by Marge Piercy
He took her quickly, then fell asleep in her arms, knowing that when he wakened, she would have crept off to her room. It was a measure of polite discretion they maintained. Everyone in the house was aware they were lovers. It was condoned but never mentioned.
The next day Saint-Just was blunt. “Desmoulins is not your son or your idiot cousin. He’s not a fine lady, although we’ve sent plenty of those to the guillotine. You expose yourself to ridicule when you make an exception of a man whose reputation is tainted, to say the least.”
“He’s a very old friend. I stood up for him at his marriage. I’m godfather to his son.”
“When the personal clouds the political, it’s time to cut out your heart. Justice is blind, Robespierre, and does not watch out for dogs or boys who never grew up.” Saint-Just stood over him like an angel of justice.
Max sighed. “Danton is a worse nuisance. He’s begun to constitute himself as the center of an opposition party in the Convention. Don’t they understand that the Revolution conquers united or disintegrates?” He saw so clearly: they were fighting a war against every crowned head in Europe, against armies on every border, against the English on the seas. All those powers bought agents inside France who undermined the currency, counterfeited, spread rumors, spied on military plans and preparations, attempted to overthrow the Jacobin government. The wealthy and the powerful could topple coalitions, hire assassins, buy off generals, bribe delegates, put out their lying propaganda.
“They’ve lost their nerve,” Saint-Just said. “Their vices drag them down. They plead indulgence, because they’re so much in need of it themselves.”
Attacks from the right: Danton, Camille, Fabre d’Églantine, Hérault de Séchelles; attacks from the left: Leclerc, Hébert and company. No sooner had the Revolution defeated one group of enemies than another rose in their place. At least the army was winning in the Vendée, and a young Corsican officer Bonaparte had recaptured Toulon from the British.
Fabre d’Églantine had two Hébertists arrested in December for abuses in Lyon, where the Girondins had been overthrown and the city retaken by government forces. They were accused of slaughtering hundreds. But when Collot d’Herbois got back from Lyon, where he had organized mass executions, he went straight to the Jacobin Club and defended himself successfully. Now Collot had freed his pals and they were stalking Fabre. Max had protected Fabre when the first charges about financial chicanery came to light. More papers were unearthed by the Committee of Security linking Fabre to forged documents. Max did not intervene. Fabre went to prison, and the Hébertists thundered against Danton. Max let them fight. He would move against them when he could. He let the factions tear at each other, while he prepared a speech to clarify the situation, demolish the political ground from under both factions and make plain the way the government must go.
Eléanore served as his secretary. For a whole week, he worked on the speech until his eyes watered, but it was a pleasure to grapple with large issues. This speech had to be so lucid that the Convention would hear it and say, Ah, yes, here we are and there we must go. The house smelled of new wood under the saw, cherry, pine, walnut, cooking odors from the kitchen. Often Elisabeth Lebas was around, just showing her pregnancy. Max was surrounded by women of his ideal family, coddled, fussed over, adored, the arbiter of whatever small differences arose. At his side always was Eléanore, dark, attentive, often silent; at his feet, was Blount, idiotically happy, his tail pounding the floor.
He returned to the Convention in time to spearhead the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. Finally Blacks were assured freedom and French citizenship. Three representatives from Saint Domingue were seated, one Black, one mulatto, one white, to great applause. Max had been fighting for this since he had become a delegate to the Estates General. The next day he took the rostrum to make his speech.
“The mainspring of government of the people is virtue. In time of war, in time of revolution, virtue and terror are yoked. Without virtue, terror is squalid repression. Without terror, virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but swift, severe and inflexible justice. ‘Indulgence for the royalists,’ some cry. ‘Mercy for the scoundrels!’ No, I say, Mercy for the unfortunate, mercy for the weak, mercy for the innocent, mercy for humanity.” He lashed to the right; he lashed to the left. Fall into line, come back into unity or be destroyed. “Democracy is not a state in which the people, split into a hundred temporary factions, decide the fate of society by taking hasty and violent action. In a democracy, the people are guided by law. France’s enemies within are divided into two armies. They march under banners of different colors, but they march toward the same goal: the ruin of the Convention. One faction would drive us toward weakness. The other drives us toward dangerous excess.”
