by Marge Piercy
The next morning, streets around the Convention were blocked by armed citizens. The people of Paris were taking no chances. Chambon, the new Mayor of Paris, was dispatched to fetch the King. Nicolas heard that when Chambon addressed him as Louis Capet, Louis refused to answer.
Louis was brought in wearing an olive silk coat, simply but elegantly dressed and without a wig, his hair curled. A chair had been set up for him in the center of the Convention. The president was Barère, who tried to be nobody’s enemy. “Louis Capet, the French nation accuses you. You will hear the accusation. You may be seated.”
Louis proceeded to deny everything, with unflagging dignity. “It was the ministers. I did what they asked of me. I am not responsible for my brothers. I am innocent. I know nothing of these papers. That isn’t my signature. I never saw these papers before in my life.” He was ordered to find a lawyer of his choosing and prepare his defense.
All during the rather dull trial, Nicolas had nightmares. Sophie held him, but he slept little and woke abruptly, dreaming of blood. Then his Girondin colleagues came up with a new ploy to save Louis. The judgement on Louis should be submitted to the forty-five thousand primary assemblies of France. That would certainly delay matters up to a year or more. It sounded democratic and it would take forever.
The Mountain began attacking immediately, first Saint-Just, then Robespierre. The referendum would tie up the Convention and the government. It would use up endless man-hours while they were at war. How could each of the forty-five thousand assemblies judge Louis without evidence, and how could the evidence be trucked around to every town? If they were true representatives of the people, they could not dodge this issue. Clearly voting for a referendum was voting to reprieve Louis.
The Convention went on waffling for days. Finally on January fourth, a surprising hero emerged. The greatest waffler of them all, Barère rose, dressed in a red waistcoat. He was handsome and vain. He had belonged to the minor nobility outside Toulouse. Barère was generally regarded as master of the ornate and flowery style. This time however, his hand on his hip and his long brown hair flowing, he spoke to the point. The trial had been fair, he argued. Everything had been done openly. Now by a roll call they would establish his guilt or innocence. “In the midst of all these passions and quarrels, a single voice has a right to be heard, that of liberty. Let us unite to save the Republic. Before the entire world, it is with our careful judgement on the last king of France that we shall enter history. Let us be worthy of the moment.”
It would have been the new year under the old calendar, now Nivôse, the snowy month. The endless speeches went on endlessly. Everybody wanted to go on record. Great speeches, dull speeches, long speeches, longer speeches. Finally the day came when they must vote. First, was Louis guilty? Second, should the sentence be appealed by referendum? Third, his punishment. The moderates wanted a secret ballot; the Mountain wanted open balloting. Let everyone’s vote be recorded before the people. They won.
Twenty-six were absent, and six hundred ninety-three voted for guilt. No one voted not guilty. The first question was settled quickly.
Then came the tricky one: should the judgement on Louis be submitted to the primary assemblies? As he sat waiting, he realized he could not vote for it. He hated to admit that Robespierre and Saint-Just were right, but this was a delaying tactic that would tie up the government for months. There would be no possibility of getting to his Constitution. If Louis were not found guilty, what would happen to him? Would Louis be stuck back on the toppled throne? Nicolas could not support the appeal. He voted against it. His own friends glared at him. The appeal lost by a wide margin. Many changed their minds, as he had, wanting the business over. Tomorrow came the decision on punishment.
Since they had run late into the night, the session began at ten-thirty. It began with trifling daily business, communiqués from representatives on mission, reports of minor committees, petitions. Nicolas looked around. Nobody was paying attention. They were whispering together. Brissot said to him, “The city is going to rise. It’s August tenth all over again, but this time they’re coming after us.”
The current Minister of Justice was sent to the Commune. He reported back within the hour that nothing was happening. Paris was going about its daily business. Mayor Chambon came in person to assure the Convention that he had taken every precaution to assure tranquillity. The delegates remained nervous. When a book fell to the floor, half of them flinched.
