Читать книгу Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien - Hilary Mantel - Страница 28

‘OUR CHARACTERS make our destiny,’ Félicité de Genlis says. ‘Ordinary people for that reason do not have destinies, they belong to chance. A pretty, intelligent woman who has original ideas should have a life full of extraordinary events.’

WE ARE NOW IN 1790. Certain events befall Gabrielle – a few of them extraordinary.

IN MAY THIS YEAR, I gave my husband a son. We called him Antoine. He seems strong; but so did my first baby. We never talk about our first son now. Sometimes, though, I know that Georges thinks about him. Tears come into his eyes.

I will tell you what else has happened, in the larger world. In January my husband was elected to the Commune, along with Legendre, our butcher. I did not say so – I never say anything now – but I was surprised that he put himself up for office, because he criticizes the Commune all the time, and Mayor Bailly most of all.

Just before he went to take his seat, there was the business of Dr Marat. Marat insulted the authorities so much that an order was put out for his arrest. He was staying at the Hôtel de la Fautrière, within our district. They sent four officers to arrest him, but a woman ran to warn him, and he got away.

I didn’t understand why Georges should be so concerned about Marat. He usually brings Dr Marat’s paper into the house, then in the middle of reading it cries, ‘Scum, scum, scum!’ and throws it across the room, or into the fire if he happens to be standing near it. But anyway, he said it was a matter of principle. He told the District Assembly that no one was going to be arrested in our district without his permission. ‘My writ runs here,’ he said.

Dr Marat went into hiding. I thought, that will be the end of the newspaper for a while, we shall have some peace. But Camille said, ‘Well, I think we should help each other, I’m sure I can get the next issue out on time.’ The next issue of the paper insulted the people at City Hall still worse.

On 21 January M. Villette, who is our battalion commander now, came round and asked to see Georges urgently. Georges came out of his office. M. Villette waved a piece of paper and said, ‘Order from Lafayette. Arrest Marat, top priority. What do I do?’

Georges said, ‘Put a cordon round the Hôtel de la Fautrière.’

The next thing that happened was that the sheriff’s officers came again with the warrant – and a thousand men.

Georges was in a fury. He said it was an invasion by foreign troops. The whole district turned out. Georges found the commander and walked up to him and said, ‘What the hell is the use of these troops, do you think? I’ll ring the tocsin, I’ll have Saint-Antoine out. I can put twenty thousand armed men on the streets, just like that.’ And he snapped his fingers under the man’s nose.

‘PUT YOUR HEAD out of the window,’ Marat said. ‘See if you can hear what Danton is saying. I’d put my own head out, but somebody might shoot it off.’

‘He is saying, where is that fucking battalion commander.’

‘I wrote to Mirabeau and Barnave.’ Marat turned to Camille his tired, gold-flecked eyes. ‘I thought they needed enlightenment.’

‘I expect they didn’t reply.’

‘No.’ He thought. ‘I renounce moderation,’ he said.

‘Moderation renounces you.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘Danton is sticking his neck out for you.’

‘What an expression,’ Marat said.

‘Yes, I don’t know where I pick them up.’

‘Why don’t they ever try arresting you? I’ve been on the run since October.’ Marat wandered around the room, pursuing a muttered monologue and scratching himself occasionally. ‘This affair could be the making of Danton. We lack good men. We could blow the Riding-School up, it would be no great loss. There are only half a dozen deputies who are any use at all. Buzot has some of the right ideas, but he’s too bloody high-minded. Pétion is a fool. I have some hopes for Robespierre.’

‘Me too. But, I don’t think a single measure he has proposed has ever been passed. Just to know that he supports a motion is enough to make most of the deputies vote against it.’

‘But he has perseverance,’ Marat said sharply. ‘And the Riding-School is not France, is it? As for you, your heart is in the right place, but you are mad. Danton I esteem. He will do something. What I should like to see – ’ he stopped, and pulled at the filthy kerchief knotted around his neck, ‘I should like to see the people dispense with the King, the Queen, the ministers, Bailly, Lafayette, the Riding-School – and I should like to see the country governed by Danton and Robespierre. And I should be there to keep an eye on them.’ He smiled. ‘One may dream.’

GABRIELLE: It was like this for the rest of the day, our men ringing the building, Dr Marat inside, and the troops Lafayette had sent drawn up around the cordon. Georges came home to check that we were safe, and he seemed quite calm, but every time he went out on to the streets he seemed to be in a towering rage. He made a speech to the troops, he said, ‘You can stay here till tomorrow if you want, but it won’t bloody get you anywhere.’

There was a great deal of bad language that day.

As the morning wore on, our men and their men started talking to each other. There were regular troops, and volunteers too, and people said, after all, these are our brothers from other districts, of course they’re not going to fight us. And Camille went around saying, of course they’re not going to arrest Marat, he’s the People’s Friend.

Then Georges went down to the Assembly. They wouldn’t let him speak at the bar of the House, and they passed a motion saying that the Cordeliers district must respect the law. He seemed to be away for hours. I just kept finding things to do. Picture it. You marry a lawyer. One day you find you’re living on a battlefield.

‘SO HERE ARE THE CLOTHES, Dr Marat,’ François Robert said. ‘M. Danton hopes they fit.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Marat said. ‘I was hoping to make my escape by balloon. I’ve wanted for such a long time to ascend in a balloon.’

‘We couldn’t get one. Not in the time we had.’

‘I bet you didn’t try,’ Marat said.

After he had washed, shaved, dressed in a frock-coat, combed his hair, François Robert said, ‘Amazing.’

‘One was always well-dressed,’ Marat said, ‘in one’s days in high society.’

‘What happened?’

Marat glowered. ‘I became the People’s Friend.’

‘But you could still dress normally, couldn’t you? For instance, you mention Deputy Robespierre as a patriot, and he is always wonderfully turned-out.’

‘There is perhaps a strain of frivolity in M. Robespierre,’ Marat said drily. ‘For myself, I have no time for the luxuries, I think of the Revolution for twenty-four hours of the day. If you wish to prosper, you will do the same. Now,’ he said, ‘I am going to walk outside, through the cordon, and through Lafayette’s troops. I am going to smile, which I admit you do not often see, and affecting a jaunty air I am going to swing this elegant walking-cane with which M. Danton has so thoughtfully provided me. It’s like a story-book, isn’t it? And then I am off to England, just until the fuss dies down. Which will be a relief to you all, I know.’

GABRIELLE: When there was a knock at the door I didn’t know what to do. But it was only little Louise from upstairs. ‘I went out, Mme Danton.’

‘Oh, Louise, you shouldn’t have done that.’

‘I’m not frightened. Besides – it’s all over. The troops are dispersing. Lafayette has lost his nerve. And I’ll tell you a secret, Mme Danton, that M. Desmoulins told me to tell you. Marat isn’t even in there any more. He got out an hour ago, disguised as a human being.’

A few minutes later Georges came home. That night we threw a party.

