by Marge Piercy
He began with a careful refutation of the specific charges, first that he had threatened the Assembly with revolt. He read the minutes, proving he had actually rebuked the deputy who had made that threat. “If I wished to be a dictator, would I have called for the replacement of a weak Assembly with a strong Convention? Yet I was one of the citizens who first proposed a Convention, who tried to assure that it would represent all the people and not just some, that it would have broad powers. Why would I demand again and again that a Republic be proclaimed, if I wanted to be dictator?”
He was holding his speech before him. He spoke deliberately, as he always did, as if each word were a nail driven in. He spoke in long and rolling sentences that would probably move the people even if he were speaking a different language. He did not have a big sonorous trombone of a voice like Danton, but he spoke so intensely and with such controlled passion, it lifted them all and bore them along. He was speaking from his soul to her soul. He never spoke quickly. He paused for emphasis, he paused to look over his green-tinted glasses at the crowd, he paused as if to think, to consider, to ponder.
He had finished with his brief personal defense, and now he was defending not himself but the Commune. He was speaking again for the people. That high intense voice with its long sentences moved them like a fierce wind, carrying them along. “The revolutionaries and the martyrs of the tenth of August saved France. I will freely admit that there may have been excesses in the heat of battle, but public safety must always and ever take precedence over the details of the criminal code. It has long been recognized that in self-defense violence is permissible, and the Revolution is our purer, our better self. Louvet has implied that the Commune acted illegally in overthrowing the monarchy. Yes, it did. Yes, we did. So did the people who stormed the Bastille—a great illegal act. Revolutionary acts are fully as illegal as liberty itself.
“As for the summary justice executed by the people in the prisons, no one regrets those deaths more than I do. But the people who carried them out did so out of a genuine fear of the counter-revolutionaries—who are more powerful, better financed, more numerous and better placed than we imagined. Our worst nightmares are constantly proven insufficient to the machinations of our enemies.
“Fellow deputies, Citizens, we must realize what we are doing. All revolutions are violent. It is their nature. We cannot celebrate the fall of the Bastille and condemn the fall of the monarchy. Both are the will of the sovereign people in arms. Citizens, what do you want, a revolution without a revolution? We must go forward or perish.”
Enormous cheers went up as he finished. She was on her feet screaming. He had carried the Convention. Delegates were weeping. Of course they were always weeping, throwing their arms around each other and kissing and carrying on, then attempting to oust each other the next day. She did not take their blubbering seriously. But when Louvet wanted to speak, he was shouted down.
Robespierre had triumphed. For the moment, he and the Revolution were safe, if it was possible to distinguish between them. She went to the tavern hoarse from cheering, where she was promised a large bottle of hard cider if she would tell those who had not been able to get in, exactly what had happened.
Pauline took the bottle in one hand and climbed on a table. Babette was banging on the counter for order. Pauline told them as much of Robespierre’s speech as she remembered. “He’s our saint,” Babette’s mother said.
“He takes them all on,” Henri’s father said. “He shoves it down their throat. Damn right. No revolution without a revolution. They want a lace revolution, one for ladies and gents. We’ll give them a revolution they’ll choke on. Down with the mincing bastards.”
Pauline was exhausted when she finished. Babette brought her mutton stew. She had not eaten anything but a crust of bread since the night before. She was happy to eat and then go home. When she got into bed, she beamed at the bust of Robespierre. “You showed them,” she said to him. “You gave it back to them good. No one frightens you. Me, I get scared sometimes. But I try not to. I try to be as brave as you.”
FIFTY-NINE
Max
(Fall 1792)
MAX spoke carefully, watching each member of the Convention. It wasn’t like the Jacobin Club, an assured friendly audience. The Plain was now with him and now against him, blown by the winds of rhetoric and political climate. The Girondins were his open enemies. They had attempted to finish him off, to put him in prison, and they had failed. They would find him a slow but implacable enemy. The Mountain was his, but they formed less than a quarter of the deputies. He needed to make converts from the Plain. When he paused in his speech and applause broke out, he ignored the gallery and watched carefully to see who in the Plain was with him. He would remember each face and attach a name to it. Some he had notes on already, if they had been in either Assembly. Most of the others had cut their teeth on local politics, provincial assemblies. Some had come out of Jacobin clubs in the provinces and were already his.
He watched the ones he did not yet know for possible supporters. More and more of them were applauding; he had them, at least temporarily. Even some of the Girondins were clapping, including Condorcet, who had always treated him with patronizing contempt. People did not know that almost everything they said about him would find its way back. “A narrow second-rate mind and a first-rate ambition,” Condorcet had said. The former marquis thought himself above partisan politics. Max’s strategy was briefly but definitively to refute specific charges, but then defend, not himself, but the Revolution, as if in attacking him they were attacking the Revolution itself.
Max finished and knew he had brought it off. The fools had given him a chance to stand before the Convention clad in the mantle of the Revolution and to become its foremost spokesman. They had thought to destroy him and they had increased his public stature. But he was exhausted. This was the most intense personal attack he had experienced. He knew he was hated, but never had any group tried quite simply to destroy him. He saw through their machinations, for they were inept conspirators.