The Convention listened. But the factions did not. The Hébertists were the more dangerous as they enjoyed support in the sections. Police spies working for the Committee of Security reported that an insurrection was being discussed at the Cordeliers. Hébert was exposing himself. A few steps forward, and the trap would spring. Would Collot and Billaud stand with the Committee against Hébert? Max kept talking up the vital importance of a united front. A man cannot have two heads, let alone twelve. The great Committee must speak with one voice.
On the evening of March fourth, a spy reported on a loud and bombastic session at the Cordeliers. The Declaration of the Rights of Man had been draped in black to symbolize tyranny. Max was castigated for assuming too much power, although they did not dare use his name. Hébert’s men called for an insurrection to force the government to deal harshly with Danton and the Indulgents and to give power back to the sections.
Collot led a delegation to the Cordeliers to urge them to heal differences with the Jacobins and rebuild revolutionary unity. He received a reasonable hearing. The black crepe was taken from the Declaration. Then Hébert made a rousing speech about tyrants and the stagnation of the Revolution under the Committee. Hébert began trying to rouse the sections. But the recent economic legislation Saint-Just and Couthon and Max had pushed through the Convention was highly popular. The working people thought the government was finally answering their cries. The response to the call for insurrection, police spies reported, was lukewarm.
All members of the Committee not on mission gathered at the green baize table. “We cannot permit talk of insurrection when the Republic is in danger,” Max said. “Hébertists are enemies as dangerous as the Austrians or the British. This is war. They have declared it, but we must win it, and quickly.”
Saint-Just was ordered to draw up the accusation and take it at once to the Committee of Security. Both Committees must agree before they could move against the Hébertists. Max was watching Billaud and Collot, but they were ready to sacrifice their former colleagues. The gamble of taking them on the Committee had worked. Their allegiance had shifted to the Committee of which they were part, like fingers of a hand. Max would never like or trust them, but they would stand with the Committee. It helped that Collot had been insulted by the Cordeliers. He did not forget insults. He was a vain man like most actors, handsome and shallow.
On March thirteenth, Saint-Just mounted the rostrum and began his accusation. His clear icy tones rang out in the theater that housed the Convention. He stood stiff, looming, reading the indictment in his usual crisp style, no flourishes, no rhetoric. Max and Saint-Just and Couthon: they worked well together, they trusted each other, they had their roles in every crisis. Now there was this potential insurrection to smash.
The Committee of Security was delighted to order the arrests. Amar, whom Max intensely disliked—a strange effeminate man who enjoyed the paraphernalia of repression and execution—was strongly in favor of the trial. So was Vadier, called the Old Inquisitor, who had spies everywhere, including in the offices of the Committee of Public Safety. Vadier had men accumulating a dossier on Danton, it had been leaked to Max. First Vadier was narrowing in on the Hébertists. The trial was coming. It should be in Fouquier-Ti
nville’s style—fast and dirty. It was.
Max was persuaded, against his better judgement, to go to dinner at the house of an old friend. The occasion was an attempt to reconcile Danton and himself. He brought Eléanore; Danton, his child bride. Camille and Lucile were there, Camille attempting to coerce both men into believing they were in fundamental agreement. Max listened. Too much champagne was served. His glass kept being filled. Eléanore would quietly pour it out or drink it herself. She was wary, for he was not used to drinking more than a little watered wine.
He considered that more than Danton or Camille, he had done well in the woman he had selected. Louise and Lucile got their men into trouble; Eléanore was his helpmate. She was an intense dark presence at his side watching out for him. She did not flirt with the men as Lucile and Louise did. Danton was always dropping comments about Max’s lack of sexual prowess, which Max noted, filed away. He would never be a man who threw himself upon women. Rather he usually ducked when women threw themselves at him. Yet he possessed his woman more thoroughly, they were more of a unity, than any couple at this drunken dinner. If he survived, he would marry her. But no children.