Next day my husband went to take his seat at City Hall. There was another row. Some people tried to stop him and said he had no right to be a member of the Commune because he had no respect for law and order. They said that in his own district he was acting like a king. They said a lot of terrible things about Georges at that time – that he was taking money from the English to stir up the Revolution and that he was taking money from the Court not to make the Revolution any worse. One day Deputy Robespierre came, and they talked about who was slandering Georges. Deputy Robespierre said he shouldn’t feel he was alone. He brought a letter from his brother Augustin, from Arras, which he gave to Georges to read. It seemed that people in Arras were saying Robespierre was a godless man who wanted to kill the King – which absolutely can’t be true, because I’ve never met a more mild-mannered human being. I felt sorry for him; they had even printed in what Georges calls ‘the royalist rags’ some stupid claim that he was descended from Damiens, the man who tried to kill the old King. They deliberately spell his name wrong, to insult him. When he was elected for a term as president of the Jacobin Club, Lafayette walked out in protest.

After Antoine was born, Georges’s mother came up from the country for a few days to see the baby. Georges’s stepfather would have come with her but he couldn’t spare any time from inventing spinning machines – at least, that was the story, but I should think the poor man was glad to be on his own for a few days. It was terrible. I hate to say it, but Mme Recordain is the most disagreeable woman I have ever met.

The first thing she said was, ‘Paris is filthy, how can you bring a child up here? No wonder you lost your first. You’d better send this one to Arcis when he’s weaned.’

I thought, yes, what a good idea, let him be gored by bulls and scarred for life.

Then she looked around and said, ‘This wallpaper must have cost a pretty penny.’

At the first meal she complained about the vegetables, and asked how much I paid our cook. ‘Far too much,’ she said. ‘Anyway, where does all the money come from?’ I explained to her how hard Georges worked, but she just snorted, and said that she had an idea of how much lawyers earned at his age and it wasn’t enough to keep a house like a palace and a wife in the lap of luxury.

That’s where she thinks I am.

When I took her shopping, she thought the prices were a personal insult. She had to admit we got good meat, but she said Legendre was common, and that she didn’t bring up Georges with all the care she’d lavished on him to see him associate with someone who ran a butcher’s shop. She amazed me – it isn’t as if Legendre stands there wrapping up bleeding parcels of beef these days. You never see him in an apron. He puts on a black coat like a lawyer and sits beside Georges at City Hall.

Madame Recordain would say, in the mornings: ‘Of course, I don’t require to go anywhere.’ But if we didn’t, she would say in the evening, ‘It’s a long way to come and sit and see four walls.’

I thought I’d take her to visit Louise Robert – seeing as Madame is such a snob, and Louise is so well-born. Louise couldn’t have been more charming. She didn’t say a single word about the republic, or Lafayette, or Mayor Bailly. Instead she showed Madame all her stock and explained to her where all the spices came from and how they were grown and prepared and what they were for, and offered to make her up a parcel of nice things to take home. But after ten minutes Her Ladyship was looking like thunder, and I had to make my excuses to Louise and follow her out. In the street she said, ‘It’s a disgrace for a woman to marry beneath her. It shows low appetites. And it wouldn’t surprise me if I found out they weren’t married at all.’

Georges said, ‘Look, because my mother comes, does it mean I can’t see my friends? Invite some people to supper. Somebody she’ll like. How about the Gélys? And little Louise?’

I knew this was a sacrifice on his part, because he’s not over-fond of Mme Gély; in fact, the strain was showing in his face already. And I had to say, ‘Well, no, they’ve already met. Your mother thinks Mme Gély is mincing and ridiculous and mutton dressed as lamb. And Louise is precocious and needs a stick taking to her.’

‘Oh dear,’ Georges said: which was quite mild for him, don’t you think? ‘We must know somebody nice. Don’t we?’

I sent a note to Annette Duplessis, saying, please please could Lucile come to supper? Georges’s mother would be there, it would be perfectly proper, she’d never be alone with etc. So Lucile was allowed to come; she wore a white dress with blue ribbons, and she behaved like an angel, asking Madame all sorts of intelligent questions about life in Champagne. Camille was so polite – as, indeed, he almost always is, except in his newspaper – I had hidden the back-numbers, of course. I asked Fabre too, because he’s so good at keeping a conversation going – and he tried really hard with Madame. But she kept snubbing him, and in the end he gave up and started to look at her through his lorgnette, which I had given him strict instructions not to do.

Madame walked out as we were having coffee, and I found her in our bedroom running her finger under the windowsill, looking for dust. I said to her very politely, ‘Is there anything the matter?’ and she said in the most sour tone you can imagine, ‘There’ll be plenty the matter with you if you don’t watch that girl with your husband.’

For a minute I didn’t even know what she meant.

‘And I can tell you something else,’ she said. ‘You’d better watch that boy with your husband as well. So they’re going to be married, are they? They’ll suit each other.’

Once we got admission tickets for the public gallery at the Riding-School, but the debate was very dull. Georges says that any time now they will be discussing taking over the church’s lands for the nation, and that if she’d been present for that debate she’d have caused a commotion and got us thrown out. As it was, she called them villains and ingrates, and said no good would come of it. M. Robespierre saw us and came over for a few minutes, and was very kind. He pointed out the important people, including Mirabeau. Madame said, ‘That man will go straight to hell when he dies.’

M. Robespierre looked at me sideways and smiled and said to Madame, ‘You’re a young lady after my own heart.’ This set her up for the day.

All summer the consequences of that business of Dr Marat seemed to be hanging over us. We knew there was a warrant for Georges’s arrest, drawn up and ready, gathering dust in a drawer at City Hall. And I’d think, every morning, what if today is the day they decide to take it out and blow the dust off? We had plans – if he was arrested, I was to pack a bag and go at once to my mother, give the keys of the apartment to Fabre and leave everything else to him. I don’t know why Fabre – I suppose because he’s always around.

At this time Georges’s affairs were very complicated. He didn’t seem to spend much time in his own office. I suppose Jules Paré must be competent, because the money keeps coming in.

Early in the year something happened that Georges said showed the authorities were very frightened of him. They abolished our district, and all the others, and re-organized the city into voting areas. From now on there weren’t to be any public meetings of the citizens in a particular district unless it was for an election. Already they had stopped us calling our National Guard battalion ‘the Cordeliers’. They said we were just to be called ‘Number 3’.

Georges said it would take more than this to kill the Cordeliers. He said we were going to have a club, like the Jacobins but better. People from any part of the city could attend, so no one could say it was illegal. Its real name was the Club of the Friends of the Rights of Man, but from the beginning everybody called it the Cordeliers Club. At first they had meetings in a ballroom. They wanted to hold them in the old Cordeliers monastery, but City Hall had the building sealed up. Then one day – no explanation – the seals came off, and they moved in. Louise Robert said it was done by the influence of the Duke of Orléans.

It’s hard to get into the Jacobin Club. The yearly subscription is high, and you have to have a lot of members to back your application, and their meetings are very formal. When Georges went to speak there once he came home annoyed. He said they treated him like dirt.