A fine misty rain was falling when he went home to the Rue Saint Florentine, where there was little cheer and he must at once take Blount out for his walk. Now it was raining harder. Man and dog attended to their business quickly and went back to the apartment that always felt cold. Charlotte had no gift for creating comfort. The very smells of this flat irritated him. He disliked Charlotte’s perfume and the smell of polish that hung over the house. His friends did not come by, for she made them uncomfortable. She was too jealous to share him. He could not have his political allies in to discuss politics, as she made inappropriate remarks. The Duplays were politically sophisticated; Charlotte believed whatever she read in whatever rag she was buying. She wanted things to be more pretentious. Her model of the good life was how the provincial ladies of Arras had dressed, had behaved, had decorated their houses when they were snubbing her as an impoverished orphan without dowry.
The next morning he had a sore throat and his entire body ached. As the day went on, his fever rose. Charlotte fussed over him, forcing upon him foul-tasting teas which he promptly threw up. The next day he was sicker, coughing a green phlegm. She brought a doctor, who said he had a raging pleurisy.
He had been sick in bed for a week, his fever falling but his body as limp and weak as a heap of string, when Mme Duplay arrived. “This is terrible,” she said. “This room is icy cold. I wonder you haven’t died of pneumonia. There aren’t enough coverlets. There’s a draft in here.”
He could hear her confronting Charlotte. He drifted into sleep. When he awoke, the women stood glaring across his bed at each other. “Max, tell this woman that your sister is taking good care of you! That your health is none of her business. Tell her to poke her nose out of my affairs.”
“My dearest Max, you look terrible,” Mme Duplay said, running a damp warm cloth over his forehead. It smelled of lavender. He disliked strong musky scents. Lavender was soothing. “You haven’t been resting. O
bviously you haven’t been eating enough.”
“My speech,” he croaked out. “Had to write my speech.”
“Your political survival depends on your physical survival, son,” Mme Duplay said. “You need to come home. Then you’ll be properly taken care of.” She turned to Charlotte. “I’m going to take care of him until he’s on his feet. You can see that with so many of us to share nursing duty, he can’t help but get well much faster. Poor dear, you look exhausted yourself.”
Max let himself be borne off by cab to the Duplays. His room was just as he had left it. He crawled into bed, Madame helping him undress. Soon he was sound asleep with the smell of sawdust and good cooking lulling him. He slept fourteen hours. When he awoke, he knew instantly where he was. He felt weak but complete. Charlotte was a leech: he must not allow her to suck away his energy with her constant complaints, her egotistical maundering. He looked around the little blue room with the white dimity curtains that Mme Duplay had sewn. He looked at the drawings on the walls that Eléanore had made of him speaking at the Jacobin Club, relaxing at the Duplay table, the oil painting of him with Blount at his feet. He had not taken all his books when he left. Secretly he had determined to come back. He was not here for a week or to recover his health. Too bad Augustin couldn’t move out too. Max could not give up his life to his sister. He would happily support her. But he would not live with her again.
He had dressed and was sitting at his desk drinking coffee and studying his notes on the Convention delegates, when he heard Eléanore’s light step running upstairs. Then he heard her pause outside his door. For about two minutes nothing happened. He smiled. She was trying to guess if he was awake. He moved a few papers and let his chair creak. She responded with a tap on the door.
“Come,” he said. He had not seen her except in the gallery of the Jacobin Club. She had not come to visit on the Rue Saint Florentine, and all of them knew the reason: Charlotte hated her.
She came in swiftly and paused in the middle of the room. Then she swept forward and knelt before him, putting her hand lightly on his knee. “Will you stay?”
He nodded.
Her face tightened into a grimace and then went stoical. Finally she let herself smile. Another woman would have wept. Her eyes, dark, enormous, fixed on him. They gleamed. Her adoration was powerful but controlled.
She said, “I don’t want to be separated from you again.”
“That is not always under my control. But I won’t voluntarily leave you.”
“Are you very weak?”
“I’m almost back to normal. Tomorrow I’ll return to the Convention.”
She rose and stood before him. “I want to be yours.” She was gazing at the floor, then made herself meet his gaze. She grew visibly pink. Her hands clenched before her.
He was silent. He felt a clutch of fear. Yet he also felt calm. He had already accepted her gift of self. He understood that the Duplays regarded Eléanore as belonging to him. “I can’t marry you.”
She nodded. “Your family doesn’t approve.”
“I don’t care what Charlotte thinks, and Augustin likes you. I’m the head of my lame family. That is not the determining factor.” He rose and walked to the window. Outside in the courtyard Blount was barking at the saw. “By the way, have you noticed that your sister and Philippe Lebas have fallen in love? They should marry. I just defeated an organized attempt to destroy me. There will be many such attempts. One will succeed. I’ll be assassinated or I’ll fall to a better laid conspiracy. I will never see forty. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I see. I understand. I want to share your fate.”
