by Marge Piercy
When she went to climb out, the guard grabbed her arm hard. “This isn’t your stop. All the other citizenesses, out. Citizeness Lacombe, get back in and shut up.” They tied her hands together. Then the carriage trundled off, just her inside. The blinds on the windows were down so she could not see, and her hands were now bound at the wrists. But she could tell when they crossed the Seine back to the left bank. She could smell the water.
When she was yanked out, she was in Sainte Pélagie, near the Botanical Gardens, a few clustered buildings that had housed arrested prostitutes. Now it held political prisoners, male and female. It had, she knew, imprisoned Mme Roland and Mme du Barry, before their respective executions.
Claire was not the only actress. A whole group of actresses from the Comédie-Française were living in semi-luxury. Their admirers had brought in good furniture, rugs, mirrors, so many clothes that she rarely saw them in the same outfit. They looked down on her as a lesser being, but she did not greatly care. They were like hummingbirds, fragile, jeweled, light as paper.
It was noisier than Port Libre but had the same air of feverish gaiety and underneath it, fear. Whenever the guards marched in, everybody froze. Except for the actresses. As they became less unfriendly, one of them confided in Claire that they were safe. For the price of their favors, a bureaucrat had lost their files. They would never come to trial. When things cooled down, as the ingenue put it, they would be freed. She asked Claire if she would like to meet that bureaucrat, as she was sure he would prove accommodating to her also.
“I don’t think so,” Claire said. “I’ve always had this silly policy of never fucking anybody I didn’t want. Not for parts, not for protection, not for money. It’s just my way.”
The young woman looked at her blankly. “Really?”
She found comrades there, several women who had been in the RRW, a man who had been associated with the Enragés. He drew her aside to whisper, “Your friends Pauline and Leclerc are in the Luxembourg. They haven’t been charged either. Somebody’s protecting you.”
“I can’t imagine who. So many of our people are dead.”
“Some of our people and some of Hébert’s are still in the Tribunal. They do what they can for us. They can’t free us, but they can move us around so we kind of get lost. I’ve been in four different prisons. They try to keep us from entering the fatal process of being charged, tried and—” He clicked his tongue, making a slicing motion. “All these government agencies, they generate bales of paper. I was in the War Ministry. It snows paper over there. So what if a few sheets get lost?”
So some survived on sex, some survived on old political ties, and some bribed their way with gold or jewels. Thermidor arrived hot. Marie Momoro appeared one day, puzzled by her transfer. Everybody shuttled about and they became cellmates. “I’m thinking of going into the supply business here if we stay long enough,” Claire told her. “We have good contacts to the outside. Not everyone in here does, but everybody has something to exchange. I’m thinking of becoming a sort of informal caterer and supply office.”
“I can get groceries through friends in the trade. We could work out a deal with them.”
The prison was filling up. They had to take another woman into their small cell. Some rooms were now dormitories, with beds side by side down both walls. Newspapers and journals were brought into Sainte Pélagie daily. There was a discussion of the meaning of the law of twenty-second Prairial. It enlarged the Revolutionary Tribunal and simplified the process of trial in a manner that terrified everyone. There were only two verdicts, acquittal or death. The jury need not call any witnesses. Defense counsel was abolished.
After Marie had a visiter, she told Claire, “A lot of the men in the Convention don’t like it, but they voted it out of fear.”
“If I were them, it’s that law I’d be scared of. It eliminates their immunity—not that Danton and Desmoulins found that of any use.”
More and more prisoners arrived. Now four were crammed in the cell. Prisoners were carried off to trial, to execution, sometimes more than once a day. Claire was boiling with nerves. They watched, from the courtyard or the windows, as the daily list of the damned marched out. Prisoners gave away possessions to friends, handed over messages, whispered last wishes. The worst was when a family was broken up and a mother or son dragged off.
It was a hot day in July, humid so that clothes sagged and everything felt damp and filthy, even the leaves on the trees in the courtyard. Marie pulled her aside. “Listen,” she whispered, “the guards are talking. Something big is happening. I heard gunfire. The army has been winning lately, they’ve crushed all the revolts, so it must be an attempted coup.”
Claire hugged herself. “It can’t be our side. Our leaders are dead.”
“I heard them mention Robespierre, but I couldn’t hear more. I just hope it doesn’t mean prison massacres.”
That threat always hung over them. She could tell as they walked through the corridors that everybody had heard rumors. It was unnaturally quiet in Sainte Pélagie. Some hoped, some feared. The air felt thick with images of death. She could smell the reek of bodies. The sweat of anxiety seemed to coalesce into an almost visible yellow fog. Outside the high walls and the locked gates, the guards with their muskets and dogs, something played out that would seep down to them. Was it a day of uprising? A coup? Even worse repression? She did not know, she could only guess; but there was no chance she would not find out.