The newest ploy from his Girondin colleagues was to propose that a two-thirds majority be required to vote death. The Mountain responded that Louis had been found guilty of treason. It was superfluous to vote; they need only open a law book and read the penalty. Danton took the floor. He had been off in Belgium with the armies. “We proclaimed the Republic by a simple majority. Do you really think the fate of Louis is more important than the fate of the entire country?”
The Convention agreed to require only a majority. It was now ten at night and they had been at this for nearly twelve hours. Torches had been lit in the hall, casting a flickering uneasy light over the pallid faces. Outside it was dreary and overcast, no moonlight. The air reeked of torches and the sweat of their weary bodies. The galleries were still packed. The spectators ate and drank and began to keep count as the delegates got up one by one to vote. The handsome little orator Buzot told him there was betting on the outcome in the cafes. The odds on Louis’ survival had been dropping for three days.
Even some Girondins were voting for death now. People were shifting sides from fear, fury, boredom and exhaustion. He could not vote for death. He had never approved of the death penalty. By midnight they had reached only the eleventh delegation. Nicolas was so tired he wanted to weep, he wanted to throw himself on the floor.
When the roll call reached Paris, it was morning although still dark in the hall. The former due d’Orléans, the King’s cousin now known as Philippe Égalité, voted for death. He was hissed. “Call yourself Phil Turncoat,” someone yelled. At noon the Aisne delegation voted, Nicolas against death.
Finally the new president Vergniaud announced that the vote was narrowly for death. At ten-thirty at night they went home, after having met for thirty-six hours straight. Nicolas could scarcely walk. He imagined he must appear drunk as he staggered through the streets. Sophie was waiting. “Death,” he said. His voice sounded slurred. She took hold of him, rang for his valet. Between them, they carried him off to bed. Despite voting no, he was implicated in an execution. He felt years older and feeble.
SIXTY-TWO
Claire
(January 21, 1793)
CLAIRE rarely found Hélène in their shared room, for she had taken up with a man in her musical. She went only occasionally to the Cordeliers and to the women’s meetings. Her new lover seemed mostly to care about dining well and dressing up. Hélène was in love, although Claire could not figure out with what. A dressmaker’s mannequin would have as much force of character. Hélène told her she was jealous and should find a man of her own. Finally, just after what used to be New Year’s, Hélène moved out.
Claire’s room was used so often for informal meetings that she decided she would not bother with a roommate. If she did not have the rent money, she would just pass the hat. Jacques Roux, the priest of the Gravilliers section, came often. Sometimes he just sat silently in a chair and brooded or poured out his soul to her. He hated speculators, hoarders, middlemen, the rich, all those who lived off the poor and ate them down to the bone, as he put it. His gaunt ascetic presence radiated no sexuality. He met her mind to mind. Lately he had been bringing a young army officer, Théophile Leclerc with him. They were close politically. Théophile was darkly tanned, slender but well built.
Jacques cared about nothing but the poor. He was their shepherd. The first shall be last and the last shall be first, he preached in his harsh impassioned voice. He lived no better than his parishioners. People gossiped about his going to her room. The opposition papers spoke of her as a w
hore who received aristocrats (she knew absolutely none) and priests of dubious reputation. They pretended to think she and Jacques were lovers.
She missed Hélène in the mornings, when she woke alone in the old double bed, when Hélène would hum as she brushed out her red hair till it crackled as if it were the bonfire it made her think of. She missed the intimate conversations after meetings, after the theater, the dissection, the easy gossip. It was not that she was lonely, for she was seldom alone. She was with Pauline, with Victoire, with a dozen other friends. Sometimes she helped Victoire with her old-clothes business, especially the buying. She was at meetings day and evening and sometimes all night. But she had grown used to living with another woman, and she missed that soft intimacy, that sisterly presence unlike her real sister. She went to visit Hélène twice, but her lover hovered, mistrustful.