At the Cordeliers anyone could come and speak. So you would get a lot of the actors and lawyers and tradesmen from around here, but you’d also get quite rough-looking types who’d walk in off the street. Of course, I never went there when there was a meeting, but I saw what they’d done with the chapel. It was very bleak and bare. When some windows got broken it was weeks before they were mended. I thought, how odd men are, at home they like to be comfortable but outside they pretend they don’t care. The president’s desk was a joiner’s bench that happened to be lying about when they moved in. Georges really wouldn’t have much to say to a joiner, if it weren’t for the present upheavals. The speaker’s rostrum at the club was made of four rough beams with a plank running between them. On the wall somebody had nailed a strip of calico with a slogan in red paint. It said Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

After the bad time I had with Georges’ mother I was miserable when he said he wanted to spend some time in Arcis. To my great relief, we stayed with his sister Anne Madeleine, and to my surprise we were received everywhere with great deference and respect. It was uncanny really – unnerving. Anne Madeleine’s friends were practically curtseying to me. At first I thought the local people must have heard of Georges’s successes as president of the district, but I soon realized that they don’t get the Paris newspapers and they don’t much care what goes on there anyway. And people kept asking me strange questions, like, what’s the Queen’s favourite colour, what does she like to eat. So one day it came to me: ‘Georges,’ I said, ‘they think that because you’re a King’s Councillor, he asks you in every day to give him advice.’

For a moment he looked amazed. Then he laughed. ‘Do they? Bless them. And I have to live in Paris, with all these cynics and wits. Give me four or five years, Gabrielle, and I’ll come back here and farm. We’ll get out of Paris for good. Would you like that?’

I didn’t know how to answer. On the one hand, I thought, how wonderful to be away from the newspapers and the fishwives and the crime rate and the shortages of things in the shops. But then I thought of the prospect of Mme Recordain calling on me every day. So I didn’t say anything, because I saw it was just a whim of his. I mean, is he going to give up the Cordeliers Club? Is he going to give up the Revolution? I watched him start to get restless. And one evening he said, ‘We’re going back tomorrow.’

All the same, he spent a long time with his stepfather, looking at properties, and arranging with the local notary about buying a piece of land. M. Recordain said, ‘Doing nicely, son, are you?’ Georges only smiled.

I think that summer will always be clear in my memory. In my heart I was uneasy, because I believe in my heart that whatever is happening we should be loyal to the King and Queen and to the church. But soon, if some people have their way, the Riding-School will be more important than the King, and the church will be just a goverment department. I know that we are bound to obey authority, and that Georges has often flouted it. That is in his nature, because at school, Paré tells me, they used to call him ‘the Anti-Superior’. Of course you must try to overcome the worst things in your nature, but meanwhile where am I? – because I am bound to obey my husband, unless he counsels me to commit sin. And is it a sin to cook supper for people who talk about sending the Queen back to Austria? When I asked my confessor for guidance, he said that I should maintain an attitude of wifely obedience and try to bring my husband back to the Catholic faith. That was no help. So outwardly I defer to all Georges’s opinions, but in my heart I make reservations – and every day I pray that he will change some of them.

And yet – everything seems to be going so well for us. There’s always something to celebrate. When it came to the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, every town in France sent delegations to Paris. A great amphitheatre was built on the Champs-de-Mars, and an altar was set up which they called the Altar of the Fatherland. The King went there, and took an oath to uphold the constitution, and the Bishop of Autun said High Mass. (It is a pity he is an atheist.) We didn’t go ourselves; Georges said he couldn’t stand to see the people kiss Lafayette’s boots. There was dancing where the Bastille used to be, and in the evening we had celebrations throughout our own district, and we went from one party to another, and stayed out all night. I got quite tipsy, everyone laughed at me. It had poured with rain all day, and somebody made a verse saying it proved that God was an aristocrat. I’ll never forget the ludicrous business of trying to let off fireworks in a downpour; or Georges bringing me back home, me leaning on his arm, the cobbles wet and slick and dawn breaking over the streets. Next day I saw that my new satin shoes had got a water-mark; they were completely ruined.

You should see us now; you wouldn’t know us from last year. Some quite fashionable ladies have given up powdering their hair; instead of pinning it up, they wear it down, in loose curls. Many gentlemen have also given up powder, and far less lace is worn. It’s quite unfashionable for a woman to paint her face; I don’t know what they do at Court now, but Louise Robert is the only woman I know who still wears rouge. Admittedly, she has not a good colour without it. We make our dresses from the simplest of fabrics, and the fashionable colours are the national colours, red, white and blue. Mme Gély says the new fashions are not flattering to older women, and my mother agrees with her. ‘But you,’ my mother says, ‘can take your chance to get out of laces and stays.’ I don’t agree with her. I haven’t got my figure back since Antoine was born.

The modish jewellery this year is a chip of stone from the Bastille, made into a brooch or worn on a chain. Félicité de Genlis has a brooch with the word LIBERTY spelled out in diamonds – Deputy Pétion described it to me. We have given up our elaborate fans, and now have them made out of cheap sticks and pleated paper, with bright colours portraying some patriotic scene. I have to be very careful to have a scene that fits in with my husband’s views. I can’t have a portrait of Mayor Bailly crowned with laurels, or of Lafayette on his white horse, but I can have Duke Philippe, or the taking of the Bastille, or Camille making his speech in the Palais-Royal. But why should I want his portrait when I see too much of the original?

I remember Lucile at our apartment, the morning of the Bastille celebrations, her tricolour ribbons all bedraggled, wringing out the hem of her dress. The muslin clung to her figure in the most startling way, and she didn’t seem to be possessed of much in the way of underwear. Think what Georges’s mother would have said! I was quite severe with her myself – I had a fire lit, and I took away her clothes, and wrapped her in the warmest blanket I could find. I’m sorry to report that Lucile looks quite exquisite in a blanket. She sat with her bare feet drawn up beneath her, like a cat.

‘What a child you are,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised your mother let you go out dressed like that.’

‘She says I must learn from my mistakes.’ She put out two white arms from her blanket. ‘Let me have the baby.’

I gave her my little Antoine. She billed and cooed at him for a bit. ‘Camille has been famous for a whole year now,’ she said dejectedly, ‘and we’re no nearer getting married. I thought it would be neat if I got pregnant, it would hurry things up. But – there you are – can’t get him into bed. You’ve no idea what Camille’s like when he’s got one of his fits of rectitude. John Knox was merely a beginner.’

‘You wicked girl,’ I said. More for form’s sake, than anything. I like her; you can’t help it. Oh, I’m not a perfect fool, I know that Georges looks at her, but so do all the men. Camille lives just around the corner now. He’s actually got a really nice apartment, and a rather fierce-looking woman called Jeanette to do the housekeeping. I don’t know where he found her, but she’s a good cook, and quite happy to come round here and help when we have a lot of people to dine. Hérault de Séchelles comes quite often these days, and of course then I make a special effort. Very fine manners he has; it makes a change from Fabre’s theatrical friends. Various deputies and journalists come, and I have various opinions about them, which I do not usually express. Georges’s viewpoint is that if somebody is a patriot, it doesn’t matter about their personality too much. He says that, but I notice he doesn’t spend any time with Billaud-Varennes if he can help it. You remember Billaud, don’t you? He used to work for Georges, here and there. Since the Revolution he looks marginally cheered-up. It seems, in some way, to give him steady employment.

