Читать книгу Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien - Hilary Mantel - Страница 24

A DEPOSITION to the Estates-General:

The community of Chaillevois is composed of about two hundred persons. The most part of the inhabitants have no property at all, those who have any possess so little that it is not worth talking about. The ordinary food is bread steeped in salt water. As for meat, it is never tasted, except on Easter Sunday, Shrove Tuesday and the feast of the patron saint…A man may sometimes eat haricots, if the master does not forbid them to be grown among the vines…That is how the common people live under the best of Kings.

Honoré-Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau:

My motto shall be this: get into the Estates at all costs.

NEW YEAR. You go out in the streets and you think it’s here: the crash at last, the collapse, the end of the world. It is colder now than any living person can remember. The river is a solid sheet of ice. The first morning, it was a novelty. Children ran and shouted, and dragged their complaining mothers out to see it. ‘One could skate,’ people said. After a week, they began to turn their heads from the sight, keep their children indoors. Under the bridges, by dim and precarious fires, the destitute wait for death. A loaf of bread is fourteen sous, for the New Year.

These people have left their insufficient shelters, their shacks, their caves, abandoned the rock-hard, snow-glazed fields where they cannot believe anything will ever grow again. Tying up in a square of sacking a few pieces of bread, perhaps chestnuts: cording a small bundle of firewood: saying no goodbyes, taking to the road. They move in droves for safety, sometimes men alone, sometimes families, always keeping with the people from their own district, whose language they speak. At first they sing and tell stories. After two days or so, they walk in silence. The procession that marched now straggles. With luck, one may find a shed or byre for the night. Old women are wakened with difficulty in the morning and are found to have lost their wits. Small children are abandoned in village doorways. Some die; some are found by the charitable, and grow up under other names.

Those who reach Paris with their strength intact begin to look for work. Men are being laid off, they’re told, our own people; there’s nothing doing for outsiders. Because the river is frozen up, goods do not come into the city: no cloth to be dyed, no skins to be tanned, no corn. Ships are impaled on the ice, with grain rotting in their holds.

The vagrants congregate in sheltered spots, not discussing the situation because there is nothing to discuss. At first they hang around the markets in the late afternoons, because at the close of the day’s trading any bread that remains is sold off cheaply or given away; the rough, fierce Paris wives get there first. Later, there is no bread after midday. They are told that the good Duke of Orléans gives away a thousand loaves of bread to people who are penniless, like them. But the Paris beggars leave them standing again, sharp-elbowed and callous, willing to give them malicious information and to walk on people who are knocked to the ground. They gather in back courts, in church porches, anywhere that is out of the knife of the wind. The very young and the very old are taken in by the hospitals. Harassed monks and nuns try to bespeak extra linen and a supply of fresh bread, only to find that they must make do with soiled linen and bread that is days old. They say that the Lord’s designs are wonderful, because if the weather warmed up there would be an epidemic. Women weep with dread when they give birth.

Even the rich experience a sense of dislocation. Alms-giving seems not enough; there are frozen corpses on fashionable streets. When people step down from their carriages, they pull their cloaks about their faces, to keep the stinging cold from their cheeks and the miserable sights from their eyes.

‘YOU’RE GOING HOME for the elections?’ Fabre said. ‘Camille, how can you leave me like this? With our great novel only half finished?’

‘Don’t fuss,’ Camille said. ‘It’s possible that when I get back we won’t have to resort to pornography to make a living. We might have other sources of income.’

Fabre grinned. ‘Camille thinks elections are as good as finding a gold-mine. I like you these days, you’re so frail and fierce, you talk like somebody in a book. Do you have a consumption by any chance? An incipient fever?’ He put his hand against Camille’s forehead. ‘Think you’ll last out till May?’

When Camille woke up, these mornings, he wanted to pull the sheets back over his head. He had a headache all the time, and did not seem to comprehend what people were saying.

Two things – the revolution and Lucile – seemed more distant than ever. He knew that one must draw on the other. He had not seen her for a week, and then only briefly, and she had seemed cool. She had said, ‘I don’t mean to seem cool, but I – ’ she had smiled painfully – ‘I daren’t let the painful emotion show through.’

In his calmer moments he talked to everyone about peaceful reform, professed republicanism but said that he had nothing against Louis, that he believed him to be a good man. He talked the same way as everybody else. But d’Anton said, ‘I know you, you want violence, you’ve got the taste for it.’

He went to see Claude Duplessis and told him that his fortune was made. Even if Picardy did not send him as a deputy to the Estates (he pretended to think it likely) it would certainly send his father. Claude said, ‘I do not know what sort of man your father is, but if he is wise he will disassociate himself from you while he is in Versailles, to avoid being exposed to embarrassment.’ His gaze, fixed at a high point on the wall, descended to Camille’s face; he seemed to feel that it was a descent. ‘A hack writer, now,’ he said. ‘My daughter is a fanciful girl, idealistic, quite innocent. She doesn’t know the meaning of hardship or worry. She may think she knows what she wants, but she doesn’t, I know what she wants.’

He left Claude. They were not to meet again for some months. He stood in the rue Condé looking up at the first-floor windows, hoping that he might see Annette. But he saw no one. He went once more on a round of the publishers of whom he had hopes, as if – since last week – they might have become devil-may-care. The presses are busy day and night, and their owners are balancing the risk; inflammatory literature is in request, but no one can afford to see his presses impounded and his workmen marched off. ‘It’s quite simple – I publish this, I go to gaol,’ the printer Momoro said. ‘Can’t you tone it down?’

‘No,’ Camille said. No, I can’t compromise: just like Billaud-Varennes used to say. He shook his head. He had let his hair grow, so when he shook his head with any force its dark waves bounced around somewhat theatrically. He liked this effect. No wonder he had a headache.

The printer said, ‘How is the salacious novel with M. Fabre? Your heart not in it?’

‘When he’s gone,’ Fabre said gleefully to d’Anton, ‘I can revise the manuscript and make our heroine look just like Lucile Duplessis.’

If the Assembly of the Estates-General takes place, according to the promise of the King…there is little doubt but some revolution in the government will be effected. A constitution, probably somewhat similar to that of England, will be adopted, and limitations affixed to the power of the Crown.

J. C. Villiers, MP for Old Sarum

GABRIEL RIQUETTI, Comte de Mirabeau, forty years old today: happy birthday. In duty to the anniversary, he scrutinized himself in a long mirror. The scale and vivacity of the image seemed to ridicule the filigree frame.

Family story: on the day of his birth the accoucheur approached his father, the baby wrapped in a cloth. ‘Don’t be alarmed…’ he began.

He’s no beauty, now. He might be forty, but he looks fifty. One line for his undischarged bankruptcy: just the one, he’s never worried about money. One line for every agonizing month in the state prison at Vincennes. One line per bastard fathered. You’ve lived, he told himself; do you expect life not to leave a mark?

Forty’s a turning point, he told himself. Don’t look back. The early domestic hell: the screaming bloody quarrels, the days of tight-lipped, murderous silence. There was a day when he had stepped between his mother and his father; his mother had fired a pistol at his head. Only fourteen years old, and what did his father say of him? I have seen the nature of the beast. Then the army, a few routine duels, fits of lechery and blind, obstinate rage. Life on the run. Prison. Brother Boniface, getting roaring drunk every day of his life, his body blowing out to the proportions of a freak at a fair. Don’t look back. And almost incidentally, almost unnoticed, a bankruptcy and a marriage: tiny Émilie, the heiress, the little bundle of poison to whom he’d sworn to be true. Where, he wondered, is Émilie today?

Happy birthday, Mirabeau. Appraise the assets. He drew himself up. He was a tall man, powerful, deep-chested: capacious lungs. The face was a shocker: badly pock-marked, not that it seemed to put women off. He turned his head slightly so that he could study the aquiline curve of his nose. His mouth was thin, intimidating; it could be called a cruel mouth, he supposed. Take it all in all – it was a man’s face, full of vigour and high breeding. By a few embellishments to the truth he had made his family into one of the oldest and noblest in France. Who cared about the embellishments? Only pedants, genealogists. People take you at your own valuation, he said to himself.

But now the nobility, the second Estate of the Realm, had disowned him. He would have no seat. He would have no voice. Or so they thought.

It was all complicated by the fact that last summer there had appeared a scandalous book called A Secret History of the Court at Berlin. It dealt in some detail with the seamier side of the Prussian set-up and the sexual predilections of its prominent members. However strenuously he denied authorship, it was plain to everyone that the book was based on his observations during his time as a diplomat. (Diplomat, him? What a joke.) Strictly, he was not at fault: had he not given the manuscript to his secretary, with orders not to part with it to anyone, especially not to himself? How could he know that his current mistress, a publisher’s wife, was in the habit of picking locks and rifling his secretary’s desk? But that was not quite the sort of excuse that would satisfy the government. And besides, in August he had been very, very short of money.

The government should have been more understanding. If they had given him a job last year, instead of ignoring him – something worthy of his talents, say the Constantinople embassy, or Petersburg – then he would have burned A Secret History, or thrown it in a pond. If they had listened to his advice, he wouldn’t be getting ready, now, to teach them the hard way.

So the Nobility rejected him. Very well. Three days ago he had entered Aix-en-Provence as a candidate for the Commons, the Third Estate. What resulted? Scenes of wild enthusiasm. ‘Father of his Country’, they had called him; he was popular, locally. When he got to Paris those bells of Aix would still be ringing jubilee, the night sky of the south would still be criss-crossed by the golden scorch-trails of fireworks. Living fire. He would go to Marseille (taking no chances) and get a reception in no way less noisy and splendid. Just to ensure it, he would publish in the city an anonymous pamphlet in praise of his own character and attributes.

So what’s to be done with these worms at Versailles? Conciliate? Calumniate? Would they arrest you in the middle of a General Election?