“Max, Max,” Camille intoned drunkenly, weeping, “old revolutionaries should not fight. Infighting gives comfort to our enemies. France is stronger when we stand together. When we must disagree, let us disagree honestly on one point, on two points, and still under it, keep our respect and our love for each other. We made the fucking Revolution. If sometimes we want to enjoy it a little, it doesn’t mean we’re less committed. When the crunch comes, we’re there. We must support each other even when we have minor spats, because without all of us, France is weak and the Revolution, doomed.”
Camille embraced him. He endured it. The room smelled like a brewery. Danton had unbuttoned to allow his girth to ease out of his clothes. A great stuffed turbot, Vadier had called him, saying, “I’m going to have him for dinner.” Max gazed at Camille. Protecting Camille was an old habit, something he could scarcely imagine abandoning.
Saint-Just came by in the morning, while he was breakfasting in the Duplays’ dining room. “You must be resolute. If you don’t save the country, who will?” Saint-Just scowled. “We can’t pass this plate to anyone else. We must finish it ourselves. Then the way is clear to the real Republic.”
On March twenty-fourth, Hébert—Père Duchesne himself—and twenty supporters were guillotined. They all died well except Hébert, who was dragged still protesting and calling to the crowd to save him. Hébert had been a nuisance for two years. It was over in twenty-five minutes. One faction down, another to go.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Georges
(March-April 5, 1794)
GEORGES thought the evening with Robespierre went well. As they had planned, champagne flowed like a river into all the glasses. Probably Robespierre had never drunk so much in his life. Camille and Robespierre had embraced. Robespierre seemed moved when they talked about the past. Georges had to say that Robespierre’s girlfriend or whatever she was did not add to the company. Scarcely a smile out of her. She sat there like a statue of dark wood, probably terrified to open her mouth and make a fool of herself. Georges must have met her seven times by now, but she was still as cold and formal as the first day. A real stick: skinny and mute.
The Hébertists went to the guillotine a couple of days later. Camille stopped by after supper with a bottle of Hérmitage. “I wondered if you would drink to the dear departed. I hesitate to ask you, because I remember when Fabre wanted to celebrate the departure of the Girondins, you went through the roof. You said too much blood had been shed already and we’d follow them.”
“Ah, but I liked Vergniaud and Brissot—bright men, a pleasure to spend time with. Well read, civilized. Hébert and his crew were rats from the sewers of Paris. Him with his foul mouth and his ex-nun of a wife. I never thought Robespierre would have the balls to move against them. But he pounced like a cat and he caught his rat.”
“It’s all over Paris that Vadier of Security is out to get you.”
“I heard what he really said. How unlike you to be tactful, Camille. Are you getting old? Losing your edge? I’ll have Vadier’s head before he has mine, and I’ll use his skull for a chamber pot and piss in it.” Danton scowled. One bastard after another to be fought. He felt like an old champion who always has an upstart to lick.
“Well, we got Hébert and company. Now Max is free to end the Terror. A general amnesty. Empty the prisons. Let’s go forward with a clean slate for everyone and be one country.”
“You’re bubbling with optimism tonight. Me, I was just thinking when you came in I’d like to have another kid. Two isn’t enough. Maybe a girl this time.”
“How are the sections taking it?” Camille refilled their glasses. “Père Duchesne had quite a following.”
“It’s like their own heads are cut off. A lot of sullen sans-culottes are milling around, asking each other what the world has come to. More confusion than rage. Who should they believe? They trusted Hébert. But they’ve trusted Robespierre forever and Collot and Billaud stood with the Committee. For them it’s like a sudden blow in the belly. The wind and the will to fight are knocked out of them.”
Camille refused to be daunted. “Now comes the Republic we’ve been aiming for. The new heaven and new earth, or at least a well-washed version of the old one. Now comes dancing in the streets and a million opinions expressed every day, poetry on the walls, schools for every child.”
