by Frank Yerby
“Come in,” he said. “Sit down, Citizen Desmoulins; I confess I hardly expected . . .”
“Ah, yes,” the young journalist smiled; “I knew you’d be astonished. Yet in a way, you should not be: the mountain comes at last to the prophet.”
“You speak riddles,” Jean Paul said.
“Yes, I know. It is simply this, painful as it is for me to confess it: time and experience have brought us round to seeing that you were right all the time; the only workable, worthwhile government is a moderate one.”
“Us?” Jean Paul was astonished.
“Danton—and I. Even Robespierre approves. But it was Danton who sent me to you: ‘Go to Marin,’ he said, ‘he’s your man.
“I?” Jean gasped.
“Yes. We are beginning a new paper to be called the Vieux Cordelier. I have brought some samples with me. I ask you only to read them.”
Jean took the papers, written in Desmoulins’ own flowing script, from his outstretched hand. There were three complete issues, ready to be set up in print. The first two were innocuous enough, though they both contained hints of greater things to come. But the third boldly attacked the Hébertists and cried out with stinging eloquence for a policy of mercy. Jean raised his eyes, stared at Desmoulins.
“The ideas are Danton’s,” the young man said; “only the style is mine.”
“Then Danton is prepared to die,” Jean said flatly; “as one of the authors of the Terror, he will be caught up in the retribution its cessation is sure to bring; if, on the other hand, this new policy fails, it will involve its advocates in its own ruin.”
“He realises this,” Desmoulins said tensely; “but then Georges Danton is an authentically great man. ‘Tis only little men, Citizen Marin, who are unwilling to undo and atone for their own errors.”
“Morbleu!” Jean swore, “I cannot believe it!”
“Nevertheless, it’s true. Danton believes his personal magnetism will ride him over the tumult; but, at bottom, he is prepared to die. He is a patriot, Citizen, which is why I respect him.”
Jean sat very still, staring at his visitor. Of all the facts of human nature difficult to accept, the hardest was the basic inconsistency of human nature. Big, roaring, infinitely complex Danton; Danton of the September massacres; but Danton who killed always in the belief it was for France, Danton who would abandon killing if mercy served his country better. Big, bluff, growling, vulgar; but healthily vulgar—never puerile and obscene like Hébert. Danton who had been sickened as much as Jean himself at the Hébertist degeneracy; Danton who could change, who was big enough to.
“You say Robespierre has seen this?” Jean said.
“And approves. The corrections on the manuscripts are in his hand.”
“What is it you want me to do, Citizen Desmoulins?”
“Work with us—openly or secretly, we care not. We need your experience, your ideas. . . .”
Jean smiled.
“Secretly,” he said, “as long as Robespierre has any connection with it at all.”
Desmoulins’ smile was half a sneer.
“Afraid?” he mocked.
“No,” Jean smiled. “But I consider it my duty to preserve my life and the lives of as many moderates as possible until the time comes when we may strike. Any man who trusts Maximilien Robespierre is a fool. He would turn upon his own mother if circumstances demanded it. I will work with you and Danton, because I understand you; but that feline little monster I neither trust nor understand. He is not to know I’m with you. . . .”
“Very well,” Camille Desmoulins said.
As he opened the door to let Desmoulins out, they both heard the clatter of feminine footsteps on the stair. Desmoulins took Jean’s hand and started down, bowing on the next landing to Lucienne Talbot as he passed.
“Jean,” Lucienne said breathlessly, “who on earth was that beautiful young man?”
“Why?” Jean demanded.
“Oh, don’t be so prickly!” She smiled at him mockingly. “Is he the reason that you spurned me? La! I never dreamed that your fancies would turn in the direction of pretty boys!”
Jean recognised her attempt to provoke him for what it was. “That,” he said evenly, “was Camille Desmoulins. He came on business.”
“Ah, politics again. So you’ve become a Dantonist! You’re a surprising person, Jeannot.”
“What I am, and what I have become, are none of your affair, Lucienne,” Jean said. “Now, what do you want to see me about?”
“Oh, nothing—just a social call. Perhaps I wanted to see if you’d changed your mind. I’m a persistent female, Jean.”
“You may take yourself and your persistence straight to the devil, as far as I’m concerned,” Jean said. “Now get out of here—I have work to do.”
To his surprise, she went.