A PAMPHLET by the Abbé Sieyès, 1789:

What is the Third Estate?

Everything.

What has it been, until now?

Nothing.

What does it want?

To become something.

THE FIRST Electoral Assembly of the Third Estate of Guise, in the district of Laon: 5 March 1789. Maître Jean-Nicolas Desmoulins presiding, as Lieutenant-General of the Bailiwick of Vermandois: assisted by M. Saulce, Procurator: M. Marriage as Secretary: 292 persons present.

In deference to the solemnity of the occasion, M. Desmoulins’s son had tied his hair back with a broad green ribbon. It had been a black ribbon earlier that morning, but he had remembered just in time that black was the colour of the Hapsburgs and of Antoinette, and that was not at all the kind of partisanship he wished to display. Green, however, was the colour of liberty and the colour of hope. His father waited for him by the front door, fuming at the delay and wearing a new hat. ‘I never know why Hope is accounted a virtue,’ Camille said. ‘It seems so self-serving.’

It was a raw, blustery day. On the rue Grand-Pont, Camille stopped and touched his father’s arm. ‘Come to Laon with me, to the district assembly. Speak for me. Please.’

‘You think I should stand aside for you?’ Jean-Nicolas said. ‘The traits which the electors will prefer in me, are not the ones you have inherited. I am aware that there are certain persons in Laon making a noise on your behalf, saying you must know your way about and so on. Just let them meet you, that’s all I say. Just let them try to have a five-minute normal conversation with you. Just let them set eyes on you. No, Camille, in no way will I be party to foisting you on the electorate.’

Camille opened his mouth to reply. His father said, ‘Do you think it is a good idea to stand about arguing in the street?’

‘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 apeing 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.’

ARTOIS: 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 half-way through his speech it died momentarily in his throat; people had to lean forward and nudge their neighbours 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…

MAXIMILIEN de 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 honours 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.

PARIS: on 1 April, 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.

THE 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.

Camille stood on a chair, the light breeze fanning out his hair. He was holding a piece of paper, and was reading from what appeared to be a police file. When he had finished he held the piece of paper at arm’s length between finger and thumb and released it to let it flutter to the ground. The crowd hooted with laughter. Two men exchanged glances and melted away from the back of the crowd. ‘Informers,’ Fréron said. Then Camille spoke of the Queen with cordial contempt, and the crowd hissed and groaned; he spoke of delivering the King from evil advisers, and praised M. Necker, and the crowd clapped its hands. He spoke of Good Duke Philippe and his concern for the people, and the crowd threw its hat into the air and cheered.

‘They’ll arrest him,’ Hérault said.

‘What, in the face of this crowd?’ Fabre said.

‘They’ll pick him up afterwards.’

D’Anton looked very grave. The crowd was increasing. Camille’s voice reached out to them without a trace of hesitation. By accident or design he had developed a marked Parisian accent. People were drifting over from across the gardens. From the upper window of a jeweller’s shop, the Duke’s man Laclos gazed down dispassionately, sipping from time to time from a glass of water and jotting down notes for his files. Hot, getting hotter: Laclos alone was cool. Camille flicked his fingers across his forehead, brushing the sweat away. He launched into grain speculators. Laclos wrote, ‘The best this week.’

‘I’m glad you came to tell us, Hérault,’ d’Anton said. ‘But I don’t see any chance of stopping him now.’

‘It’s all my doing,’ Fabre said. His face shone with pleasure. ‘I told you, you have to take a firm line with Camille. You have to hit him.’

THAT EVENING, as Camille was leaving Fréron’s apartment, two gentlemen intercepted him and asked him politely to accompany them to the Duc de Biron’s house. A carriage was waiting. On the way, no one spoke.

Camille was glad of this. His throat hurt. His stutter had come back. Sometimes in court he had managed to lose it, when he was caught up in the excitement of a case. When he was angry it would go, when he was beside himself, possessed; but it would be back. And now it was back, and he must revert to his old tactics: he couldn’t get through a sentence without the need for his mind to dart ahead, four or five sentences ahead, to see words coming that he wouldn’t be able to pronounce. Then he must think of synonyms – the most bizarre ones, at times – or he must simply alter what he’s going to say…He remembered Fabre, banging his head rather painfully against the arm of a chair.

The Duc de Biron made only the briefest appearance; he accorded Camille a nod, and then he was whisked through a gallery, away, into the interior of the house. The air was close; sconces diffused the light. On walls of muffling tapestry, dim figures of goddesses, horses, men: woollen arms, woollen hooves, draperies exuding the scent of camphor and damp. The topic was the thrill of the chase; he saw hounds and spaniels with dripping jaws, dough-faced huntsmen in costumes antique: a cornered stag foundered in a stream. He stopped suddenly, gripped by panic, by an impulse to cut and run. One of his escorts took him – quite gently – by the arm and steered him on.

Laclos waited for him in a little room with walls of green silk. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Tell me about yourself. Tell me what was going through your mind when you got up there today.’ Self-contained, constrained, he could not imagine how anyone could parade his raw nerves to such effect.

The Duke’s friend de Sillery drifted in, and gave Camille some champagne. There was no gaming tonight, and he was bored: may as well talk to this extraordinary little agitator. ‘I suppose you have financial worries,’ Laclos said. ‘We could relieve you of those.’

When he had finished his questions he made an imperceptible signal, and the two silent gentlemen reappeared, and the process was reversed: the chill of marble underfoot, the murmur of voices behind closed doors, the sudden swell of laughter and music from unseen rooms. The tapestries had, he saw, borders of lilies, roses, blue pears. Outside the air was no cooler. A footman held up a flambeau. The carriage was back at the door.

Camille let his head drop back against the cushions. One of his escorts drew a velvet curtain, to shield their faces from the streets, Laclos declined supper and returned to his paperwork. The Duke is well-served by crowd-pleasers, he said, by unbalanced brats like that.

ON THE EVENING of 22 April, a Wednesday, Gabrielle’s year-old son refused his food, pushed the spoon away, lay whimpering and listless in his crib. She took him into her own bed, and he slept; but at dawn, she felt his forehead against her cheek, burning and dry.

Catherine ran for Dr Souberbielle. ‘Coughing?’ said the doctor. ‘Still not eaten? Well, don’t fuss. I don’t call this a healthy time of year.’ He patted her hand. ‘Try to get some rest yourself, my dear.’

By evening there was no improvement. Gabrielle slept for an hour or two, then came to relieve Catherine. She wedged herself into an upright chair, listening to the baby’s breathing. She could not stop herself touching him every few minutes – just a fingertip on cheek, a little pat to the sore chest.

By four o’clock he seemed better. His temperature had dropped, his fists unclenched, his eyelids drooped into a doze. She leaned back, relieved, her limbs turned to jelly with fatigue.

The next thing she heard was the clock striking five. Wrenched out of a dream, she jerked in her chair, almost fell. She stood up, sick and cold, steadying herself with a hand on the crib. She leaned over it. The baby lay belly-down, quite still. She knew without touching him that he was dead.

AT THE CROSSROADS of the rue Montreuil and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine there was a great house known to the people who lived there as Titonville. On the first floor were the (allegedly sumptuous) apartments occupied by one M. Réveillon. Below ground were vast cellars, where notable vintages appreciated in the dusk. On the ground floor was the source of M. Réveillon’s wealth – a wallpaper factory employing 350 people.

M. Réveillon had acquired Titonville after its original owner went bankrupt; he had built up a flourishing export trade. He was a rich man, and one of the largest employers in Paris, and it was natural that he should stand for the Estates-General. On 24 April he went with high hopes to the election meeting of the Sainte-Marguerite division, where his neighbours listened to him with deference. Good man, Réveillon. Knows his stuff.

M. Réveillon remarked that the price of bread was too high. There was a murmur of agreement and a little sycophantic applause: as if the observation were original. If the price of bread were to come down, M. Réveillon said, employers could cut wages; this would lead to a reduction in the price of manufactured articles. Otherwise, M. Réveillon said, where would it all end? Prices up, wages up, prices up, wages up…

M. Hanriot, who owned the saltpetre works, warmly seconded these observations. People lounged near the door, and handed out scraps of news to the unenfranchised, who stood outside in the gutter.

Only one part of M. Réveillon’s programme caught the public attention – his proposal to cut wages. Saint-Antoine came out on the streets.

De Crosne, the Lieutenant of Police, had already warned that there could be trouble in the district. It was teeming with migrant workers, unemployment was high, it was cramped, talkative, inflammable. News spread slowly across the city; but Saint-Marcel heard, and a group of demonstrators began a march towards the river. A drummer at their head set the pace, and they shouted for death:

Death to the rich

Death to the aristocrats

Death to the hoarders

Death to the priests.

They were carrying a gibbet knocked together in five minutes by a carpenter’s apprentice anxious to oblige: dangling from it were two eyeless straw dolls with their straw limbs pushed into old clothes and their names, Hanriot and Réveillon, chalked on their chests. Shopkeepers put up their shutters when they heard them coming. The dolls were executed with full ceremony in the Place de Grève.

All this is not so unusual. So far, the demonstrators have not even killed a cat. The mock executions are a ritual, they diffuse anger. The colonel of the French Guards sent fifty men to stand about near Titonville, in case anger was not quite diffused. But he neglected Hanriot’s house, and it was a simple matter for a group of the marchers to wheel up the rue Cotte, batter the doors down and start a fire. M. Hanriot got out unharmed. There were no casualties. M. Réveillon was elected a deputy.