One evening in July, a man called Collot d’Herbois came to supper. What would you think – they must have Christian names, these people? Yes, but ‘Collot’ was what we were to call him. He was rather like Fabre, in that he was an actor and a playwright, and had been a theatre manager – and he was about the same age, too. At that time he had a play called The Patriotic Family at the Théâtre de Monsieur. It was the kind of play that had suddenly become very popular, and we spent all evening hedging around the fact that we hadn’t actually seen it. It was a great success at the box-office, but that didn’t make Collot agreeable company. He insisted on telling us the story of his life, and it appeared that nothing had ever gone right for him till now, and even this he was suspicious about. When he was young – he said – he used to be baffled at the way people were always cheating him and doing him down – but then he realized they were jealous of his gifts. He used to think he just had no luck, but then he realized that people were conspiring against him. (When he said this Fabre made signs to me that he was a lunatic.) Every topic we raised had some bitter association for Collot, and at the smallest thing his face would become congested with anger and he would make violent sweeping gestures, as if he were speaking at the Riding-School. I feared for my crockery.

Later I said to Georges, ‘I don’t like Collot. He’s sourer than your mother. And I’m sure the play is dreadful.’

‘A typical feminine remark,’ Georges said. ‘I don’t see what’s wrong with him, except he’s a bore. His opinions are – ’ He paused and smiled. ‘I was going to say they’re correct, but of course I mean they’re mine.’

Next day, Camille said: ‘This hideous Collot. Much the worst person in the world. Play I suppose is unbearable.’

Georges said meekly, ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

Towards the end of the year Georges addressed the Assembly. A few days later the Ministry fell. People said that Georges had brought it down. My mother said, you are married to a powerful man.

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY in session: Lord Mornington, September 1790:

They have no regular form of debate on ordinary business; some speak from their seats, some from the floor, some from the table and some from their tribune or desk…the riot is so great that it is very difficult to collect what is being said. I am certain I have seen above a hundred in the act of addressing the Assembly together, all persisting to speak, and as many more replying in different parts of the House; then the President claps his hands on both ears and roars Order, as if he were calling a coach…he beats his table, his breast…wringing his hands is quite a common action, and I really believe he swears…the galleries approve and disapprove by groaning and clapping.

I went to court this morning at the Tuileries, and a very gloomy court it was…The King seemed well, but I thought his manner evidently humbled since I was introduced to him before; he now bows to everybody, which was not a Bourbon fashion before the Revolution.

LUCILE’S YEAR: I keep two sets of notebooks now. One’s for pure and elevated thoughts, and the other’s for what really goes on.

I used to live like God, in different Persons. The reason for this was, life was so dull. I used to pretend to be Maria Stuart, and to be quite honest I must say I still do, for old time’s sake. Its not easy to break yourself of these habits. Everybody else in my life would be assigned a role – usually as a lady-in-waiting, or something – and I would hate them when they wouldn’t play it properly. If I got tired of Maria S. I would play at being Julie from La Nouvelle Héloïse. These days I wonder what is my relationship to Maximilien Robespierre. I’m living inside his favourite novel.

You have to employ some fantasy to keep brute reality at bay. The year began with Camille being sued for libel by M. Sanson, the public executioner. Strange – you don’t think of executioners having recourse to law, in the normal way, you don’t think of them having any animosity to spare.

Fortunately, the law is slow, its processes are cumbersome, and when damages are awarded the Duke is ready to pick up the bill. No, it’s not the courts that worry me. Every morning I wake up and think to myself: is he still alive?

Camille is attacked on the street. He is denounced in the Assembly. He is challenged to duels – though the patriots have made a pact never to respond. There are lunatics going round the city, boasting that they’re waiting for a chance to put a knife in him. They write him letters, these lunatics – letters so demented and so revolting that he won’t read them himself. You can tell, he says, by a quick scan, what sort of letter it is. Sometimes you can tell by the handwriting on the outside of the packet. He has a box that he throws them into. Then other people have to look through them, in case any of the threats are very specific – I will kill you, at such a time and place.

My father’s odd. About twice a month he’ll forbid me ever to see Camille again. But every morning he’s making a grab for the papers – ‘Any news, any news?’ Does he want to hear that Camille’s been found across the river with his throat cut? I don’t think so. I don’t think my father would find any joy in his life if it weren’t for Camille. My mother teases him in the most cold-blooded way. ‘Admit it, Claude,’ she says. ‘He’s the son you’ve never had.’

Claude brings home young men for supper. He thinks I might like them. Civil servants. Dear God.

Sometimes they write me poems, lovely civil service sonnets. Adèle and I read them out with suitable sentimental expressions. We turn up our eyes, slap our hands on our ribcages, and sigh. Then we make them into paper darts and bombard each other. Our spirits, you see, are high. We roll through our days in a sort of unwholesome glee. It’s either this, or a permanent welter of sniffles and tears, forebodings and fears – and we prefer to be hilarious. We prefer to make blood-curdling jokes.

My mother, by contrast, is strained, sad; but fundamentally, I think she suffers less than I do. Probably it’s because she’s older, and she’s learned to ration these things. ‘Camille will survive,’ she says. ‘Why do you think he goes around in the company of such large men?’ There are guns, I say, knives. ‘Knives?’ she says. ‘Can you imagine someone trying to get a knife past M. Danton? Hacking through all that muscle and flesh?’ That’s to imagine, I say, that he would interpose himself. She says, ‘Isn’t Camille rather good at exacting human sacrifices? After all,’ she says, ‘look at me. Look at you.’

We expect, quite soon, to hear of Adèle’s engagement. Max came here, and quite gratuitously praised the Abbé Terray. Much that the abbé had done, he said, had not been generally understood. Claude has consequently ceased to mind that Max has only his deputy’s salary, and that he is supporting a younger brother and a sister out of it.

What will Adèle’s life be like? Robespierre gets letters too, but they’re not the same as the ones Camille gets. They come from all over the city; they’re letters from little people, who have fallen foul of the authorities or got themselves into some form of trouble, and they think he can take up their case and put everything right. He has to get up at five a.m. to answer these letters. Somehow I think his standards of domestic comfort are rather low. His requirements for recreation, amusement, diversion seem to be nil. Now, ask yourself – will that suit Adèle?

ROBESPIERRE: It’s not just Paris he must consider. Letters come from all over the country. Provincial towns have set up their Jacobin Clubs, and the Correspondence Committee of the Paris club sends them news, assessments, directives; back come their letters, distinguishing among the Paris brethren the deputy Robespierre, marking him out for their praise and thanks. This is something, after the vilification of the royalists. Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: ‘I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works.’ When he suffers, as he does increasingly, from a distressing tightness of the chest and shortness of breath, and when his eyes seem too tired to focus on the printed page, the thought of the letter urges the weak flesh to more Works.

Every day he attends the Assembly, and every evening the Jacobin Club. He calls when he can at the Duplessis house, dines occasionally with Pétion – working dinner. He goes to the theatre perhaps twice in the season, with no great pleasure, and regret at the time lost. People wait to see him outside the Riding-School, outside the club, outside the door of his lodgings.

Each night he is exhausted. He sleeps as soon as his head touches the pillow. His sleep is dreamless, a plummeting into blackness: like falling into a well. The night world is real, he often feels; the mornings, with their light and air, are populated by shadows, ghosts. He rises before dawn, to have the advantage of them.