On the twenty-first of January, Pauline, Victoire and Claire went before dawn to the Place de la Revolution, where the guillotine had recently been moved, to see Louis Capet executed. In the darkness, the square was already filling up. Some had been there since the night before. During the night, a dusting of snow had fallen. The temperature had not risen above freezing, but many feet had trampled it to a damp smear except on the roofs. The crowd, standing in the dark morning when the sun seemed reluctant to rise, was at once jolly and solemn. They sensed they were consciously making history. They assented in his death, Claire thought, but they were not giddy. She was of two minds herself. She had seen the guillotine in action three times. It did not give her the same pleasure it gave many citizens, who felt safety, retribution in the drop of its blade. It was a merciful death, certainly. She had seen Protestants burnt alive. She had seen hangings where the poor wretch flopped and flopped like a dying fish.
But death was death, and she could not rejoice in it as Pauline honestly did. She would always be an outsider, the way Mendès had been, for as a Protestant she had not been born into the body politic. In the presence of the guillotine, she was insecure. Her friends viewed it as their own. It belonged to the people. It was a tool of justice. But she, alarmed at how she was attacked in the Girondin papers as a whore of the Revolution, felt vulnerable in the presence of the high scaffold. It was necessary to view the death of the man who had been king; but it made her silently and secretly nervous.
She bought coffee from a woman peddler with a tank on her back and shared it with Victoire. Victoire was shorter than she was, sturdily built. A real peasant body, Victoire said about herself, born to push a cart. Lately she had been dressing more brightly, no longer ashamed of herself, no longer hiding bruises. She was only ten months older than Claire, but only recently had that seemed true. “You’re jumpy,” Victoire said softly, so no one else could hear.
“Why do you say that?” Claire was scared to be thought unpatriotic. A royalist sympathizer. Olympe de Gouges had offered to defend Louis. Everyone was against her now. She was considered a turncoat. She had always been a royalist by sentiment, as well as a genuine revolutionary.
“Shhh. It’s all right. I can tell. I understand.”
Sanson the executioner appeared, bowing to the crowd. He had begun under Louis XV. He had no more politics than a butcher slicing up a steer. He would decapitate Louis as he had torn apart limb by limb and organ by organ Damiens, the would-be assassin of Louis XV. His son was with him; they nodded at each other and passed little jokes as they got ready. Death was the family business. He had a wife he went home to, with whom he had made the son who would succeed him soon. Sanson was fashionably dressed, his hair in perfect order. He nodded to acquaintances, a star about to perform. He was spry and deliberate in spite of his age.
Finally at ten-fifteen a closed carriage made its way through the crowd. A big man lumbered out. “That’s Santerre the brewer,” Pauline said. “I met him when we took the Bastille. He’s a born general.”
More gingerly, Louis Capet descended. He was wearing grey culottes, grey stockings, a pink waistcoat and a brown silk coat, all pastels. His hair was carefully coiffed, but it had been cut off in the back. He looked older and somewhat fatter than when she had seen him in the Tuileries. He seemed calm. It was important to die well, everyone knew that. A priest was following him, praying from a breviary. Louis crossed himself, his lips moving. Then he ascended the high platform. He seemed to be arguing with Sanson. Finally he pulled off his coat, then his embroidered waistcoat, waving his hands, frowning. A murmur passed through the crowd, everybody telling those behind them what was happening. “He doesn’t want his hands tied. Sanson says he must do it.”
Until last June, she had never seen the King except on gold coins. His face was stamped on the money that passed across her palm, a remote figure, a myth. In June he had become a dumpy man with reserves of dignity. She had seen him sweat. Now she would see him die.
The argument was continuing, Louis beating the air with his hands, Sanson drawn up to his full height and scowling. The confessor came forward and whispered in Louis’ ear. Louis nodded and let his hands be tied. He started to speak to the crowd. “My people, I die an innocent man,” he cried. Santerre signaled to the drummers and they drowned him out with a tattoo. His lips were moving, but no one could hear him. Santerre didn’t want anybody being moved to a last-ditch rescue attempt.