But by Monday, the situation looked more serious. There were fresh crowds on the rue Saint-Antoine, and another incursion from Saint-Marcel. As the demonstrators marched along the embankments stevedores fell in with them, and the workers on the woodpiles, and the down-and-outs who slept under the bridges; the workers at the royal glass factory downed tools and came streaming out into the streets. Another two hundred French Guards were dispatched; they fell back in front of Titonville, commandeered carts and barricaded themselves in. It was at this point that their officers felt the stirrings of panic. There could be five thousand people beyond the barricades, or there could be ten thousand; there was no way of telling. There had been some sharp action these last few months; but this was different.

As it happened, that day there was a race-meeting at Vincennes. As the fashionable carriages crossed the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, nervous ladies and gentlemen dressed à l’Anglais were haled out on to the sewage and cobblestones. They were required to shout, ‘Down with the profiteers,’ then roughly assisted back into their seats. Many of the gentlemen parted with sums of money to ensure good will, and some of the ladies had to kiss lousy apprentices and stinking draymen, as a sign of solidarity. When the carriage of the Duke of Orléans appeared, there was cheering. The Duke got out, said a few soothing words, and emptied his purse among the crowd. The carriages behind were forced to halt. ‘The Duke is reviewing his troops,’ said one high, carrying aristocratic voice.

The guardsmen loaded their guns and waited. The crowd milled about, sometimes approaching the carts to talk to the soldiers, but showing no inclination to attack the barricades. Out at Vincennes the Anglophiles urged their favourites past the post. The afternoon went by.

Some attempt was made to divert the returning race-goers, but when the carriage of the Duchess of Orléans appeared the situation became difficult. Up there was where she wanted to go, the Duchess’s coachman said: past those barricades. The problem was explained. The reticent Duchess did not alter her orders. Etiquette confronted expediency. Etiquette prevailed. Soldiers and bystanders began to take down the barricades. The mood altered, swung about; the idleness of the afternoon dissipated, slogans were shouted, weapons reappeared. The crowd surged through, after the Duchess’s carriage. After a few minutes there was nothing left of Titonville worth burning, smashing or carrying away.

When the cavalry arrived the crowds were already looting the shops on the rue Montreuil. They pulled the cavalrymen off their horses. Infantry appeared, faces set; orders crackled through the air, there was the sudden, shocking explosion of gunfire. Blank cartridges: but before anyone had grasped that, an infantryman was grazed by a roof tile dropped from above, and as he turned his face up to see where the tile had come from the rioter who had picked him out as a target skimmed down another tile, which took out his eye.

Within a minute the mob had splintered doors and smashed locks, and they were up on the roofs of the rue Montreuil, tearing up the slates at their feet. The soldiers fell back under the barrage, hands to their faces and scalps, blood dripping between their fingers, tripping on the bodies of men who had been felled. They opened fire. It was 6.30 p.m.

By eight o’clock fresh troops had arrived. The rioters were pushed back. The walking wounded were helped away. Women appeared on the streets, shawls over their heads, hauling buckets of water to bathe wounds and give drinks to those who had lost blood. The shopfronts gaped, doors creaked off their hinges, houses were stripped to the brick; there were smashed tiles and broken glass to walk on, spilt blood tacky on the tiles, small fires running along charred wood. At Titonville the cellars had been ransacked, and the men and women who had breached the casks and smashed the necks of the bottles were lying half-conscious, choking on their vomit. The French Guards, out for revenge, bludgeoned their unresisting bodies where they lay. A little stream of claret ran across the cobbles. At nine o’clock the cavalry arrived at full strength. The Swiss Guard brought up eight cannon. The day was over. There were three hundred corpses to shovel up off the streets.

UNTIL THE DAY of the funeral, Gabrielle did not go out. Shut in her bedroom, she prayed for the little soul already burdened with sin, since it had shown itself intemperate, demanding, greedy for milk during its year’s stay in a body. Later she would go to church to light candles to the Holy Innocents. For now, huge slow tears rolled down her cheeks.

Louise Gély came from upstairs. She did what the maids had not sense to do; parcelled up the baby’s clothes and his blankets, scooped up his ball and his rag doll, carried them upstairs in an armful. Her small face was set, as if she were used to attending on the bereaved and knew she must not give way to their emotions. She sat beside Gabrielle, the woman’s plump hand in her bony child’s grasp.

‘That’s how it is,’ Maître d’Anton said. ‘You’re just getting your life set to rights, then the wisdom of the bloody Almighty – ’ The woman and the girl raised their shocked faces. He frowned. ‘This religion has no consolation for me any more.’

After the baby was buried, Gabrielle’s parents came back to sit with her. ‘Look to the future,’ Angélique prompted. ‘You might have another ten children.’ Her son-in-law gazed miserably into space. M. Charpentier walked about sighing. He felt useless. He went to the window to look out into the street. Gabrielle was coaxed to eat.

Mid-afternoon, another mood got into the room: life must go on. ‘This is a poor situation for a man who used to know all the news,’ M. Charpentier said. He tried to signal to his son-in-law that the women would like to be left alone.

Georges-Jacques got up reluctantly. They put on their hats, and walked through the crowded and noisy streets to the Palais-Royal and the Café du Foy. M. Charpentier attempted to draw the boy into conversation, failed. His son-in-law stared straight ahead of him. The slaughter in the city was no concern of his; he looked after his own.

As they pushed their way into the café, Charpentier said, ‘I don’t know these people.’

D’Anton looked around. He was surprised at how many of them he did know. ‘This is where the Patriotic Society of the Palais-Royal holds its meetings.’

‘Who may they be?’

‘The usual bunch of time-wasters.’

Billaud-Varennes was threading his way towards them. It was some weeks since d’Anton had put any work his way; his yellow face had become an irritation, and you can’t keep going, his clerk Paré had told him, all the lazy malcontents in the district.

‘What do you think of all this?’ Billaud’s eyes, perpetually like small, sour fruits, showed signs of ripening into expectation. ‘Desmoulins has declared his interest at last, I see. Been with Orléans’s people. They’ve bought him.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Well, talk of the devil.’

Camille came in alone. He looked around warily. ‘Georges-Jacques, where have you been?’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you for a week. What do you make of Réveillon?’

‘I’ll tell you what I make of it,’ Charpentier said. ‘Lies and distortion. Réveillon is the best master in this city. He paid his men right through the lay-offs last winter.’

‘Oh, so you think he is a philanthropist?’ Camille said. ‘Excuse me, I must speak to Brissot.’

D’Anton had not seen Brissot until now; unless he had seen him and overlooked him, which would have been easy enough. Brissot turned to Camille, nodded, turned again to his group to say, ‘No, no, no, purely legislative.’ He turned back, extended a hand to Camille. He was a thin man, meagre, mousy, with narrow shoulders hunched to the point of deformity. Ill-health and poverty made him look older than his thirty-five years, yet today his wan face and pale eyes were as hopeful as a child’s on its first day at school. ‘Camille,’ he said, ‘I mean to start a newspaper.’

‘You must be careful,’ d’Anton told him. ‘The police haven’t entirely let the situation go. You may find you can’t distribute it.’

Brissot’s eyes travelled across d’Anton’s frame, and upwards, across his scarred face. He did not ask to be introduced.

‘First I thought I’d begin on 1 April and publish twice weekly, then I thought no, wait till 20 April, make it four times weekly, then I thought, no, leave it till next week, when the Estates meet – that’s the time to make a splash. I want to get all the news from Versailles to Paris and out on to the streets – the police may pick me up, but what does it matter? I’ve been in the Bastille once, I can go again. I’ve not had a moment to spare, I’ve been helping with the elections in the Filles-Saint-Thomas district, they were desperate for my advice – ’

‘People always are,’ Camille said. ‘Or so you tell me.’

‘Don’t be snide,’ Brissot said gently. There was impatience in the faint lines around his eyes. ‘I know you think I haven’t a chance of keeping a paper going, but we can’t spare ourselves now. Who would have thought, a month ago, that we’d have advanced this far?’

‘This man calls three hundred dead an advance,’ Charpentier said.

‘I think – ’ Brissot broke off. ‘I’ll tell you in private all that I think. There might be police informers here.’

‘There’s you,’ a voice said behind him.

Brissot winced. He did not turn. He looked at Camille to see if he had caught the words. ‘Marat put that about,’ he muttered. ‘After all I’ve done to further that man’s career and bolster his reputation, all I get is smears and innuendos – the people I’ve called comrades have treated me worse than the police have ever done.’

Camille said, ‘Your trouble is, you’re backtracking. I heard you, saying the Estates would save the country. Two years ago you said nothing was possible unless we got rid of the monarchy first. Which is it, which is it to be? No, don’t answer. And will there be an inquiry into the cause of these riots? No. A few people will be hanged, that’s all. Why? Because nobody dares to ask what happened – not Louis, not Necker, not even the Duke himself. But we all know that Réveillon’s chief crime was to stand for the Estates against the candidate put up by the Duke of Orléans.’

There was a hush. ‘One should have guessed,’ Charpentier said.

‘One never anticipated the scale of it,’ Brissot whispered. ‘It was planned, yes, and people were paid – but not ten thousand people. Not even the Duke could pay ten thousand people. They acted for themselves.’

‘And that upsets your plans?’

‘They have to be directed.’ Brissot shook his head. ‘We don’t want anarchy. I shudder when I find myself in the presence of some of the people we have to use…’ He made a gesture in d’Anton’s direction; with M. Charpentier, he had walked away. ‘Look at that fellow. The way he’s dressed he might be any respectable citizen. But you can see he’d be happiest with a pike in his hand.’

Camille’s eyes widened. ‘But that is Maître d’Anton, the King’s Councillor. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Let me tell you, Maître d’Anton could be in government office. Except that he knows where his future lies. But anyway, Brissot – why so unnerved? Are you afraid of a man of the people?’

‘I am at one with the people,’ Brissot said reverently. ‘With their pure and elevated soul.’