WILLIAM AUGUSTUS MILES, observing the situation on behalf of His (English) Majesty’s government:

The man held of least account in the National Assembly…will soon be of the first consideration. He is a stern man, rigid in his principles, plain, unaffected in his manners, no foppery in his dress, certainly above corruption, despising wealth, and with nothing of the volatility of a Frenchman in his character. Nothing the King could bestow…could warp this man from his purpose. I watch him closely every night. He is really a character to be contemplated; he is growing every hour into consequence, and strange to relate, the whole National Assembly hold him cheap, consider him insignificant; when I said he would be the man of sway in a short time, and govern the million, I was laughed at.

EARLY IN THE YEAR, Lucile was taken to meet Mirabeau. She would never forget the man, standing squarely on a good Persian rug in a room decorated in appalling taste. He was thin-lipped, scarred and massive. He looked her over. ‘I believe your father’s a civil servant,’ he said. He thrust his face forward and leered at her. ‘Do you come in duplicate?’

Mirabeau, in a room, seemed to use up all the available air. He seemed, too, to use up all Camille’s brains. It was extraordinary, the set of delusions Camille could entertain; no, of course Mirabeau was not in the pay of the Court, that was slander. Of course Mirabeau was the perfect patriot. Come the day Camille can no longer sustain these eccentric beliefs, he is practically suicidal. There is almost no newspaper that week.

‘Max warned him,’ Adèle said. ‘He wouldn’t listen. Mirabeau has called that half-educated Austrian baggage “a great and noble woman”. And yet, to the people in the streets, Mirabeau is a god still. It shows how easily they can be misled.’

Claude put his head in his hands. ‘Must we have this every hour, every hour of the day and night, this blasphemy and sedition from the mouths of young women? In our own house?’

‘I was thinking,’ Lucile said, ‘that Mirabeau must have his own reasons for talking to the Court. But he has lost his credit with the patriots now.’

‘His reason? Money is his reason, and greed for power. He wants to save the monarchy so that they will be grateful to him and bound to him for ever more.’

‘Save the monarchy?’ Claude said. ‘From what? From whom?’

‘Father, the King has asked the Assembly for a civil list of twenty-five million, and the grovelling fools have granted it. You know the state of the nation. They want to drain its blood. Consider, can this last?’

He looked at his daughters to discern, if he could, the children they had once been. He felt impelled to plead with them. ‘But if you had not the King, or Lafayette, or Mirabeau, or the ministers – and I have heard you speak against them all – who would there be left to rule the nation?’

They exchanged glances. ‘Our friends,’ the sisters said.

Camille attacked Mirabeau in print, with a savagery he had not known himself to command. He did command it; abuse moves in the bloodstream, anger is better than food. For a time Mirabeau continued to speak out for him, defending him against the Right when they tried to silence him. ‘My poor Camille,’ he called him. In time, he would pass over to the ranks of his enemies. ‘I am truly Christian,’ Camille said. ‘I love my enemies.’ And indeed, his enemies gave him definition. He could read his purpose in their eyes.

Moving away from Mirabeau, he became closer to Robespierre. This made for a different life – evenings spent pushing papers across a desk, silence broken only by the odd murmur of consultation, the scratching of quills, the ticking of a clock. To be with Robespierre, Camille had to put on gravity like a winter cloak. ‘He is all I should be,’ he told Lucile. ‘Max doesn’t care for failure or success, it all evens out in his mind. He doesn’t care what other people say about him, or what opinion they hold of his actions. As long as what he does feels right, inside, that’s enough for him, that’s his guide. He’s one of the few men, the very few men, to whom only the witness of their own conscience is necessary.’

Yet just the day before, Danton had said to her, ‘Ah, young Maximilien, he’s too good to be true, that one. I can’t work him out.’

But after all, Robespierre had been quite right about Mirabeau. Whatever you thought about him, you had to admit that he was almost always right.

IN MAY, Théroigne left Paris. She had no money, and she was tired of the royalist papers calling her a prostitute. One by one, the murky layers of the past had been peeled away. Her time in London with a penniless milord. Her more profitable relationship with the Marquis de Persan. Her sojourn in Genoa with an Italian singer. A silly few weeks, when she was new in Paris, when she introduced herself to people as the Comtesse de Campinado, a great lady fallen on hard times. Nothing criminal, or madly hyperbolic: just the sort of thing we’ve all done when necessity has pressed. It left her open, though, to ridicule and insult. Whose life, she asked as she did her packing, would stand up to the sort of scrutiny mine has received? She meant to be back in a few months. The press will have moved on to new targets, she thought.

She left a gap, of course. She’d been a familiar figure at the Riding-School, lounging in the public gallery in a scarlet coat, her claque around her; strolling through the Palais-Royal, with a pistol in her belt. News came that she’d disappeared from her home in Liège; her brothers thought she’d gone off with some man, but before long rumours seeped through that she’d been abducted, that the Austrians had got her.

Hope they keep her, Lucile said. She was jealous of Théroigne. What gave her the right to be a pseudo-man, turning up at the Cordeliers and demanding the rostrum? It made Danton mad. It was funny to see what a rage it put him into. The kind of woman he liked was the kind he met at the Duke’s dinner table: Agnès de Buffon, who gave him the most ridiculous languishing looks, and the blonde Englishwoman, Grace Elliot, with her mysterious political connections and her mechanical, eye-flashing flirtatiousness. Lucile had been to the Duke’s house; she had watched Danton there. She supposed he knew what was happening; he knew that Laclos was setting him up, dangling these women under his nose. The procuress, Félicité, he left to Camille. Camille didn’t mind having to have intelligent conversations with women. He seemed to enjoy them. One of his perversions, Danton said.

That summer Camille’s old school-enemy, Louis Suleau, came to Paris. He came from Picardy under arrest, charged with seditious, anti-constitutional writings. He had a different brand of sedition from Camille, being more royalist than the King. Louis was acquitted; on the night of his release he and Camille sat up and argued until dawn. It was a very good argument – very articulate, very erudite, and its patron saint was Voltaire. ‘I have to keep Louis away from Robespierre,’ Camille said to Lucile. ‘Louis is one of the best people in the world, but I’m afraid Max doesn’t understand that.’

Louis was a gentleman, Lucile thought. He had dash, he had flair, he had presence. Soon he had a platform, too; he joined the editorial board of a royalist scandal-sheet called the Acts of the Apostles. The deputies who sat on the left were fond of calling themselves ‘the apostles of liberty’, and Louis thought such pomposity ought to be punished. Who were the contributors? A cabal of exhausted roués and defrocked priests, said the patriots whose noses were out of joint. How did it get written at all? The Acts held ‘evangelical dinners’ at the Restaurant du Mais and at Beauvillier’s, where they’d exchange gossip and plot the next edition. They would invite their opponents and ply them with drink, to see what they’d say. Camille understood the principle: a titbit here, a trade-off there, a screamingly good time at the expense of the fools and bores who tried to occupy the middle-ground. Often a witticism for which the Révolutions had no use would find its home in the Acts. ‘Dear Camille,’ Louis said, ‘if only you would throw, in your lot with us. One day we are sure to see eye-to-eye. Never mind this “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” rot. Do you know our manifesto? “Liberty, Gaiety, Royal Democracy”. When it comes down to it, we both want the same – we want people to be happy. What’s the use of your Revolution if it breeds long faces? What’s the use of a revolution run by miserable little men in miserable little rooms?’