It struck her how new was this sense they all had of being actors in history, seeing themselves in a painting by David as the event was still occurring. People had not used to think that way. History had become a daily thing, something they could almost grasp in their hands. Louis was still trying to speak and the drums were beating and the crowd was waving and yelling to get on with it. Quietly, invisibly in the crowd, Victoire took her hand and held it.
Sanson and his son clutched Louis and laid him on his stomach in a big wicker basket with his neck in the guillotine’s lunette. The voices of the crowd rose in a furious insectlike buzzing and then dropped almost to silence. Sanson stepped back and signaled his son. The blade dropped. A roar rose from those who could see. Louis’ head fell into a small basket placed to catch it. Sanson drew out the head, holding it aloft by the hair to show the crowd. The roar grew louder until it seemed to vibrate through all the bones of her body. The ex-King was dead and there would be no more kings. They were truly a republic now, no going back.
People rushed forward to the scaffold to dip handkerchiefs and scraps of paper in the blood. Some of his effects were auctioned off on the spot, the executioner’s privilege. Immediately both parts of the corpse were carried down, loaded and driven off in the same closed carriage. Usually remains went to the cemetery heaped in an open wagon.
“What will they do with him?” Claire asked.
Pauline knew. “They’re taking him to Sainte Marguerite cemetery to be buried. Right next to the mass grave of the Swiss killed in the Tuileries after he ran away.”
Of course, Claire thought, it had all been thought out with an eye to history and the fitting gesture.
Everyone stood around the plaza, looking at the empty guillotine. Sanson and his son Henri rode off waving to the crowd. The Commune should have had Danton or Robespierre or Barère give a speech to mark the occasion. Now they all felt at a loss. The crowd had lost its energy. The death was so quick that they were still standing there waiting, looking at nothing.
“Well,” said Pauline, practical as always, “time to go back to work. So much for Louis Capet. May all those fucking Girondins die the same way so we can stop starving. I haven’t had my belly full for three months.”
Victoire grinned. “At least you can eat chocolate.”
“If I eat my wares, what will I live on?” Pauline shrugged. “We need price controls on bread and sugar. The bastards won’t give it to us. Free trade, free trade, as if starving were a god-given right. Damn them all.”
“Amen,” Victoire said. Arm in arm, the women crossed the Pont Neuf. They were cold, they were hungry, and like most of Paris, they would stay that way. The Revolution marched on, Claire thought,
but their lives were still as hard as they ever had been.
SIXTY-THREE
Manon
(Winter-Spring 1793)
MANON’S “little brother” Lanthénas was jealous. He was furious that she had fallen in love, although she explained that François was not her lover. After ten years of platonic friendship, Lanthénas had thought her impervious, a saint. If only he were not still living in the Ministry house, she might have had some rest, but she never knew at what hour he would pop out ranting and throwing a tantrum. Now he was flirting with the Mountain to punish her. Even Jean noticed that Lanthénas was acting strangely. He asked her what was wrong. She put him off, feeling guilty. She was not in the habit of lying. She suspected Lanthénas of telling Marat about François: somebody had.
“I can’t stand what Marat says about us.” François took her face between his hands. “I should kill him for you.”
“Really, you don’t imagine he’s about to fight a duel with you. The man is confined to a medicinal bath most of the time.”
“He scarcely attends the Convention. He’s literally rotting. When he does drag himself there, even his fellow thugs from the Mountain won’t sit near him. Some say it’s syphilis.”
“This is the man who calls me immoral.” She paced to and fro, clutching her elbows. “According to him, I’ve seduced half the Convention at my luxurious and decadent dinner parties. He calls my little office my boudoir. He’s afflicted with sexual fantasies, but why must he attach them to me?”