‘Not really you aren’t. You look down on them because they smell and can’t read Greek.’ He slid across the room to d’Anton. ‘He took you for some cut-throat,’ he said happily. ‘Brissot,’ he told Charpentier, ‘married one Mlle Dupont, who used to work for Félicité de Genlis in some menial capacity. That’s how he got involved with Orléans. I respect him really. He’s spent years abroad, writing and, you know, talking about it. He deserves a revolution. He’s only a pastry-cook’s son, but he’s very learned, and he gives himself airs because he’s suffered so much.’

M. Charpentier was puzzled, angry. ‘You, Camille – you who are taking the Duke’s money – you admit to us that Réveillon has been victimized – ’

‘Oh, Réveillon’s of no account now. If he didn’t say those things, he might have done. He might have been thinking them. The literal truth doesn’t matter any more. All that matters is what they think on the streets.’

‘God knows,’ Charpentier said, ‘I like the present scheme of things very little, but I dread to think what will happen if the conduct of reform falls into hands like yours.’

‘Reform?’ Camille said. ‘I’m not talking about reform. The city will explode this summer.’

D’Anton felt sick, shaken by a spasm of grief. He wanted to draw Camille aside, tell him about the baby. That would stop him in his tracks. But he was so happy, arranging the forthcoming slaughter. D’Anton thought, who am I to spoil his week?

VERSAILLES: a great deal of hard thinking has gone into this procession. It isn’t just a matter of getting up and walking, you know.

The nation is expectant and hopeful. The long-awaited day is here. Twelve hundred deputies of the Estates walk in solemn procession to the Church of Saint-Louis, where Monseigneur de la Fare, Bishop of Nancy, will address them in a sermon and put God’s blessing on their enterprise.

The Clergy, the First Estate: optimistic light of early May glints on congregated mitres, coruscates over the jewel-colours of their robes. The Nobility follows: the same light flashes on three hundred sword-hilts, slithers blithely down three hundred silk-clad backs. Three hundred white hat plumes wave cheerfully in the breeze.

But before them comes the Commons, the Third Estate, commanded by the Master of Ceremonies into plain black cloaks; six hundred strong, like an immense black marching slug. Why not put them into smocks and order them to suck straws? But as they march, the humiliating business takes on a new aspect. These mourning coats are a badge of solidarity. They are called, after all, to attend on the demise of the old order, not to be guests at a costume ball. Above the plain cravats a certain pride shows in their starched faces. We are the men of purpose: goodbye to frippery.

Maximilien de Robespierre walked with a contingent from his own part of the country, between two farmers; if he turned his head he could see the embattled jaws of the Breton deputies. Shoulders trapped him, walled him in. He kept his eyes straight ahead, suppressed his desire to scan the ranks of the cheering crowds that lined the routes. There was no one here who knew him; no one cheering, specifically, for him.

In the crowd Camille had met the Abbé de Bourville. ‘You don’t recognize me,’ the abbé complained, pushing through. ‘We were at school together.’

‘Yes, but in those days you had a blue tinge, from the cold.’

‘I recognized you right away. You’ve not changed a bit, you look about nineteen.’

‘Are you pious now, de Bourville?’

‘Not noticeably. Do you ever see Louis Suleau?’

‘Never. But I expect he’ll turn up.’

They turned back to the procession. For a moment he was swept by an irrational certainty that he, Desmoulins, had arranged all this, that the Estates were marching at his behest, that all Paris and Versailles revolved around his own person.

‘There’s Orléans.’ De Bourville pulled at his arm. ‘Look, he’s insisting on walking with the Third Estate. Look at the Master of Ceremonies pleading with him. He’s broken out in a sweat. Look, that’s the Duc de Biron.’

‘Yes, I know him. I’ve been to his house.’

‘That’s Lafayette.’ America’s hero stepped out briskly in his silver waistcoat, his pale young face serious and a little abstracted, his peculiarly pointed head hidden under a tricorne hat à la Henri Quatre. ‘Do you know him too?’

‘Only by reputation,’ Camille muttered. ‘Washington pot-au-feu.’

Bourville laughed. ‘You must write that down.’

‘I have.’

At the Church of Saint-Louis, de Robespierre had a good seat by an aisle. A good seat, to fidget through the sermon, to be close to the procession of the great. So close; the billowing episcopal sea parted for a second, and between the violet robes and the lawn sleeves the King looked him full in the face without meaning to, the King, overweight in cloth-of-gold; and as the Queen turned her head (this close for the second time, Madame) the heron plumes in her hair seemed to beckon to him, civilly. The Holy Sacrament in its jewelled monstrance was a small sun, ablaze in a bishop’s hands; they took their seat on a dais, under a canopy of velvet embroidered with gold fleur-de-lis. Then the choir:

O salutaris hostia

If you could sell the Crown Jewels what could you buy for France?

Quae coeli pandis ostium,

The King looks half-asleep.

Bella premunt hostilia,

The Queen looks proud.

Da robur, fer auxilium.

She looks like a Hapsburg.

Uni trinoque Domino,

Madame Deficit.

Sit sempiterna gloria,

Outside, the women were shouting for Orléans.

Qui vitam sine termino,

There is no one here I know.

Nobis donet in patria.

Camille might be here somewhere. Somewhere.

Amen.

‘LOOK, LOOK,’ Camille said to de Bourville. ‘Maximilien.’

‘Well, so it is. Our dear Thing. I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘I should be there. In that procession. De Robespierre is my intellectual inferior.’

‘What?’ The abbé turned, amazed. Laughter engulfed him. ‘Louis XVI by the grace of God is your intellectual inferior. So no doubt is our Holy Father the Pope. What else would you like to be, besides a deputy?’ Camille did not reply. ‘Dear, dear.’ The abbé affected to wipe his eyes.

‘There’s Mirabeau,’ Camille said. ‘He’s starting a newspaper. I’m going to write for it.’

‘How did you arrange that?’

‘I haven’t. Tomorrow I will.’

De Bourville looked sideways at him. Camille is a liar, he thinks, always was. No, that’s too harsh; let’s say, he romances. ‘Well, good luck to you,’ he said. ‘Did you see how the Queen was received? Nasty, wasn’t it? They cheered Orléans though. And Lafayette. And Mirabeau.’

And d’Anton, Camille said: under his breath, to try out the sound of it. D’Anton had a big case in hand, would not even come to watch. And Desmoulins, he added. They cheered Desmoulins most of all. He felt a dull ache of disappointment.

It had rained all night. At ten o’clock, when the procession began, the streets had been steaming under the early sun, but by midday the ground was quite hot and dry.

CAMILLE had arranged to spend the night in Versailles at his cousin’s apartment; he had made a point of asking this favour of the deputy when there were several people about, so that he could not with dignity refuse. It was well after midnight when he arrived.

‘Where on earth have you been till this time?’ de Viefville said.

‘With the Duc de Biron. And the Comte de Genlis,’ Camille murmured.

‘Oh I see,’ de Viefville said. He was annoyed, because he did not know whether to believe him or not. And there was a third party present, inhibiting the good row they might have had.

A young man rose from his quiet seat in the chimney corner. ‘I’ll leave you, M. de Viefville. But think over what I’ve said.’

De Viefville made no effort to effect introductions. The young man said to Camille, ‘I’m Barnave, you might have heard of me.’

‘Everyone has heard of you.’

‘Perhaps you think I am only a troublemaker. I do hope to show I’m something more. Good-night, Messieurs.’

He drew the door quietly behind him. Camille would have liked to run after him and ask him questions, try to cement their acquaintance; but his faculty of awe had been overworked that day. This Barnave was the man who in the Dauphiné had stirred up resistance to royal edicts. People called him Tiger – gentle mockery, Camille now saw, of a plain, pleasant, snub-nosed young lawyer.

‘What’s the matter?’ de Viefville inquired. ‘Disappointed? Not what you thought?’

‘What did he want?’

‘Support for his measures. He could only spare me fifteen minutes, and that in the small hours.’

‘So are you insulted?’

‘You’ll see them all tomorrow, jockeying for advantage. They’re all in it for what they can grab, if you ask me.’

‘Does nothing shake your tiny provincial convictions?’ Camille asked. ‘You’re worse than my father.’

‘Camille, if I’d been your father I’d have broken your silly little neck years ago.’

At the palace and across the town, the clocks began to strike one, mournfully concordant; de Viefville turned, walked out of the room, went to bed. Camille took out the draft of his pamphlet ‘La France Libre’. He read each page through, tore it once across and dropped it on the fire. It had failed to keep up with the situation. Next week, deo volente, next month, he would write it again. In the flames he could see the picture of himself writing, the ink skidding over the paper, his hand scooping the hair off his forehead. When the traffic stopped rumbling under the window he curled up in a chair and fell asleep by the dying fire. At five the light edged between the shutters and the first cart passed with its haul of dark sour bread for the Versailles market. He woke, and sat looking around the strange room, sick apprehension running through him like a slow, cold flame.

THE VALET – who was not like a valet, but like a bodyguard – said: ‘Did vou write this?’

In his hand he had a copy of Camille’s first pamphlet, ‘A Philosophy for the French People’. He flourished it, as if it were a writ.

Camille shrank back. Already at eight o’clock, Mirabeau’s antechamber was crowded. All Versailles wanted an interview, all Paris. He felt small, insignificant, completely flattened by the man’s aggression. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My name’s on the cover.’

‘Good God, the Comte’s been after you.’ The valet took him by the elbow. ‘Come with me.’

Nothing had been easy so far: he could not believe that this was going to be easy. The Comte de Mirabeau was wrapped in a crimson silk dressing-gown, which suggested some antique drapery: as if he waited on a party of sculptors. Unshaven, his face glistened a little with sweat; it was pock-marked, and the shade of putty.

‘So I have got the Philosopher,’ he said. ‘Teutch, give me coffee.’ He turned, deliberately. ‘Come here.’ Camille hesitated. He felt the lack of a net and trident. ‘I said come here,’ the Comte said sharply. ‘I am not dangerous.’ He yawned. ‘Not at this hour.’