George slapped his back. “We’ll pave the streets with diamonds and live for five hundred years, always able to get it up twice a day.”
A week later, shortly after Louise had gone to sleep and Georges had settled down to read, he had a visitor. His old friend Panis, whom he had helped to good positions in the government, burst in. “Georges, the Public Safety and the Security Committees met together. Saint-Just presented an accusation against you. Carnot and Lindet defended you, but the others won—”
“Robespierre?”
“I heard that his notes were all over Saint-Just’s memorandum. That he corrected it himself to damn you absolutely. He added facts and dates and quotes from you. He’s out to get you—”
“I’ll tear his guts out and eat them. So he thinks he can take me on, that dickless pussycat.”
“Georges, don’t bluster. They’re after your head.” Panis rose and began to pace. “They’re not going to wait. Saint-Just and Robespierre wanted to confront you in the Convention tomorrow morning. But Vadier argued that was too dangerous. He insisted you be arrested tonight.”
“Tonight? I don’t believe it. Who else?”
“Camille, Hérault, about a dozen others. Saint-Just accused Vadier of being afraid of you and insisted you be confronted in full session of the Convention. Robespierre wanted that too. But they lost. The Committees have closed ranks. Do you understand now?”
He felt weary. This was a bad play he had seen before. “Robespierre wouldn’t dare. They would not dare.”
“You can be out of Paris before they come for you. Get out and give your friends time to rally. You’ve done favors for everyone. I’m convinced the British would give you asylum. The Americans surely would.”
“A man can’t carry his country with him on the soles of his boots.”
“Well, I’m bolting. A lot of your friends are going down with you if you fall, Georges. I won’t be one of them.”
Georges went up to warn Camille, rousing them from bed. When he left them, Camille was scrawling a hasty speech, and Lucile in her negligee was having hysterics. He considered waking Louise, but decided to let her sleep on. He sat back down, reading by a small oil lamp. He was rereading The Lives of the Emperors. He had known obscurity and he had known power. He had lived pretty much as he’d wanted to. He’d lent his strong back and his good right arm to the Revolution and his powerful voice like the wind of change itself. Finally he could not believe that the Convention would go along, that Paris would permit this outra
ge. Sure, everybody knew he’d cut some corners. He had waffled here and there, and money stuck to his palms. But he had never done anything that he considered detrimental to the nation. Saving a few lives, that was just being human. What good had blood ever done anyone? If people liked their lives better, they’d have less desire to see others lose theirs. Paris reeked of blood. To say that more had died hideously under the old regime was to beg the question of how many deaths he had been involved in. He had thrown himself into the fight for a general amnesty because he could not endure one more execution.
He heard the sound of boots and the clink of weapons in the street, the Cour de Commerce renamed for Marat, although everybody called it by its old name. Now he went to wake Louise, who sat up, lovely as always and at first grumpy. “Louise, they’re coming to arrest me. Once they have taken me, dress the children and leave at once for Arcis. Ask my mother and stepfather for help. My will is made. They have a copy. Most of the property is in your name, so it can’t be confiscated if I’m convicted.”
Louise held him tight but stayed calm. She began to pack a bag for him. The guards were at the door. Already they had Camille who was wildly struggling. Lucile fell in a faint as he was torn from her and dragged out. Georges called back to Louise, “See to Lucile.” Both his sons had wakened and were crying.
Camille and he were marched off to the Luxembourg. The first person Georges saw when the guards brought him in was Tom Paine, looking older and gaunt, his hair white. “Tom! I’d planned to have you all out of here. But you see, I’m in with you instead.”
They were each put in a cell alone. By morning they discovered how to call through the ventilating shafts, how to get messages to each other via prisoners who were not confined. Camille was reported scribbling away on whatever speech he had started the night before. Hérault was his usual charming aristocratic self, providing them with a pleasant lunch. Contrary to Georges’ instructions, Louise came to bring him clean linen, food, books and paper. She promised to leave for the country, but he suspected she would wait through his trial.