He would have been more surprised if he could have known what was going on inside her lovely head as she descended the stains. There was in her mind the first faint stirring of an idea. It was vague now, and almost unformed; but it was there, and it would grow.
Jean—in politics again, she thought. But politics today nearly always ends in a one-way cart ride to the Place de la Revolution. He’s a fool to take the risk. Ah, yes—he’s a fool; and he holds my life in the hollow of his hand. ‘Tis not good to be at the mercy of a fool. . . . If I could win him over—but he persists in spurning me. . . . People make such a fuss about what a woman does with her body; my body is my own. Besides, with Jean it’s exceedingly pleasant. . . . That way I could bind him, and I would be safe. But he’s a fool, an honourable fool, and I am not safe. I shall never be safe as long as he rejects me, and he’s stubborn enough to reject me as long as he lives.
She stopped still, one foot poised to take the next downward step.
“As long as he lives. . . .” she whispered, “as long as he lives!”
Then she started down again, running as though all the hounds of hell pursued her. They did. But only inside her own mind.
This, Jean Paul told himself, has gone on quite long enough! I have tried pleas, entreaties, reason, and to none of them will my poor Fleurette listen. But there is another language she will understand, because she is a woman. Nicole’s mind is blank, but her body remembers. That is a thing not easily forgotten, especially when it has been so tender and so fine as it was between Fleurette and me.
He dressed with great care, and went down the stairs. Mounting to Pierre’s apartment, a matter of some minutes only, because the two houses were not separated by any great distance, he knocked on the door.
Fleurette herself answered his knocking.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’ve come to take you home,” Jean said.
“No!” she shrieked at him; “I will not go! If you, Jean Marin, think that I—”
She got no further. His big hands came down and clutched her shoulders. He drew her to him, imprisoning her wildly moving head with one hand, holding it there like that, finding her mouth, cherishing it with his own, slowly, tenderly, longingly, until he could feel the wetness of her tears against his own cheeks, taste their salt, until finally her small hands stole up and locked themselves into his coarse hair, the fingers working, and he, stooping a little, swept her up bodily into his arms.
“Jean,” she said oddly, “you’ve dropped your cane. . . .”
“I don’t need it any more, love,” Jean said; “I haven’t for weeks now. . . . Don’t concern yourself about it—we’re going home.”
But when he reached his own building, she whispered:
“Put me down, Jean—I’ll walk. You’ve carried me over the door-sill once—and there’re five flights of stairs.”
He smiled, hearing the almost maternal tenderness in her voice. But he did not put her down.
Inside the flat, he put her down, and she turned to him at once, going up on tiptoes, kissing his mouth, his face, his throat, crying:
“Oh Jean, Jean, you great fool! How long it took you
to learn what to do! You came to me with arguments, reasons, excuses; O my love, I am a woman, and a woman doesn’t want to be reasoned with, cannot be convinced intellectually, because she knows what one thinks is never important, but what one feels, what one feels!”
He kissed her slowly.
“You great bear!” she wept; “how much time you’ve wasted! I sat there day after day, waiting for you to say only, ‘I love you!’, longing to be taken in your arms, and you preferred to reason with me! Jean, Jean, don’t you know that there is only one place where a man can successfully reason with a woman?”
“And where is that?” Jean asked her.
“In bed, thou fool!” Fleurette whispered, “and that’s where I would be now!”
But seeing her there, slim, long-limbed, perfect, he waited, caressing her body with his eyes; but she came up on both elbows with mock fierceness, seizing both his ears like handles, rocking his head back and forth, laughing:
“Pretend I am your mistress, Jean! You have no wife; I am thy mistress and a terrible wanton! Pretend that . . .”
“Why?” Jean chuckled.
“Because men are fools! Say ‘my wife’ and dull legality and respect enter in. I don’t want to be respected, I want to be loved! Look, thou great grandfather of stupidity! My eyes are dead but all the rest of me lives; I am neither sick, non weak, nor delicate. You’ve always been so gentle with me that you’ve made me want to scream! So today I am Mile Candeille of the Opéra, or the worst fille of the Palais Royal, and I won’t be gentled! You hear me, I won’t be! Try it and I shall run away again!”
Jean stared at her, wicked laughter in his eyes. Then he hurled himself forward and caught her to him, entrapping her small body in a grip so fierce that all the air left her lungs in an explosive rush. He slackened his grip slightly so that she could breathe again.
“Ah!” she said, “that’s better—ah yes, much better, Jean. . . .”