The Comte’s scrutiny was like a physical mauling, and designed to overawe. ‘I meant to get around to waylaying you in some public place,’ he said, ‘and having you fetched here. Unfortunately I waste my time, waiting for the King to send for me.’

‘He should send for you, Monsieur.’

‘Oh, you are a partisan of mine?’

‘I have had the honour of arguing from your premises.’

‘Oh, I like that,’ Mirabeau said mockingly. ‘I dearly love a sycophant, Maître Desmoulins.’

Camille cannot understand this: the way Orléans people look at him, the way Mirabeau now looks at him: as if they had plans for him. Nobody has had plans for him, since the priests gave him up.

‘You must forgive my appearance,’ the Comte said smoothly. ‘My affairs keep me up at nights. Not always, I am bound to say, my political ones.’

This is nonsense, Camille sees at once. If it suited the Comte, he would receive his admirers shaven and sober. But nothing he does is without its calculated effect, and by his ease and carelessness, and by his careless apologies for it, he means to dominate and outface the careful and anxious men who wait on him. The Comte looked into the face of his impassive servant Teutch, and laughed uproariously, as if the man had made a joke; then broke off and said, ‘I like your writings, Maître Desmoulins. So much emotion, so much heart.’

‘I used to write poetry. I see now that I had no talent for it.’

‘There are enough constraints, without the metrical, I think.’

‘I did not mean to put my heart into it. I expect I meant it to be statesman-like.’

‘Leave that to the elderly.’ The Comte held up the pamphlet. ‘Can you do this again?’

‘Oh that – yes, of course.’ He had developed a contempt for the first pamphlet, which seemed for a moment to extend to anyone who admired it. ‘I can do that…like breathing. I don’t say like talking, for reasons which will be clear.’

‘But you do talk, Maître Desmoulins. You talk to the Palais-Royal.’

‘I force myself to do it.’

‘Nature framed me for a demogogue.’ The Comte turned his head, displaying his better profile. ‘How long have you had that stutter?’

He made it sound like some toy, or tasteful innovation. Camille said, ‘A very long time. Since I was seven. Since I first went away from home.’

‘Did it overset you so much, leaving your people?’

‘I don’t remember now. I suppose it must have done. Unless I was trying to articulate relief.’

‘Ah, that sort of home.’ Mirabeau smiled. ‘I myself am familiar with every variety of domestic difficulty, from short temper at the breakfast table to the consequences of incest.’ He put out a hand, drawing Camille into the room. ‘The King – the late King – used to say that there should be a Secretary of State with no other function but to arbitrate in my family’s quarrels. My family, you know, is very old. Very grand.’

‘Really? Mine just pretends to be.’

‘What is your father?’

‘A magistrate.’ Honesty compelled him to add. ‘I’m afraid I am a great disappointment to him.’

‘Don’t tell me. I shall never understand the middle classes. I wish you would sit down. I must know something of your biography. Tell me, where were you educated?’

‘At Louis-le-Grand. Did you think I was brought up by the local curé?’

Mirabeau put down his coffee cup. ‘De Sade was there.’

‘He’s not entirely typical.’

‘I had the bad luck to be incarcerated with de Sade once. I said to him, “Monsieur, I do not wish to associate with you; you cut up women into little pieces.” Forgive me, I am digressing.’ He sank into a chair, an unmannerly aristocrat who never sought forgiveness for anything. Camille watched him, monstrously vain and conceited, going on like a Great Man. When the Comte moved and spoke, he prowled and roared. When he reposed, he suggested some tatty stuffed lion in a museum of natural history: dead, but not so dead as he might be. ‘Continue,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Why am I bothering with you? Do you think I want to leave your little talents to the Duke’s pack of rascals? I am preparing to give you good advice. Does the Duke give you good advice?’

‘No. He has never spoken to me.’

‘How pathetically you say it. Of course he has not. But myself, I take an interest. I have men of genius in my employ. I call them my slaves. And I like everyone to be happy, down on the plantation. You know what I am of course?’

Camille remembers how Annette spoke of Mirabeau: a bankrupt, an immoralist. The thought of Annette seems out of place in this stuffy little room crowded with furniture, old hangings on the walls, clocks ticking away, the Comte scratching his chin. The room is strewn with evidence of good living: why do we say good living, he wonders, when we mean extravagance, gluttony and sloth? That the bankruptcy is not discharged does not seem to hinder the Comte from acquiring expensive objects – amongst which it seems he is now numbered. As for immorality, the Comte seems only too eager to admit to it. The wild-beast collection of his ambitions crouches in the corner, hungry for its breakfast and stinking at the end of its chain.

‘Well, you have had a nice pause for thought.’ The Comte rose in one easy movement, trailing his drapery. He put an arm around Camille’s shoulders and drew him into the sunlight that streamed in at the window. The sudden warmth seemed an effulgence of his own. There was liquor on his breath. ‘I ought to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I like to have about me men with complicated and sordid pasts. I am then at my ease. And you, Camille, with your impulses and emotions which you have been selling at the Palais-Royal like poisoned bouquets – ’ He touched his hair. ‘And your interesting, faint but perceptible shadow of sexual ambivalence – ’

‘Do you always take people apart in this way?’

‘I like you,’ Mirabeau said drily, ‘because you never deny anything.’ He moved away. ‘There is a handwritten text circulating, called “La France Libre”. Is it yours?’

‘Yes. You did not think that anodyne tract you have there was the whole of my output?’

‘No, Maître Desmoulins, I did not, and I see that you also have your slaves and your copyists. Tell me your politics – in one word.’

‘Republican.’

Mirabeau swore. ‘Monarchy is an article of faith with me,’ he said. ‘I need it, I mean to assert myself through it. Are there many of your underground acquaintances who think as you do?’

‘No, not more than half a dozen. That is, I don’t think you could find more than half a dozen republicans in the whole country.’

‘And why is that, do you suppose?’

‘I suppose it’s because people cannot bear too much reality. They think the King will whistle them from the gutter and make them ministers. But all that world is going to be destroyed.’

Mirabeau yelled for his valet. ‘Teutch, lay out my clothes. Something fairly splendid.’

‘Black,’ Teutch said, trundling in. ‘You’re a deputy, aren’t you.’

‘Dammit, I forgot.’ He nodded towards his anteroom. ‘It sounds as if they’re getting a bit restive out there. Yes, let them all in at once, it will be amusing. Ah, here comes the Genevan government in exile. Good morning, M. Duroveray, M. Dumont, M. Clavière. These are slaves,’ he said to Camille in a carrying whisper. ‘Clavière wants to be a Minister of Finance. Any country will do for him. Peculiar ambition, very.’

Brissot scuttled up. ‘I’ve been suppressed,’ he said. For once, he looked it.

‘How sad,’ Mirabeau said.

They began to fill the room, the Genevans in pale silk and the deputies in black with folios under their arms, and Brissot in his shabby brown coat, his thin, unpowdered hair cut straight across his forehead in a manner meant to recall the ancient world.

‘Pétion, a deputy? Good day to you,’ Mirabeau said. ‘From where? Chartres? Very good. Thank you for calling on me.’

He turned away; he was talking to three people at once. Either you held his interest, or you didn’t. Deputy Pétion didn’t. He was a big man, kind-looking and fleshily handsome, like a growing puppy. He looked around the room with a smile. Then his lazy blue eyes focused. ‘Ah, the infamous Camille.’

Camille jumped violently. He would have preferred it without the prefix. But it was a beginning.

‘I paid a flying visit to Paris,’ Pétion explained, ‘and I heard your name around the cafés. Then Deputy de Robespierre gave me such a description of you that when I saw you just now I knew you at once.’

‘You know de Robespierre?’

‘Rather well.’

I doubt that, Camille thought. ‘Was it a flattering description?’

‘Oh, he thinks the world of you.’ Pétion beamed at him. ‘Everyone does.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t look so sceptical.’

Mirabeau’s voice boomed across the room. ‘Brissot, how are they at the Palais-Royal today?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘Setting filthy intrigues afoot as usual, I suppose; all except Good Duke Philippe, he’s too simple for intrigues. Cunt, cunt, cunt, that’s all he thinks about.’

‘Please,’ Duroveray said. ‘My dear Comte, please.’

‘A thousand apologies,’ the Comte said, ‘I forget that you hale from the city of Calvin. It’s true though. Teutch has more notion of statesmanship. Far more.’

Brissot shifted from foot to foot. ‘Quiet about the Duke,’ he hissed. ‘Laclos is here.’

‘I swear I didn’t see you,’ the Comte said. ‘Shall you carry tales?’ His voice was silky. ‘How’s the dirty-book trade?’

‘What are you doing here?’ Brissot said to Camille, below the buzz of conversation. ‘How did you get on such terms with him?’

‘I hardly know.’

‘Gentlemen, I want your attention.’ Mirabeau pushed Camille in front of him and placed his large be-ringed hands on his shoulders. He was another kind of animal now: boisterously dangerous, a bear got out of the pit. ‘This is my new acquisition, M. Desmoulins.’

Deputy Pétion smiled at him amiably. Laclos caught his eye and turned away.

‘Now, gentlemen, if you would just give me a moment to dress, Teutch, the door for the gentlemen, and I will be with you directly.’ They filed out. ‘You stay,’ he said to Camille.

There was a sudden silence. The Comte passed his hand over his face. ‘What a farce,’ he said.

‘It seems a waste of time. But I don’t know how these things are conducted.’