EIGHTY-ONE
Max
(March-July 27, 1794)
MAX was exhausted. He had been working from eight to midnight every day. He had fought enemies outside and inside France, enemies to the right, to the left, enemies through cowardice, through greed, through false conviction, enemies through ambition or opportunism or vice. He was weary of forcing himself to repugnant acts. He could see with clarity the choice that must be made, but each act of blood left him closer to a dangerous apathy approaching quiescence; yet not to fight actively was to abandon the Revolution.
It was worse when Elisabeth had her baby. He was at ease with children and dogs. He knew that Saint-Just was correct in the utopia he had written (in who could imagine what spare time) where male children were taken from their mothers at age six and raised by the State. But in his heart, the ideal would always be the good hardworking artisan family. He would rather be raised in such a family than in Saint-Just’s utopia, where children were never touched. Saint-Just had rather too much of a doting mother; but Max had not had enough. Now he was well mothered. Why, then, did the sight of Elisabeth nursing little Philippe sadden him? It could not be remembering Lucile, as Elisabeth was nothing at all like Lucile, nothing at all.
He was sick to his stomach, sick to his brain of the infighting. He had been married to eleven other men since July, and he hated them. He had reached the point where he wanted to throttle Barère for that smirk and his little jokes. Sitting in the room with Collot or Billaud made him feel he was sharing space with two murderers, one vain, one stinking. He respected Carnot but would never like him. Military men were trained not to virtue but to blind obedience. Carnot and Saint-Just were fighting about strategy. Carnot was the military man, but Saint-Just proved to have rapport with soldiers in the field and a head for planning battles.
Something had gone wrong in the Revolution. Something was rotten. He was sick and exhausted, yes, but he was also morally sore. He had been right to squash the deChristianizers. The peasants needed a Church. If someone was thoroughly persuaded there was no afterlife, would he behave with true altruism? Max believed in a force of virtue he called God, active in history, active in him, palpable as pain, a force that shaped his morality. Christianity had much to recommend it: in its origins, a concern with the wretched of the earth. But the Church was the enemy of the Revolution. Pius VI had proved intransigent. He was not interested in reaching a compromise with the new government of France but only in anathematizing them. It was becoming clear that people required a religion, a
deity. That would bring soul and freshness back into the Revolution. It should be something grand and simple. He began working on a speech for the Convention, about worship of the Supreme Being. That was a formulation that should displease no one, except the atheists. With festivals at natural points in the year, an emphasis on nature, on behaving well, on virtue.
He knew he was defying some members of the Committee, but so be it. He was right, and they would give in or go down. He was going to take on the Committee of Security. They were furious at him because he oversaw the police closely. Security complained that people they arrested were let go by the Great Committee and that the Great Committee arrested people Security had released. Why should they have a second committee? Through Security’s network of spies, they had a hand in everywhere. Vadier and Amar were old enemies, of Hébert’s stripe. Cutting off the head did not always get rid of the active body. Lizards regenerated tails, but factions regenerated heads.
When he set out his plan for the Cult of the Supreme Being, the Convention met it with mixed reaction. They were blinded by their limited politics. People needed a sense of exaltation, of being joined in a vast harmony that spread out to the whole nation—that is, the nation of those who were worthy. This religion would bind the nation into one. The worst of Catholicism was the priesthood, the notion that a free man required some mediator between him and the eternal. And original sin. That was a travesty. “Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”
Some were moved, some eyed him with obvious cynicism, some were confused. But they passed his legislation. No one could call the Revolution atheistic now. He turned to David and instructed him to prepare a pageant for the first festival. David said it would take about a month to organize. Max wanted a day never to be forgotten.
The armies were winning; paper money had risen in value. Slowly the work of the Committee was paying off, yet the squabbling, the infighting, the jostling for position continued. Obviously the forces against the Revolution were bribing, undermining. The Terror must be stepped up. He could see no other way to move ahead except by eliminating those who obstructed. Soon, soon the way would be clear and the opposition silenced. They would reach harmony. This festival would lead the way.
On the great day, he dressed carefully in yellow and blue, because they were symbolic colors. Rousseau had shown the way of enlightened sentiment to Goethe, who had written about the soul of Werther. When Werther was going to his death, he dressed in the colors of sacrifice, which Max put on for this great day. They meant, to anyone who could read the costume, that far from the dictatorial ambitions his enemies ascribed to him, he was offering himself to the Revolution and to the people, to use, to use up, to martyr, if it came to that.
He walked alone before members of the Convention, carrying flowers, and the people cheered him. He felt the love of the people, and for once he was not embarrassed. He did not turn away but looked at them benignly. In praising him, they praised themselves, for he was their will personified. That was why they had always followed him, why the people cared for him and trusted him above all other politicians.