Liberty, Gaiety, Royal Democracy. The Duplessis women give orders to their dressmakers for the autumn of 1790. Black silks with scarlet sashes and cut-away coats piped with the tricolour take them to first nights, supper parties, private views. Take them to meet new people…

It was still summer, though, when Antoine Saint-Just came to Paris. Not to stay, just to visit; Lucile was avid to get a sight of him. She’d heard the stories, about how he’d absconded with the family silver and had run through the money in a fortnight. She was highly prepared to like him.

He was twenty-two now. The episode with the silver was three years ago. Had Camille perhaps made it up? It was hard to believe a person could change so much. She looked up at Saint-Just – he was tall – and noted the awesome neutrality of his expression. Introductions were made, and he looked at her as if he were not interested in her at all. He was with Robespierre; it seemed they’d exchanged letters. It was quite strange, she thought – most men seemed to fall over themselves in their eagerness to get more out of her than her normal workaday affability. Not that she held it against him: it made a change.

Saint-Just was handsome. He had velvet eyes and a sleepy smile; he moved his fine body carefully, as big men sometimes do. He had a fair skin and dark brown hair – if there was any fault in his face, it was that his chin was too large, too long. It saved him from prettiness, she thought, but seen from certain angles his face had an oddly overbalanced look.

Camille was with her, of course. He was in one of those precarious moods; teasing, but quite ready for a fight. ‘Done any more poems?’ he asked. Last year, Saint-Just had published an epic, and sent it for his opinion; it was interminable, violent, faintly salacious.

‘Why? Would you read them?’ Saint-Just looked hopeful.

Camille slowly shook his head. ‘Torture has been abolished,’ he said.

Saint-Just’s lip curled. ‘I suppose it offended you, my poem. I suppose you thought it was pornographic.’

‘Nothing so good,’ Camille said, laughing.

Their eyes met. Saint-Just said, ‘My poem had a serious point. Do you think I would waste my time?’

‘I don’t know,’ Camille said, ‘whether you would or not.’

Lucile’s mouth went dry. She watched the two men try to face each other down: Saint-Just waxen, passive, waiting for results, and Camille nervously aggressive, his eyes bright. This is nothing to do with a poem, she thought. Robespierre, too, looked faintly alarmed. ‘You’re a little severe, Camille,’ he said. ‘Surely the work had some merit?’

‘None, none,’ Camille said. ‘But if you like, Antoine, I could bring you some specimens of my own early efforts, and let you mock them at your leisure. You are probably a better poet than I was, and you will certainly be a better politician. Because look at you, you have self-control. You would like to hit me, but you aren’t going to.’

Saint-Just’s expression had deepened; it was not fathomable.

‘Have I really offended you?’ Camille tried to sound sorry.

‘Oh, deeply.’ Saint-Just smiled. ‘I am wounded to the core of my being. Because isn’t it obvious that you are the one human being whose good opinion I crave? You without whom no aristocrat’s dinner party is complete?’

Saint-Just turned his back to speak to Robespierre. ‘Why couldn’t you be kind?’ Lucile whispered.

Camille shrugged. ‘As a friend, I’d have been kind. But he was talking to an editor, not to a friend. He wanted me to put a piece in the paper crying up his talents. He didn’t want my personal opinion, he wanted my professional opinion. So he got it.’

‘What’s happened? I thought you liked him?’

‘He was all right. He’s changed. He used to be always thinking up mad schemes and getting into difficulties with women. But look at him, he’s become so solemn. I wish Louis Suleau could see him, he’s a fine example of a miserable revolutionary. He’s a republican, he says. I wouldn’t like to live in his republic.’

‘Perhaps he wouldn’t let you.’

Later she heard Saint-Just tell Robespierre, ‘He is frivolous.’

She contemplated the word. She associated it with giggly summer picnics, or gossipy theatre suppers with champagne: the rustling hot still-painted actresses sitting down beside her and saying, I see you are much in love, he is beautiful, I hope you will be happy. She had never before heard it uttered as an indictment, charged with menace and contempt.

THAT YEAR the Assembly made bishops and priests into public officials, salaried by the state and subject to election, and in time also required of them an oath of loyalty to the new constitution. To some it seemed a mistake to force the priests to a stark choice; to refuse was to be counted disloyal, and dangerous. Everybody agreed (at her mother’s little afternoon salons) that religious conflict was the most dangerous force that could be unleashed in a nation.

From time to time her mother would sigh over the new developments. ‘Life will be so prosaic,’ she complained. ‘The constitution, and the high-mindedness, and the Quaker hats.’

‘What would you have, my dear?’ Danton asked her. ‘Plumes and grand passions at the Riding-School? Mayhem among the Municipality? Love and death?’

‘Oh, don’t laugh. Our romantic aspirations have received a shock. Here is the Revolution, the spirit of Rousseau made flesh, we thought – ’

‘And it is only M. Robespierre, with defective eyesight and a provincial accent.’

‘It is only a lot of people discussing their bank balances.’

‘Who has been gossiping to you about my affairs?’

‘The walls and gateposts talk of you, M. Danton.’ She paused, touched his arm. ‘Tell me something, will you? Do you dislike Max?’

‘Dislike him?’ he seemed surprised. ‘I don’t think so. He makes me a bit uneasy, that’s all. He does seem to set everyone very high standards. Will you be able to scrape up to them when you’re his mother-in-law?’

‘Oh, that’s – not settled yet.’

‘Can’t Adèle make up her mind?’

‘It’s more that the question hasn’t been asked.’

‘Then it’s what they call an understanding,’ Danton said.

‘I’m not sure whether Max thinks he has asked her – well, no, I must decline to comment. You need not raise your eyebrows in that way. How can a mere woman say what a deputy understands?’

‘Oh, we don’t have “mere women” any more. Last week your two prospective sons-in-law defeated me in argument. I am told that women are in every respect the equal of men. They only want opportunity.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All this is set in motion by that opinionated little creature Louise Robert, who doesn’t know what she’s starting. I don’t see why men should spend their time arguing that women are their equals. It seems against their interests.’

‘Robespierre is disinterested, you see. As always. And Camille tells me we shall have to give women the vote. We shall have them at the Riding-School soon, wearing black hats and lugging document cases and droning on about the taxation system.’

‘Life will be even more prosaic.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We may yet have our grubby little tragedies.’

SO HAS THIS REVOLUTION a philosophy, Lucile wanted to know, has it a future?

She dared not ask Robespierre, or he would lecture her for the afternoon on the General Will: or Camille, for fear of a thoughtful and coherent two hours on the development of the Roman republic. So she asked Danton.

‘Oh, I think it has a philosophy,’ he said seriously. ‘Grab what you can, and get out while the going’s good.’

DECEMBER 1790: Claude changed his mind. He changed it on an ominous December day, when iron-coloured clouds, pot-bellied with snow, grazed among the city’s roofs and chimneys.

‘I just can’t take it any more,’ he said. ‘Let them get married, before I die of the fatigue of it all. Threats, tears, promises, ultimata…I couldn’t take another year of it, I couldn’t take another week. I should have been much firmer, long ago – but it’s too late now. We’ll have to make the best of it, Annette.’

Annette went to her daughter’s room. Lucile was scribbling away at something. She looked up, startled and guilty, put her hand over her work. An ink blot grew on the page.