‘You don’t know much at all, my dear, but that doesn’t stop you having your prim little opinions.’ He bounced across the room, arms outstretched. ‘The Rise and Rise of the Comte de Mirabeau. They have to see me, they have to see the ogre. Laclos comes here with his pointed nose twitching, Brissot ditto. He wears me out, that man Brissot, he never stays still. I don’t mean he runs around the room like you, I mean he fidgets. Incidentally, I presume you are taking money from Orléans? Quite right. One must live, and at other people’s expense if at all possible. Teutch,’ he said, ‘you may shave me, but do not put lather in my mouth, I want to talk.’

‘As if that were anything new,’ the man said. His employer leaned forward and punched him in the ribs. Teutch spilled a little hot water, but was not otherwise incommoded.

‘I’m in demand with the patriots,’ Mirabeau said. ‘Patriots! You notice how we can’t get through a paragraph without using that word? Your pamphlet will be got out, within a month or two.’

Camille sat and looked at him sombrely. He felt calm, as if he were drifting out to sea.

‘Publishers are a craven breed,’ the Comte said. ‘If I had the ordering and disposition of the Inferno, I would keep a special circle for them, where they would grill slowly on white-hot presses.’

Camille’s eyes flickered to Mirabeau’s face. He found in its temper and tensions some indication that he was not the devil’s only steady bet. ‘Are you married?’ the Comte asked suddenly.

‘No, but in a way I am engaged.’

‘Has she money?’

‘Quite a lot.’

‘I warm to you with every admission.’ He waved Teutch away. ‘I think you had better move in here, at least when you are in Versailles. I’m not sure you’re fit to be at large.’ He pulled at his cravat. His mood had altered. ‘Do you know, Camille,’ he said softly, ‘you may wonder how you got here, but I wonder the same thing about myself…to be here, in Versailles, expecting daily a summons from the Palace, and this on the strength of my writings, my speeches, the support I command among the people…to be playing at last my natural role in this Kingdom…because the King must send, mustn’t he? When all the old solutions have been tried and have failed?’

‘I think so. But you must show him clearly how dangerous an opponent you can be.’

‘Yes…and that will be another gamble. Have you ever tried to kill yourself?’

‘It comes up as a possibility from time to time.’

‘Everything is a joke,’ the Comte snapped. ‘I hope you’re flippant when you’re in the dock for treason.’ He dropped his voice again. ‘Yes, I take your point, it’s been an option. You see, people say they’ve no regrets, they boast about it, but I, I tell you, I have regrets – the debts I’ve incurred and daily incur, the women I’ve ruined and let go, my own nature that I can’t curb, that I’ve never learned to curb, that’s never learned to wait and bide its time – yes, I can tell you, death would have been a reprieve, it would have given me time off from myself. But I was a fool. Now I want to be alive so – ’ He broke off. He wanted to say that he had been made to suffer, had felt his face ground into his own errors, had been undermined, choked off, demeaned.

‘Well, why?’

Mirabeau grinned. ‘So I can give them hell,’ he said.

THE HALL of the Lesser Pleasures, it was called. Until now it had been used for storing scenery for palace theatricals. These two facts occasioned comment.

When the King decided that this hall was a suitable meeting place for the Estates-General, he called in carpenters and painters. They hung the place with velvet and tassels, knocked up some imitation columns and splashed around some gold paint. It was passably splendid, and it was cheap. There were seats to the right and left of the throne for the First and Second Estates; the Commons were to occupy an inadequate number of hard wooden benches at the back.

It began badly. After the King’s solemn entry, he surveyed them with a rather foolish smile, and removed his hat. Then he sat down, and put it on again. The brilliant robes and silk coats swept and rustled into their places. Three hundred plumes were raised and replaced on three hundred noble heads. But protocol dictates that in the presence of the monarch, commoners remain hatless and standing.

A moment later a red-faced man clamped his plain hat over his forehead and sat down with as much noise as he found he could make. With one accord, the Third Estate assumed its seat. The Comte de Mirabeau jostled on the benches with the rest.

Unruffled, His Majesty rose to make his speech. It was unreasonable, he had thought personally, to keep the poor men standing all afternoon, since they had already been waiting three hours to be let into the hall. Well, they had taken the initiative, he would not make a fuss. He began to speak. A moment later, the back rows leaned into the front rows. What? What did he say?

Immediately it is evident: only giants with brazen lungs will prosper in this hall. Being one such, Mirabeau smiled.

The King said – very little, really. He spoke of the debt burden of the American war. He said that the taxation system might be reformed. He did not say how. M. Barentin rose next: Minister of Justice, Keeper of the Seals. He warned against precipitate action, dangerous innovation; invited the Estates to meet separately the next day, to elect officers, draw up procedures. He sat down.

It is the earnest desire of the Commons that the Estates should meet as one body, and that the votes should be counted individually, by head. Otherwise, the churchmen and the nobles will combine against the Commons; the generous grant of double representation – their six hundred to the three hundred each of the Nobles and the Clergy – will avail them nothing. They might as well go home.

But not before Necker’s speech. The Comptroller of Finances rose, to an expectant hush; and Maximilien de Robespierre moved, imperceptibly, forward on his bench. Necker began. You could hear him better than Barentin. It was figures, figures, figures.

After ten minutes, Maximilien de Robespierre’s eyes followed the eyes of the other men in the hall. The ladies of the court were stacked on benches like crockery on a shelf, rigid and trapped inside their impossible gowns and stays and trains. Each one sat upright; then, when this exhausted her, leaned back for support against the knees of the lady behind. After ten minutes, those knees would twitch and flex; then the first lady would shoot upright again. Soon she would droop, stir, yawn, twitch, she would shift in the little space allowed, she would rustle and moan silently to herself, and pray for the torture to be over. How they longed to lean forward, drop their addled heads on to their knees! Pride kept them upright – more or less. Poor things, he thought. Poor little creatures. Their spines will break.

The first half hour passed. Necker must have been in here before, to test his voice in the hall, for he had been quite audible; it was just a shame that none of it made any sense. A lead was what we wanted, Max thought, we wanted some – fine phrases, I suppose. Inspiration, call it what you will. Necker was struggling now. His voice was fading. This, clearly, had been anticipated. He had a substitute by him. He passed his notes across. The substitute rose and began. He had a voice like a creaking drawbridge.

Now there was one woman Max watched: the Queen. When her husband spoke, there was some effort at a frowning concentration. When Barentin rose, she had dropped her eyes. Now she looked about her, quite frankly; she scanned the benches of the Commoners. She would watch them, watching her. She would glance down to her lap, move her fingers slightly, to catch the flash of diamonds in the light. She would raise her head, and again the stiff-jawed face would turn, turn. She seemed to be searching, searching. What was she searching for? For one face above the black coats…An enemy? A friend? Her fan jerked in her hand, like a live bird.

Three hours later, heads reeling, the deputies stumbled out. into the sun. A large group gathered at once about Mirabeau, who was dissecting for their instruction the speech of M. Necker. ‘It is the speech, gentlemen, that one might expect from a banker’s clerk of some small ability…As for the deficit, it is our best friend. If the King didn’t need to raise money, would we be here?’

‘We may as well not be here,’ a deputy observed, ‘if we cannot have the voting by head.’ Mirabeau slapped the man on the shoulder, unbalancing him.

Max moved well out of range. He didn’t want to risk, even accidentally, being pounded on the back by Mirabeau; and the man was so free with his fists. At once, he felt a tap on his shoulder; it was no more than a tap. He turned. One of the Breton deputies. ‘Conference on tactics, tonight, my rooms, eight o’clock, all right?’

Max nodded. Strategy, he means, he thought: the art of imposing on the enemy the time, place and conditions for the fight.

Here was Deputy Pétion, bounding up. ‘Why lurk so modestly, de Robespierre? Look now – I’ve found you your friend.’ The Deputy dived bravely into the circle around Mirabeau, and in a moment re-emerged: and with him, Camille Desmoulins. Pétion was a sentimental man; gratified, he stood aside to watch the reunion. Mirabeau stumped off in animated conversation with Barnave. Camille put his hands into de Robespierre’s. De Robespierre’s hands were cool, steady, dry. Camille felt his heart slow. He glanced over his shoulder at the retreating Mirabeau. For a second, he saw the Comte in quite a different light: a tawdry grandee, in some noisy melodrama. He wished to leave the theatre.

ON 6 MAY the Clergy and the Nobility met separately, in the chambers allocated to them. But except for the Hall of the Lesser Pleasures, there was nowhere big enough for the Third Estate. They were allowed to stay where they were. ‘The King has made an error,’ de Robespierre said. ‘He has left us in possession of the ground.’ He surprised himself: perhaps he had learned something after all from his scraps of conversation with Lazare Carnot, the military engineer. One day soon he must undertake the nervous business of addressing this great assembly. Arras seems far, very far away.

The Third Estate cannot actually transact any business, of course. To do so would be to accept their status as a separate assembly. They don’t accept it. They ask the two other Estates to come back and join them. Nobility and Clergy refuse. Deadlock.

‘SO WHATEVER I SAY next, write it down.’

The Genevan slaves sat about with scraps of paper resting on books propped on their knees. The Comte’s papers covered every surface that might have been used as a writing desk. From time to time they exchanged glances, like the knowing veteran revolutionaries they were. The Comte strode about, gesturing with a sheaf of notes. He was wearing his crimson dressing-gown, and the rings on his big hairy hands caught the candlelight and flashed fire into the airless room. It was one a.m. Teutch came in.

TEUTCH: Monsieur–

MIRABEAU: Out.

[Teutch draws the door closed behind him.]

MIRABEAU: So, the Nobility don’t wish to join us. They have voted against our proposal – by a clear hundred votes. The Clergy don’t wish to join us, but their voting was, am I right, 133 to 114?

GENEVANS: You are right.

MIRABEAU: So that’s close. That tells us something.

[He begins to pace. The Genevans scribble. It is 2.15. Teutch comes in.]

TEUTCH: Monsieur, there is a man here with a very hard name who has been waiting to see you since eleven o’clock.