David had built a great mountain in the Place de la Revolution. The guillotine had been rolled away. No executions on the day of the festival. It was a vast procession. Half a million people, almost everyone in Paris attended, the people joined in ceremony as he had envisioned it. Bands played, choruses sang, women danced, flowers were heaped up and tossed down, doves were released. Children marched and danced and sang. Old men from Les Invalides, crippled and wounded soldiers, rode on wagons laden with banners and roses. Veterans of the Bastille, of all the great days of insurrection, marched with their pikes, their flags. He felt a sense of exaltation as he approached the great mountain David had erected, representing the Mountain itself, virtue, resolution. Strength. A mystical aspiring. He could never in his life be so happy again.
The next day he had Couthon move the laws that would speed up conviction of the guilty plotting against the Revolution. The prisons were getting too full. Trials must go faster, so that the vast cancer would be cut from the body of the country and health and peace would come. This prolongation of a painful process was an error. Terror should be swift, inexorable, exalting to the just. Get it over, get it done and leave it behind. The law of twenty-two Prairial stripped the process to the bone. The Convention passed it, but he could feel their reservations. If they were afraid, that showed they were guilty too, did it not?
There were two attempts on his life, clumsy but real. In one case, the man ended up attacking Collot thinking he was Robespierre; in the other, a young girl—a counter-revolutionary fanatic like Charlotte Corday—was caught trying to force her way into the Duplays’ house armed with two knives. He could feel the forces of his enemies gathering. The Committee of Security had arrested a crazy woman Catherine Théot, who had been prophesying that Max was the messiah. They had got as much publicity for the poor woman’s idiocy as they could, to discredit him. Members of the Convention were whispering that he wanted to be dictator, that he wanted to be a kind of Pope.
He began to skip Committee meetings. He mistrusted them all. Something else was needed. In the meantime, he simply could not make himself go to the Convention. His will had worn slack. He needed to find his way again. It was comfortable at home with the Duplays. Whatever had been causing him queasiness at the sight of Elisabeth with little Philippe had eased. Philippe was a jolly baby, fast growing, always hungry. He was a living answer to the ridiculous notion of original sin. He was original joy. Max always surprised people when they saw him holding a baby. There was no malice in babies. They were simple and good as dogs. Philippe senior was in a dark mood, even while holding his child. He spoke of plots, something underhanded going on in the Committee of Security, who kept sending him away on mission.
One Sunday late in Messidor—early July—Max went to the country with Philippe and Elisabeth, the Duplays. They picnicked near the Seine. Afterward he withdrew with Eléanore. It was cooler under the trees. He spread his jacket. They made love in nature for the first time. He was tempted to spend in her. He was tempted again to marry her. It would please the Duplays. If he managed to get through the next crisis, perhaps the government would be stable. He could withdraw. He spoke his fantasies aloud as they lay together, reluctant to leave this soothing grove.
“We’ll live in the country. We’ll have a small house,” Eléanore promised him. “If you still don’t want babies, we could adopt.”
“We could adopt the orphan of a hero of the army or a murdered sansculotte.” He could see them in a small clean house with roses growing around it, children studying under the arbor. Doves in a coop. Blount chasing rabbits. They would grow lettuce. Perhaps they could grow oranges under glass. Their fragrance was his favorite smell.
Monday afternoon, Saint-Just stormed in, back from the front. “Why aren’t you going to the Committee and the Convention? Are you trying to commit public suicide? Don’t you care what happens to the Revolution?”
“Of course I care. I’ve been to the Jacobins every night. I’ve been trying to see exactly what we must do.” He was not about to admit to Saint-Just he was worn out, wanting to drift and be cared for. He had been hoping to recover the sense of swift inexorable justice that had sustained him through so many duels and battles. “We’ve lost our momentum.”
“The Revolution is frozen. Everywhere petty bureaucrats squabble for minute advantages of position. There’s a massive loss of faith. Everyone is full of mistrust and petty anger.” Another man would have paced in agitation, Saint-Just stood still at the window, blocking the light, “We have agents on mission making fortunes—like Tallien did. We have agents on mission who terrify helpless populations like that butcher Collot did in Lyon. But when we recall them, they have friends who defend them, factions who conspire.”
“Those are symptoms. The disease is vast and growing.”
“How do you propose to stop it sitting in your room writing in your notebooks?
While you scribble and contemplate, France goes to hell. And our enemies plot.”
Max rose. “Fortunately, our enemies have no ability to get along with each other. We have enemies to the right, the remaining Dantonists. We have enemies to the left, the surviving Hébertists. We have enemies whose hands we plucked out of the public till. But can you really imagine Collot combining with Tallien to fight us?”
“I can imagine anything.” Saint-Just stood like a column of marble against the window. In the light from outside his hair ignited like a visible halo. “You’ve allowed your loathing to overcome your good sense. You like being outside the government better than being inside. Until recently, you were riding the wave. Now you’ve let yourself be sucked under.”
Max glared at Saint-Just, towering over him so that he was sorry he had got to his feet. He took his seat as if casually. That restored the power balance. He did not like to be pushed, and he was irritated because he suspected Saint-Just was right: he had been staying away out of a great distaste.