“If I marry you, you certainly will. But I don’t want to die like an Eastern tyrant, surrounded by my dog and my wife and my friends, all lying on the same pyre. I want you to survive me. I want you all to survive me. Tell the truth about me when I’m gone. But when I’m taken, when they finally manage to kill me, I want to die alone. I don’t want to pull anybody down with me. That would make it unendurable.”
“I don’t want to survive you.”
“Eléanore, obey me. I want you to live. I want to leave you all in this house intact as I found you.”
“I will never be as you found me. I wasn’t fully alive then.” She put her hands on his shoulders, nervously but with strength. Her face was close to his. “My life is yours. I would give it up to you in an instant.”
“As my wife, as my widow, you’d be vulnerable. You’d die because you bore my name. So I can’t give you my name. And I can’t have offspring. I can’t have a son to carry on my name that so many will curse.”
“I can promise you that I will not bear children.”
“You say that now. But I won’t change my mind. I couldn’t endure putting a woman I care for through that. My mother died … that way. Her screams echoed through the house for three days. I can’t.”
“I promise you, if you will let me love you, I won’t bear you any children. I know what to do. I’ve asked. Do you think I don’t know how you feel? I know what you feel as soon as you do.”
“You always do.” He smiled slightly. “Suppose you should become pregnant in spite of these precautions which you and I would take?”
“You’d never know it. No one would ever know.” She moved closer. She wore a flower perfume, almost herbal. Lemon verbena. It was slightly astringent, like Eléanore. He had been with only two women in his life, and they had been far more experienced than he. He was sure Eléanore was not. He seemed to be agreeing to go to bed with her, without having a clear idea how he would set about doing so. He put his hands on her upper arms. She felt firm. She was used to doing housework and hauling her canvases through the streets. At his touch, she surged forward against him. Her mouth pressed against his. He felt himself stir. He was almost surprised, but then, this was Eléanore who belonged to him already.
She led him to the bed, and he realized as she undressed him that she did not expect passion from him. She would provide that. She was inexperienced, as he had suspected, but eager. She ran her hands over his body, she adored him. Her touch was pleasant. He never minded her touching him, he who could not endure the touch of anyone else. He lay with his eyes lightly closed as she caressed his body, experimenting, judging from his breath what pleased him.
He sat up and turned her on her back, spreading her legs. She was thin but womanly. He was glad she was not fleshy. As he placed his member against her, he said, “This may hurt.” He hesitated.
“No. I’ve been stretching myself. I knew you would be upset by blood.”
He thrust into her with a great sigh. “No, I don’t like blood.” It was very easy with her. He could tell she was a little frightened but also happy. He withdrew just before he came. He would tell Madame and Monsieur that he and Eléanore were engaged. That would satisfy them. And he had placed Eléanore’s body squarely between Charlotte and himself. She could not use guilt on him again to make him set up gloomy housekeeping with her. He had provided himself with an obligation. It would be his secret, but as far as he was concerned, Eléanore was his wife. He was married to the whole Duplay family through her flesh. He anticipated that it would be a satisfying marriage.
SIXTY
Manon
(Fall 1792)
MANON was busy. The care of Eudora and her education occupied a portion of every day, dealing with the governess as well as her daughter. The grand house that came with Jean’s being Minister of the Interior required constant attention. Besides Fleury, as much friend as servant, she had a staff to direct. It would not do to pass on this residence that belonged to the Republic in worse condition than they had received it.
She had a small office in the house where she screened petitioners, saving Jean time and inconvenience. Sometimes they did not need to see Jean, for she could take care of the matter. He was often exhausted. The Ministry of the Interior was a vast operation that should have been subdivided into several bureaus, but it was just as well that someone as staun
ch and wise as Jean should oversee it all. She wrote his speeches and Buzot’s for the Convention—and every day she stole some time to see François.
Her dinners continued. They finally got rid of Danton, ousted from his ministry. The hostility was in the open. He attacked her in the Convention. When it was a question of Jean being reappointed, he had been vicious, insisting it was a double appointment. He said he had been alone in his ministry, while Roland shared his with her. Jean counterattacked, demanding Danton give an accounting of the finances of the Ministry of Justice when he had headed it. Presumably he had used some money to bribe the Prussians, but it was likely that he had helped himself. He was corrupt through and through. Then he had the nerve to attack Jean about the monies for Interior that they were using for propaganda. He claimed they were using money of the Republic to finance journals that supported their faction.
She lay awake at night feeling a fury consume her against those who carped and conspired against them. She considered herself a warm-hearted soul, but she had certainly been schooled in how to hate. Danton, Marat and Robespierre, those would-be dictators were her worst enemies. They were dangerous men, ambitious, bloodthirsty, without scruples. Danton was lustful, half animal, but the other two lusted only for power, which made them more dangerous in the long run.
The Girondins, as people called them, had thought to discredit Robespierre, but he had outwitted Louvet. They attacked Marat then, bringing charges against him, but the court would not convict. All charges were dismissed and he was free to return to his lair, to stir up violence. Marat was the most frightening, because he published vile sexual slanders against her daily. The other two had dined at her table. She had their measure. Marat was a savage she could imagine drinking blood and rending the flesh of those he hated.