When Annette gave her the news, she stared into her mother’s face, her dark eyes wide, hardly comprehending. ‘So simple?’ she whispered. ‘Claude simply changes his mind, and everything comes right? Somehow I’d started thinking it was very much more complicated than that.’ She turned her head. She began to cry. She put her head down on to her diary and let tears flow over the forbidden words: let them salt her paragraphs, let them turn the letters liquid. ‘Oh, it’s relief,’ she said. ‘It’s relief.’

Her mother stood behind her, took her by the shoulders, gave her an incidental but vindictive pinch. ‘So, you’ve got what you wanted. Let’s have no more of your nonsense with M. Danton, either. You behave yourself, now.’

‘I’ll be a paragon.’ She sat upright. ‘Let’s get organized then.’ She scrubbed the back of her hand across her cheeks. ‘We’ll be married right away.’

‘Right away? But think what people will say! And besides, it’s Advent. You can’t get married in Advent.’

‘We’ll get a dispensation. As for what people will say, that is a matter for them. I shall not be worrying about it. It is beyond my control.’

Lucile leapt up. She seemed no longer able to contain herself within civilized bounds. She ran through the house, laughing and crying at the same time, slamming the doors. Camille arrived. He seemed mystified. ‘Why has she got ink on her forehead?’ he asked.

‘I suppose you might see it as a second baptism,’ Annette said. ‘Or the republican equivalent of anointing with holy oil. After all, my dear, there’s so much ink in your lives.’

There was in fact a spot of it on Camille’s cuff. He had very much the air of a man who has just written an editorial, and is worrying about what the typesetter will do to it. There was the time he’d referred to Marat as ‘an apostle of liberty’ and it had come out as ‘an apostate of liberty’. Marat had arrived in the office, foaming with rage…

‘Look, M. Duplessis, are you sure about this?’ Camille said. ‘Good things like this don’t happen to me. Could it be some mistake? A sort of printing error?’

Annette couldn’t stop the images – didn’t want them, but couldn’t stop them. The swish of her skirts as she strode about this room, telling Camille to get out of her life. The rain pattering against the windows. And that kiss, that ten-second kiss that would have ended, if Lucile had not walked in, with a locked door and some undignified gratification on the chaise-longue. She cast her eye on it, that same item of furniture, upholstered in fading blue velvet. ‘Annette,’ Claude said, ‘why are you looking so angry?’

‘I’m not angry, dear,’ Annette said. ‘I’m having a lovely day.’

‘Really? If you say so. Ah, women!’ he said fondly, looking at Camille for complicity. Camille gave him a cool glance; said the wrong thing again, Claude thought, forgotten his Views. ‘Lucile seems equally confused about her feelings. I hope – ’ He approached Camille. He seemed to be about to put a hand on his shoulder, but it wavered in the air and dropped loosely at his side. ‘Well, I hope you’ll be happy.’

Annette said, ‘Camille, dear, your apartment is very nice, but I expect you’ll be moving to somewhere bigger? You’ll need some more furniture – would you like the chaise-longue? I know you’ve always admired it.’

Camille dropped his eyes. ‘Admired it? Annette, I’ve dreamt of it.’

‘I could get it re-upholstered.’

‘Please don’t think of it,’ Camille said. ‘Leave it exactly as it is.’

Claude looked faintly bemused. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it then, if you want to talk about furniture.’ He smiled, gallantly. ‘I must say, my dear boy, you never cease to surprise.’

THE DUKE OF ORLÉANS said: ‘Are they? Isn’t that wonderful? Do you know, I never get any nice news nowadays?’ Some months previously Lucile had been brought for his inspection; he had passed her. She had style, almost the style of an Englishwoman; be good to see her on the hunting field. That toss of the head, that supple spine. I’ll give them a good present, he decided. ‘Laclos, what’s that town-house of mine standing empty, the one with the garden, bit shabby, twelve bedrooms? Corner of thing street?’

‘OH, WONDERFUL!’ Camille said. ‘I can’t wait to hear what my father says! We’re going to have this amazing house! Plenty of room for the chaise-longue.’

Annette put her head in her hands. ‘Sometimes I lose hope,’ she said. ‘What would happen to you if you didn’t have so many people to look after you? Camille, think. How can you accept from the Duke a house, which is the largest, most visible bribe he could come up with? Wouldn’t it be a shade compromising? Wouldn’t it lead to a little paragraph or two in the royalist press?’

‘I suppose so,’ Camille said.

She sighed. ‘Just ask him for the cash. Now, speaking of houses, come and look at this.’ She unfolded a plan of her property at Bourg-la-Reine. ‘I have been making some sketches for a little house I should like to build for you. I thought here,’ she indicated, ‘at the bottom of the linden avenue.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because I value my holidays, and I don’t intend to have you and Claude in the same house sneering at each other and having meaningful silences. It would be like taking weekend excursions to Purgatory.’ She bent over her drawings. ‘I’ve always wanted to design a sweet little cottage. Of course, I may in my amateur enthusiasm leave a few vital bits out. Don’t worry, I’ll remember to put in a nice bedroom for you. And of course, you’ll not be exiles. No, I’ll come tripping down to see you, when the mood takes me.’

She smiled. How ambivalent he looked. Caught between terror and pleasure. The next few years will be quite interesting, she thought, one way and another. Camille has the most extraordinary eyes: the darkest grey, as near-black as the eyes of a human being can be, the iris almost merging with the pupil. They seem to be looking at the future now.

‘AT SAINT-SULPICE,’ Annette said, ‘confessions are at three o’clock.’

‘I know,’ Camille said. ‘Everything’s arranged. I sent a message to Father Pancemont. I thought it was only fair to warn him. I told him to expect me on the dot of three, and that I don’t do this sort of thing every day and I don’t expect to be kept waiting. Coming?’

‘Order the carriage.’

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH Annette addressed her coachman. ‘We’ll be – how long will we be? Do you favour a long confession?’

‘I’m not actually going to confess anything. Perhaps just a few token peccadilloes. Thirty minutes.’

A man in a dark coat was pacing in the background, a folder of documents tucked under his arm. The clock struck. He advanced on them. ‘Just three, M. Desmoulins. Shall we go in?’

‘This is my solicitor,’ Camille said.

‘What?’ Annette said.

‘My solicitor, notary public. He specializes in canon law. Mirabeau recommended him.’

The man looked pleased. How interesting, she thought, that you still see Mirabeau. But she was having trouble with this notion: ‘Camille, you’re taking your solicitor to confession with you?’

‘A wise precaution. No serious sinner should neglect it.’

He swept her through the church at an unecclesiastical pace. ‘I’ll just kneel down,’ she said, lurching sideways to get away from him. It was quiet; a gaggle of grannies praying for the old days to come back, and a small dog curled up, snoring. The priest seemed to see no reason to lower his voice. ‘It’s you, is it?’ he said.

Camille said to the notary, ‘Write that down.’

‘I didn’t think you’d come, I must say. When I got your message I thought it was a joke.’

‘It’s certainly not a joke. I have to be in a state of grace, don’t I, like everybody else?’

‘Are you a Catholic?’

A short pause.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because if you’re not a Catholic I can’t confer on you the sacraments.’

‘All right then. I’m a Catholic.’

‘Have you not said – ’ Annette heard the priest clearing his throat ‘ – have you not said in your newspaper that the religion of Mahomet is quite as valid as that of Jesus Christ?’