MIRABEAU: What do you mean, a hard name?

TEUTCH: I can’t understand what it is.

MIRABEAU: Well, get him to write it down on a piece of paper and bring it in, can’t you, imbecile?

[Teutch goes out.]

MIRABEAU [digressing]: Necker. What is Necker, in the Lord’s name? What are his qualifications for office? What in the name of God makes him look so good? I’ll tell you what it is – the fellow has no debts, and no mistresses. Can that be what the public wants these days – a Swiss pinch-penny, with no balls? No, Dumont, don’t write that down.

DUMONT: You make yourself sound envious of Necker, Mirabeau. Of his position as minister.

[2.45 a.m. Teutch comes in with a slip of paper. Mirabeau takes it from him in passing and puts it in his pocket.]

MIRABEAU: Forget Necker. Everybody will, anyway. Return to the point. It seems, then, that the Clergy are our best hope. If we can persuade them to join us…

[At. 3.15 he takes the slip of paper out of his pocket.]

MIRABEAU: De Robespierre. Yes, it is a peculiar name…Now, everything depends on those nineteen priests. I must have a speech that will not only invite them to join us, but will inspire them to join us – no commonplace speech, but a great speech. A speech that will set their interest and duty plainly before them.

DUROVERAY: And one that will cover the name of Mirabeau in eternal glory, just by the way.

MIRABEAU: There is that.

[Teutch comes in.]

MIRABEAU: Oh, good heavens, am I to endure you walking in and out and slamming the door every two minutes? Is M. de Robepierre still here?

TEUTCH: Yes, Monsieur.

MIRABEAU: How very patient he must be. I wish I had that kind of patience. Well, make the good deputy a cup of chocolate, Teutch, out of your Christian charity, and tell him I will see him soon.

[4.30 a.m. Mirabeau talks. Occasionally he pauses in front of a mirror to try out the effect of a gesture. M. Dumont has fallen asleep.]

MIRABEAU: M. de Robinpère still here?

[5.00 a.m. The leonine brow clears.]

MIRABEAU: My thanks, my thanks to you all. How can I ever thank you enough? The combination, my dear Duroveray, of your erudition, my dear Dumont, of your – snores – of all your singular talents, welded together by my own genius as an orator –

[Teutch sticks his head around the door.]

TEUTCH: Finished, have you? He’s still here, you know.

MIRABEAU: Our great work is concluded. Bring him in, bring him in.

[Dawn is breaking behind the head of the deputy from Arras as he steps into the stuffy little room. The tobacco smoke stings his eyes. He feels at a disadvantage, because his clothes are creased and his gloves are soiled; he should have gone home to change. Mirabeau, in greater disarray, examines him – young, anaemic, tired. De Robespierre has to concentrate to smile, holding out a small band with bitten nails.

Bypassing the hand, Mirabeau touches him lightly on the shoulder.]

MIRABEAU: My dear M. Robispère, take a seat. Oh – is there one?

DE ROBESPIERRE: That’s all right, I’ve been sitting for quite a time.

MIRABEAU: Yes, I’m sorry about that. The pressure of business…

DE ROBESPIERRE: That’s all right.

MIRABEAU: I’m sorry. I try to be available to any deputy who wants me.

DE ROBESPIERRE: I really won’t keep you long.

[Stop apologising, Mirabeau says to himself. He doesn’t mind; he’s just said he doesn’t mind.]

MIRABEAU: Is there anything in particular, M. de Robertspierre?

[The deputy takes some folded papers from his pocket. He hands them to Mirabeau.]

DE ROBESPIERRE: This is the text of a speech I hope to make tomorrow. I wondered if you’d look at it, give me your comments? Though it’s rather long, I know, and you probably want to go to bed…?

MIRABEAU: Of course I’ll look at it. It’s really no trouble. The subject of your speech, M. de Robespere?

DE ROBESPIERRE: My speech invites the Clergy to join the Third Estate.

[Mirabeau wheels round. His fist closes on the papers. Duroveray puts his head in his hands and groans unobtrusively.

But when the Comte turns again to face de Robespierre, his features are composed and his voice is like satin.]

MIRABEAU: M. de Robinpère, I must congratulate you. You have fixed on the very point which should occupy us tomorrow. We must ensure the success of this proposal, must we not?

DE ROBESPIERRE: Certainly.

MIRABEAU: But does it occur to you that other members of our assembly might have fixed on the same point?

DE ROBESPIERRE: Well, yes, it would be odd if no one had. That’s why I came to see you, I imagined you knew the plans, we don’t want a stream of people all getting up and saying the same thing.

MIRABEAU: It may reassure you to know that I have myself been drafting a little speech which touches on the topic. [Mirabeau speaks; he also reads.] May I suggest that the question might be better propounded by some person well-known to our fellow-deputies, some orator of experience? The Clergy may be less inclined to listen to someone who has yet – what shall we say? – who has yet to reveal his remarkable talents.

DE ROBESPIERRE: Reveal? We’re not conjurers, Monsieur. We’re not here to pull rabbits out of hats.

MIRABEAU: Don’t be too sure.

DE ROBESPIERRE: Always supposing that one had remarkable talents, could there be a better time to reveal them?

MIRABEAU: I understand your viewpoint, but I suggest on this occasion you give way, for the common good. You see, I can be sure of carrying my audience with me. Sometimes when a famous name allies himself with a cause –

[Mirabeau stops abruptly. He can see on the young man’s delicate triangular face the pale traces of contempt. Yet his voice is still deferential.]

DE ROBESPIERRE: My speech is quite a good speech, it makes all the relevant points.

MIRABEAU: Yes, but it is the speaker – I tell you frankly, M. de Robertpère, that I have spent the whole night working on my speech, and I intend to deliver it, and in all possible cordiality and friendship I must ask you to find another occasion for your debut, or else to confine yourself to a few words in my support.

DE ROBESPIERRE: No, I’m not prepared to do that.

MIRABEAU: Oh, you aren’t prepared? [He sees with pleasure that the deputy flinches when he raises his voice.] It is I who carry weight at our meetings. You are unknown. They will not even suspend their private conversations to listen to you. Look at this speech, it is prolix, it is overblown, you will be howled down.

DE ROBESPIERRE: There’s no point trying to frighten me. [Not a boast. Mirabeau scrutinizes him. Experience has taught him he can frighten most people.] Look, I’m not trying to stop you making your speech. If you must, you make yours, then I’ll make mine.

MIRABEAU: But God damn you, man, they say exactly the same thing.

DE ROBESPIERRE: I know – but I thought that since you have a name as a demagogue, they might not quite trust you.

MIRABEAU: Demagogue?

DE ROBESPIERRE: Politician.

MIRABEAU: And what are you?

DE ROBESPIERRE: Just an ordinary person.

[The Comte’s face purples, and he runs a hand through his hair, making it stand up like a bush.]

MIRABEAU: You will make yourself a laughing-stock.

DE ROBESPIERRE: Let me worry about that.

MIRABEAU: You’re used to it, I suppose.

[He turns his back. Through the mirror, Duroveray wavers into life.]

DUROVERAY: May one suggest a compromise?

DE ROBESPIERRE: No. I offered him a compromise, and he rejected it.

[There is a silence. Into it, the Comte sighs heavily. Take hold of yourself, Mirabeau, he advises. Now. Conciliate.]

MIRABEAU: M. de Robinspère, this has all been a misunderstanding. We mustn’t quarrel.

[De Robespierre takes off his spectacles and puts a finger and thumb into the corners of his itching eyes. Mirabeau sees that his left eyelid flickers in a nervous spasm. Victory, he thinks.]

DE ROBESPIERRE: I must leave you. I’m sure you’d like to get to bed for an hour or two.

[Mirabeau smiles. De Robespierre looks down at the carpet, where the pages of his speech lie crumpled and torn.]

MIRABEAU: I’m sorry about that. A symptom of childish rage. [De Robespierre bends down and picks up the papers, in an easy movement that does not seem tired at all.] Shall I put them on the fire? [De Robespierre hands them over, docile. The Comte’s muscles visibly relax.] You must come to dinner sometime, de Robertpère.

DE ROBESPIERRE: Thank you, I’d like that. It doesn’t matter about the papers – I’ve got a draft copy I can read my speech from later today. I always keep my drafts.

[Out of the corner of his eye Mirabeau sees Duroveray rise, scraping his chair, and inconspicuously put his hand to his heart.]

MIRABEAU: Teutch.

DE ROBESPIERRE: Don’t trouble your man, I can see myself out. By the way, my name is Robespierre.

MIRABEAU: Oh. I thought it was ‘de Robespierre.’

ROBESPIERRE: No. Just the plain name.

D’ANTON went to hear Camille speak at the Palais-Royal. He hung to the back of the gathering and tried to find something to lean on, so that he could fold his arms and watch the proceedings with a detached smile. Camille said to him sharply, ‘You can’t spend all your life leering. It’s time you took up an attitude.’

D’Anton asked: ‘By that do you mean a pose?’

Camille was now constantly with Mirabeau. His cousin de Viefville would scarcely give him the time of day. At Versailles the deputies talked: as if there were some point in talking. When the Comte took the floor, disapproval rustled like autumn leaves. The court had not sent for him yet; in the evenings he needed much company, to keep his spirits up. The Comte had talks with Lafayette: bring over the liberal nobles, he begged. He told the Abbé Sieyès: work on the poor country curés, their hearts lie with the commoners, not with their bishops. The abbé put his fingertips together: he was a frail, still, wan man, who dropped words from his lips as though they were written in stone, who never joked, never argued: politics, he said, is a science I have made perfect.

