under the heading ‘exceptional talent.’”
“You do want him elected?” Robespierre demanded.
“Of course. I want someone to talk to during the boring debates.”
“Then don’t sit there laughing.”
Camille said, “I wish you wouldn’t discuss me as if I weren’t here.” On the next ballot, Citizen Kersaint, who before had received 230 votes, now mysteriously found that he had only thirty-six. Robespierre shrugged. “One does try to persuade people, of course. There’s no more to it than that. Congratulations, my dear.” For some reason, an image comes into his head, of Camille at twelve or thirteen years old: a violent, whimsical child, given to stormy outbreaks of tears.
Meanwhile the volunteers, in their thousands, march to the front singing. They have sausages and loaves of bread stuck on the end of their bayonets. Women give them kisses and bunches of flowers. Do you remember how it used to be when the recruiting sergeant came to a village? No one hides now. People are scraping the walls of their cellars for saltpeter to make gunpowder. Women are giving their wedding rings to the Treasury to be melted down. Many of them, of course, will be taking advantage of the new laws to get divorced.
“P
ikes?” Camille said.
ikes?” Camille said.
“Pikes,” Fabre said sullenly.
“I don’t wish to appear legalistic, a pettifogger as it were, but is it the business of the Minister of Justice to purchase pikes? Does Georges-Jacques know we’ve got a bill for pikes?”
“Oh, come on, do you think I can go running to the minister with every trifling expense?”
“When you add it all up,” Camille pushed his hair back, “we’ve spent a lot of money over the past few weeks. It worries me to think that now we’re all deputies there’ll be new ministers soon, and they’ll want to know where the money has gone. Because really, I haven’t the least idea. I don’t suppose you have?”
“Anything that causes difficulty,” Fabre said “you just put down as ‘Secret Fund.’ Then nobody asks any questions, because they can’t, you see—it’s secret. Don’t worry so much. Everything’s all right as long as you don’t lose the Great Seal. You haven’t lost it, have you?”
“No. At least, I saw it somewhere this morning.”
“Good—now look, shall we reimburse ourselves a bit? What about
that money Manon Roland is supposed to be getting for her ministry to issue news sheets?”
that money Manon Roland is supposed to be getting for her ministry to issue news sheets?”
“Oh yes. Georges told her that she’d better ask me nicely to edit them.”
“He did, I was there. She said perhaps her husband would see you, and decide if you were suitable. Our minister, he began to bellow and paw the ground.”
They laughed. “Well, then,” Camille said. “One Treasury warrant …” His hand moved over his desk. “Claude taught me this … they never query anything, you know, if it has Danton’s signature.”
“I know,” Fabre said.
“What did I do with the signature stamp? I lent it to Marat. I hope he brings it back.”
“Speaking of Queen Coco,” Fabre said, “have you noticed anything different in her manner lately?”
“How could I? You know I’m forbidden the presence.”
“Oh yes, of course you are. Well, let me tell you … There’s a certain lightness in the step, a certain bloom on the cheek—what does that betoken?”
“She’s in love.”
F
abre is now around forty years years old. He is neat, pale, built on economic lines: actor’s eyes, actor’s hands. Bits of his autobiography emerge, late at night, in no particular chronological order. No wonder nothing fazes him. In Namur once, aided by army-officer friends, he eloped with a fifteen-year-old girl called Catiche; he did it, he explains, to preserve her virginity from the girl’s own father. Better that he should have it … . They had been apprehended; Catiche had been hastily married off, he had been sentenced to hang. How is it, then, that he lives to tell the tale? All these years on, and with so much excitement in between, he can hardly remember. Camille says, “Georges-Jacques, we have lived sheltered lives, you and me.”
abre is now around forty years years old. He is neat, pale, built on economic lines: actor’s eyes, actor’s hands. Bits of his autobiography emerge, late at night, in no particular chronological order. No wonder nothing fazes him. In Namur once, aided by army-officer friends, he eloped with a fifteen-year-old girl called Catiche; he did it, he explains, to preserve her virginity from the girl’s own father. Better that he should have it … . They had been apprehended; Catiche had been hastily married off, he had been sentenced to hang. How is it, then, that he lives to tell the tale? All these years on, and with so much excitement in between, he can hardly remember. Camille says, “Georges-Jacques, we have lived sheltered lives, you and me.”
“Monk-like,” the minister agrees.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Fabre says modestly.
Fabre follows the minister as he stamps through public buildings, his large hands slapping backs and desktops, wringing the necks of all compromise solutions, all the tried and tested methods, all the decent ways of doing things. Power becomes him, fits him like an old topcoat; his little eyes glitter if anyone tries to dispute with him. Fabre feeds his ego in all the unsubtle ways he likes best; they are comfortable together, sit
up drinking and discussing shady inter-departmental deals. When dawn comes, Danton find himself alone with the map of Europe.
up drinking and discussing shady inter-departmental deals. When dawn comes, Danton find himself alone with the map of Europe.
Fabre is limited, he complains, he makes me waste my time. But his company is never exacting, and the minister is used to him, and he is always there when he’s wanted.
This morning the minister was thoughtful, chin on fist. “Fabre, have you ever planned a robbery?”
Fabre darted at him a look of alarm.
“No,” Danton said good-humoredly, “I know petty criminality is a pastime of yours. We’ll come to that later. No, I need your help, because I want to steal the Crown Jewels. Yes, do sit down.”
“Perhaps, Danton, a word of explanation?”
“You’re entitled to that—but I want no ifs or buts. Use your imagination. I do. Now, consider the Duke of Brunswick.”
“Brunswick—”
“Spare me your Jacobin diatribe—I’ve heard it. The truth is that Brunswick, as a man, is not wholly unsympathetic to us. The July manifesto wasn’t his—the Austrians and the Prussians made him sign it. Think about him. He’s an intelligent man. He’s a forward-looking man. He has no tears to waste on the Bourbons. He is also a very rich man. He is a great soldier. But to the allies he is—what? A mercenary.”
“What does he aspire to be?”
“Brunswick knows as well as I do that France isn’t ready for republican government. The people may not want Louis or his brothers, but they want a King, because Kings are what they understand, and sooner or later the nation will fall to a King, or to a dictator who will make himself King. Ask Robespierre, if you don’t think I’m right. Now there might have been circumstances in which—having established a constitution—we were scouring Europe for some reasonably regal old buffer to come and uphold it. Brunswick would perhaps word it differently—but there is no doubt that he wished to play that role.”
“Robespierre alleged this.” (And you, Fabre thought, pretended not to believe it.) “But then in July, with the manifesto—”
“Brunswick wrecked his chances. We use him as a swear word. Why did the allies make him put his name on their manifesto? Because they need him. They wanted to make him hated here, so that his personal ambitions were quashed, and he was secured to their service.”
“They succeeded. So what about it?”
“The situation’s not—irretrievable. You see, I’ve considered whether Brunswick might be bought off. I’ve asked General Dumouriez to open negotiations.”
Fabre drew in his breath. “You’re reckless with our lives. We’re in Dumouriez’s hands now.”
“That’s possible, but that’s not the issue. The issue is the result for France, not the unfinished business between me and the general. Because … it appears that Brunswick can be bought off.”
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