‘You read my newspaper?’ Camille sounded gratified. A silence. ‘You won’t marry us, then?’

‘Not until you have made a public profession of the Catholic faith.’

‘You have no right to ask that. You have to take my word for it. Mirabeau says – ’

‘Since when has Mirabeau been a Church Father?’

‘Oh, he’ll like that, I’ll tell him. But do change your mind, Father, because I am dreadfully in love, and I cannot abide even as you abide, and it is better to marry than to burn.’

‘Whilst we are on the subject of Saint Paul,’ the priest said, ‘may I remind you that the powers that be are ordained of God? And whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God, and that they that resist shall receive unto them damnation?’

‘Yes, well, I’ll have to take my chances on that,’ Camille said. ‘As you know very well – see verse fourteen – the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife. If you’re going to be obstructive, I’ll have to take it to an ecclesiastical commission. You are just putting a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in your brother’s way. You’re not supposed to go to law, you’re supposed to rather suffer yourself to be defrauded. See chapter six.’

‘That’s about going to law with unbelievers. The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens is not an unbeliever.’

‘You know you’re wrong,’ Camille said. ‘Where do you think I was educated? Do you think you can get away with talking this sort of rubbish to me? No,’ he said to his lawyer, ‘you needn’t write that down.’

They emerged. ‘Strike that out,’ Camille said. ‘I was being hasty.’ The notary looked cowed. ‘Write at the top of the page, “In the matter of the solemnization of the marriage of L. C. Desmoulins, barrister-at-law”. That’s right, put some lines under it.’ He took Annette’s arm. ‘Were you praying?’ he said. ‘Get it to the commission right away,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘NO CHURCH,’ Lúcile said. ‘No priest. Marvellous.’

‘The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens says I am responsible for the loss of half of his annual revenue,’ Camille said. ‘He says it was because of me that his château was burned to the ground. Adèle, stop giggling.’

They sat around Annette’s drawing room. ‘Well, Maximilien,’ Camille said, ‘you’re good at solving people’s problems. Solve this.’

Adèle tried to compose herself. ‘Haven’t you a tame priest? Someone you were at school with?’

Robespierre looked up. ‘Surely Father Bérardier could be persuaded? He was our last principal,’ he explained, ‘at Louis-le-Grand, and he sits in the Assembly now. Surely, Camille…he was always so fond of you.’

‘When he sees me now, he smiles, as if to say, “I predicted how you would turn out”. They say he will refuse the oath to the constitution, you know.’

‘Never mind that,’ Lucile said. ‘If there’s any chance…’

‘ON THESE CONDITIONS,’ Bérardier said. ‘That you make a public profession of faith, in your newspaper. That you cease to make anticlerical gibes in that publication, and that you erase from it its habitually blasphemous tone.’

‘Then what am I to do for a living?’ Camille asked.

‘It was foolish of you not to foresee this when you decided to take on the church. But then, you never did plan your life more than ten minutes ahead.’

‘On the conditions stipulated,’ Father Pancemont said, ‘I will let Father Bérardier marry you at Saint-Sulpice. But I’m damned if I’ll do it myself, and I think Father is making a mistake.’

‘He is a creature of impulse,’ Father Bérardier said. ‘One day his impulses will lead him in the right direction; isn’t that so, Camille?’

‘The difficulty is that I wasn’t thinking of bringing an issue out before the New Year.’

The priests exchanged glances. ‘Then we will expect to see the statement in the first issue of 1791.’

Camille nodded.

‘Promise?’ Bérardier said.

‘Promise.’

‘You always lied with amazing facility.’

‘HE WON’T DO IT,’ Father Pancemont said. ‘We should have said, statement first, marriage after.’

Bérardier sighed. ‘What is the use? Consciences cannot be forced.’

‘I believe Deputy Robespierre was your pupil too?’

‘For a little while.’

Father Pancemont looked at him as one who said, I was in Lisbon during the earthquake year. ‘You have given up teaching now?’ he asked.

‘Oh, look – there are worse people.’

‘I can’t think of any,’ the priest said.

THE WITNESSES to the marriage: Robespierre, Pétion, the writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier, and the Duke’s friend, the Marquis de Sillery. A diplomatically chosen selection, representing the left wing of the Assembly, the literary establishment and the Orléanist connection.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Camille said to Danton. ‘Really I wanted Lafayette, Louis Suleau, Marat and the public executioner.’

‘Of course I don’t mind.’ After all, he thought, I shall be a witness to everything else. ‘Are you going to be rich now?’

‘The dowry is a hundred thousand livres. And there’s some quite valuable silver. Don’t look at me like that. I’ve had to work for it.’

‘And are you going to be faithful to her?’

‘Of course.’ He looked shocked. ‘What a question. I love her.’

‘I only wondered. I thought it might be nice to have a statement of intent.’

THEY TOOK a first-floor apartment on the rue des Cordeliers, next door to the Dantons; and on 30 December they held their wedding breakfast for a hundred guests, the dark, icy day nuzzling in hostile curiosity at the lighted windows. At one o’clock in the morning they found themselves alone. Lucile was still in her pink wedding dress, now crumpled, and with a sticky patch where she had spilled a glass of champagne over herself some hours earlier. She sank down on to the blue chaise-longue, and kicked off her shoes. ‘Oh, what a day! Has there been anything like it in the annals of holy matrimony? My God, rows of people sniffing and groaning, and my mother crying, and my father crying, and then old Bérardier publically lecturing you like that, and you crying, and the half of Paris that wasn’t weeping in the pews standing outside in the streets shouting slogans and making lewd comments. And – ’ Her voice tailed off. The day’s sick excitement washed over her, wave on wave of it. Probably, she thought, this is what it’s like to be at sea. Camille seemed to be talking to her from a long way off:

‘…and I never thought that happiness like this could have anything to do with me, because two years ago I had nothing, and now I have you, and I’ve got the money to live well, and I’m famous…’

‘I’ve had too much to drink,’ Lucile said.

When she thought back on the ceremony, everything appeared to be a sort of haze, so that she felt that perhaps even by then she had had too much to drink, and she wondered in momentary panic, are we properly married? Is drunkenness an incapacity? What about last week, when we looked over the apartment – was I quite sober then? Where is the apartment?

‘I thought they’d never go,’ Camille said.

She looked up at him. All the things she’d been going to say, all the rehearsals she’d had for this moment, four years of rehearsals; and now, when it came to it, she could only manage a queasy smile. She forced her eyes open to stop the room spinning, and then closed them again, and let it spin. She rolled face down on the chaise-longue, drew up her knees comfortably, and gave a little grunt of contentment, like the dog at Saint-Sulpice. She slept. Some kind person slid a hand under her cheek, and then replaced the hand by a cushion.

‘LISTEN to what I will be,’ said the King, ‘if I do not uphold the constitutional oath on the poor bishops.’ He adjusted his spectacles and read:

‘…enemy of the public liberty, treacherous conspirator, most cowardly of perjurers, prince without honour, without shame, lowest of men…’ He broke off, put down the newspaper and blew his nose vigorously into a handkerchief embroidered with the royal arms – the last he had, of the old sort. ‘A happy new year to you too, Dr Marat,’ he said.