Next the Comte pounded on the desk of M. Bailly, the Commoner’s chairman, putting his forcible suggestions. M. Bailly viewed him gravely: he was a famous astronomer, and his mind, as someone had said, was more on heavenly revolutions than this terrestrial one. Because ‘revolution’ was the word now: not just at the Palais-Royal, but here amid the tassels and gold paint. You could hear it on Deputy Pétion’s lips as he inclined his powdered head to Deputy Buzot, a personable young lawyer from Evreux. There were twenty or thirty men who always sat together, who kept up a disaffected murmur, and sometimes laughed. Deputy Robespierre’s maiden speech was ruled out of order on a technicality.

People wonder what he had done to upset Mirabeau, at this early stage. Mirabeau calls him ‘the rabid lamb’.

THE ARCHBISHOP OF AIX came to the Third Estate carrying a piece of stony black bread and weeping crocodile tears. He exhorted the deputies to waste no more time in futile debate. People were starving, and this was the sort of thing they were being given to eat. He held up the bread delicately, between finger and thumb, for inspection; he took out a handkerchief, embroidered with his coat of arms, and dusted from his hands the blue-and-white mould. Deputies said, disgusting. The best thing they could do, the archbishop said, was to forget the procedural wrangles and form a joint committee with the other two Estates, to discuss famine relief.

Robespierre stood up. He began to move towards the rostrum. He fancied that someone might try to stop him, saw them rising in their seats to be there first, so he put his small, neat head down like a bull’s and walked as if he meant to shake them off. If they join with the other Estates for one committee session, for one vote, the Third Estate has lost its case. This was a trick, and the archbishop had come to play it. Those few steps seemed like a field, and he was walking uphill in the mud, shouting ‘No, no’, his voice carried off by the wind. His heart seemed to have jumped up and hardened into his throat, the exact size of the piece of black bread the archbishop held in his hand. He turned, saw below him hundreds of white, blank, upturned faces, and heard his voice in the sudden hush, blistering and coherent:

‘Let them sell their carriages, and give the money to the poor…’

There is a moment of incomprehension. There is no applause, but a mutter, sharp and curious. People stand up to get a better view. He blushes faintly under their attention. Here everything begins: 1789, 6 June, three p.m.

JUNE 6, seven p.m., Lucile Duplessis’s diary:

Must we crawl forever? When shall we find the happiness we all seek? Man is easily dazzled when he forgets himself he thinks he is happy. No, there is no happiness on the earth, it is only a chimera. When the world no longer exists – but how can it be wiped out? They say there will be nothing any more. Nothing. The sun to lose its brightness, to shine no more. What will become of it. How will it set about becoming nothing?

Her pen hovers, about to underline nothing. But it doesn’t really need underlining, does it?

Her father says, ‘You’re not eating, Lucile. You’re fading away. What’s happening to my pretty girl?’

She’s fining down, Father. The angles of her body emerge, shoulder and wrist. There are shadows under her eyes. She refuses to put her hair up. Her eyes were once of the sharp, lively kind; but now she looks at people with a concentrated dark stare.

Her mother says: ‘Lucile, I wish you would stop fiddling with your hair. It reminds me – I mean, it irritates me.’

Go out of the room then, Mother: turn your eyes away.

Her heart must be stony, for it seems that it won’t break. Every morning she finds herself living, breathing, bodily present, and begins her day in the iron ring of their faces. Looking into her father’s eyes she sees the reflection of a happy young woman in her mid-twenties, with two or three pretty children gathered at her knee; in the background is a stalwart, honourable man with a well-pressed coat, a nebulous area where the face should be. She’ll not give them that satisfaction. She thinks of means of suicide. But that would be to make an end; and true passion, you know, is never consummated. Better to find a cloister, skewer that metaphysical lust under a starched coif. Or to walk out of the front door one day on a casual errand, into poverty and love and chance.

Miss Languish, d’Anton calls her. It is something to do with the English plays he reads.

ON 12 JUNE, three country curés come over to the Third Estate. By the 17th, sixteen more have joined them. The Third Estate now calls itself the ‘National Assembly’. On 20 June, the National Assembly finds itself locked out of its hall. Closed for refurbishment, they are told.

M. Bailly is solemn amid the sardonic laughter, summer rain running down his hat. Dr Guillotin, his fellow academician, is at his elbow. ‘What about that tennis court down the road?’

Those within earshot stared at him. ‘It’s not locked – I know it wouldn’t give us a lot of room but…Well, anybody got a better suggestion?’

At the tennis court they stand President Bailly on a table. They swear an oath, not to separate until they have given France a constitution. Overcome by emotion, the scientist assumes an antique pose. It is, altogether, a Roman moment. ‘We’ll see how they stick together when the troops move in,’ the Comte de Mirabeau says.

Three days later, when they are back in their own premises, the King turns up at their meeting. In an unsteady and hesitant voice he annuls their actions. He will give them a programme of reform, he alone. In silence before him, black coats, bleached cravats, faces of stone: men sitting for their own monuments. He orders them to disperse, and, gathering his sorry majesty, exits in procession.

Mirabeau is at once on his feet. Scrupulously attentive to his own legend, he looks around for the shorthand writers and the press. The Master of Ceremonies interrupts: will they kindly break up the meeting, as the King has ordered?

MIRABEAU: If you have been told to clear us from this hall, you must ask for orders to use force. We shall leave our seats only at bayonet point. The King can cause us to be killed; tell him we all await death; but he need not hope that we shall separate until we have made the constitution.

Audible only to his neighbour, he adds, ‘If they come, we bugger off, quick.’

For a moment all are silent – the cynics, the detractors the rakers-up of the past. The deputies applaud him to the echo. Later they will drop back to let him pass, staring at the invisible wreath of laurels that crowns his unruly hair.

‘THE ANSWER’S THE SAME, Camille,’ said Momoro the printer. ‘I publish this, and we both land in the Bastille. There’s no point in revising it, is there, if every version gets worse?’

Camille sighed and picked up his manuscript. ‘I’ll see you again. That is, I might.’

On the Pont-Neuf that morning a woman had called out to tell his fortune. She had said the usual: wealth, power, success in matters of the heart. But when he had asked her if he would have a long life she had looked at his palm again and given him his money back.

D’Anton was in his office, a great pile of papers before him. ‘Come and watch me in court this afternoon,’ he invited Camille. ‘I’m going to drive your friend Perrin into the ground.’

‘Can’t you get up any malice, except against the people you meet in court?’

‘Malice?’ D’Anton was surprised. ‘It isn’t malice. I get on very well with Perrin. Though not so well as you.’

‘I just can’t understand how you remain wrapped up in these petty concerns.’

‘The fact is,’ d’Anton said slowly, ‘that I have a living to make. I’d like to take a trip to Versailles and see what’s going on, but there you are, I’ve got Maître Perrin and a snapping pack of litigants waiting for me at two o’clock sharp.’

‘Georges-Jacques, what do you want?’

D’Anton grinned. ‘What do I ever want?’

‘Money. All right. I’ll see you get some.’

CAFÉ DU FOY. The Patriotic Society of the Palais-Royal in session. News from Versailles comes in every half-hour. The clergy are going over en masse. Tomorrow, they say, it will be fifty of the nobles, led by Orléans.

It is established to the satisfaction of the Society that there is a Famine Plot. Hoarders in high places are starving the people to make them submissive. It must be so: the price of bread is going up every day.

The King is bringing troops from the frontier; they are on the march now, thousand upon thousand of German mercenaries. The immediate peril though are the Brigands; that is what everyone calls them. They camp outside the city walls, and no matter what precautions are taken some slip through each night. These are the refugees from the blighted provinces, from the fields stripped by the hail-storm and the winters before; hungry and violent, they stalk through the streets like prophets, knotty sticks in their hands and their ribs showing through the rags of their clothing. Unescorted women now keep off the streets. Masters arm their apprentices with pick-axe handles. Shopkeepers get new locks fitted. Housemaids going out to queue for bread slip kitchen knives into their aprons. That the Brigands have their uses is a fact noted only by the percipient: the Patriotic Society of the Palais-Royal.

‘So they have heard of your exploits in Guise?’ Fréron said to Camille.

‘Yes, my father sends me this fat package of admonition. This letter came, too.’ He proffered it to Fréron. It was from his maybe-relative, Antoine Saint-Just, the well-known juvenile delinquent from Noyon. ‘Read it,’ he said. ‘You might read it out to everyone.’

Fréron took the letter. A minute, difficult hand. ‘Why don’t you do it?’

Camille shook his head. He’s not up to this: speaking in small rooms. (‘Why not?’ He saw Fabre’s face looming up, Fabre in the small hours getting beside himself with wrath. ‘How can it be harder than talking to a crowd? How can it possibly be?’)

‘Very well,’ Fréron said. It didn’t suit him personally, for Camille to get too competent about ordinary things.

The letter contained interesting sorts of news: trouble all over Picardy, mobs in the streets, buildings burning, millers and landlords under threat of death. Its tone was that of suppressed glee.

‘Well,’ Fabre said, ‘how I look forward to meeting your cousin! He sounds a most pleasant, pacific type of youth.’

‘My father didn’t mention all this.’ Camille took the letter back. ‘Do you think Antoine exaggerates?’ He frowned at the letter. ‘Oh dear, his spelling doesn’t improve…He so badly wants something to happen, you see, he’s not having much of a life…Odd way he punctuates, too, and scatters capital letters around…I think I shall go down to Les Halles and talk to the market men.’

‘Another of your bad habits, Camille?’ Fabre inquired.

‘Oh, they are all Picards down there.’ Fréron fingered the small pistol in the pocket of his coat. ‘Tell them Paris needs them. Tell them to come out on the streets.’

‘But Antoine amazes me,’ Camille said. ‘While you sit here, deploring undue violence in the conventional way, the blood of these tradesmen to him is like – ’

‘Like what it is to you,’ Fabre said. ‘Milk and honey, Camille. July is your promised land.’