“And this?” Jean said cruelly.
She did not answer him. Her black brows had flown together, her whole face twisted in a grimace of pure pain. Then, very quickly, the grimace was gone.
“Why do you stop, my husband?” Fleurette said.
Because Jean Paul would not go to his new colleagues, it was necessary for them to come to him. And this, keeping a constant vigil outside in the street, Lucienne Talbot saw. It was very easy for her to slip up the stairs behind them; she did not even need to station herself outside Jean’s door, for Danton’s whisper rocked windows; his full bellow could be heard a half-mile or more from where he stood. It was not important to her to hear what Camille or Jean Paul said; from Danton’s roars she could supply the nest of the conversation.
She did not know what use she could make of the information she gained. She attended whenever she could the sessions of the Convention; but even to her inexperienced eyes, the deadlock there was apparent: Robespierre was twisting like a snake between the Hébertists and the Dantonists, seeming now to favour one party, then the other. If only he were to turn against the party of Danton, Lucienne’s plans could crystallise; but up till now no one knew where the fastidious little lawyer stood.
On the landing below, Danton’s bull-like laughter came over to her:
“Thibaudau told me the same thing! You know what I told him, Marin? If Robespierre dares to turn against me, I’ll eat him alive, guts and all!”
Lucienne moved closer. Now she could hear the others.
“You understand,” Jean Paul was saying, “my reluctance to associate myself with a man held responsible for the September massacres. . . .”
“I was responsible,” Danton rumbled. “I thought then that they were necessary to save France. But even then I saved as many men of worth as I could. I was unable to save the Girondists; but believe me, Marin, I was ill of grief; I wept like a child. You say you don’t trust Robespierre. Neither do I, but I do trust his cowardice. He and his hounds would never dare lay hands upon me—I am the Ark. So we must force this policy of clemency upon them—let Robespierre and Saint-Just alone and there will soon be nothing left in France but a Thebaid of political Trappists.”
“You risk your life,” Jean Paul said.
“I know; but I prefer in the end to be guillotined than to guillotine. . . .”
Hearing some stirring above, Lucienne turned and fled downstairs. At the street entrance she almost collided with a small woman. She stopped, staring at the newcomer, seeing that she was pale, with enormous blue eyes and silvery blonde hair; she was, or had been, pretty, Lucienne saw, but there was something in her face that all but destroyed her beauty.
Mad, Lucienne guessed; but then the small woman spoke.
“M’sieur Jean Marin? Is he above?”
“Yes,” Lucienne said calmly; “but I wouldn’t go up now, if I were you. He’s terribly busy.”
“Oh,” the small one said; then: “Thank you very much, Madame.”
“Je vous en prie,” Lucienne said, and walked away thinking: You have your depths, don’t you, Jeannot? Is there no end to your conquests?
The Vieux Cordelier was out at last, printed by men summoned by Pierre du Pain at Jean’s request, for Desenne, Desmoulins’ old printer, was too terrified to touch it; and the party of mercy, Le Faction des Indulgents, was launched, sending a thrill of hope through the prostrate body of France.
But not for long. Lucienne Talbot, watching every move from the galleries, waiting her own hour, saw it all. On December 25, with incredible meanness, Robespierre recanted, cowed by Collot, the bloody monster of the Lyons massacres. Standing before the Convention, Robespierre deserted Danton and Desmoulins just as Jean had predicted he would, swearing his eternal allegiance to the Terror; on February 2 the Hébertists, whom Robespierre, a convinced Deist, had hated for their atheism and himself had had arrested, were released.
Now, Lucienne thought, now!
But she could not bring herself to do it. Seeing Jean Paul hunched over in another seat in the gallery like a wounded colossus, something like pity moved her. Pity and memory. A spark of the wild and sensual love that had been between them held her still.
Throughout February the deadlock held. The Hébertists screamed and mouthed their empty threats. Danton thundered like Jove. But the tortuous Robespierre kept silent.
Then Saint-Just returned to Paris. Young, handsome, immensely brave, he was Robespierre’s right arm, supplying the force the “leader” lacked.
“You hesitate?” he said to Robespierre. “It is not a matter of choice between Hébertist and Dantonist—they both must go! Both are a danger to the State.”
First the Hébertists, for they were the easier prey. On March 17 they were dragged before the Tribunal; on the twenty-fourth they went to the guillotine, weeping and begging for mercy, displaying a cowardice as disgusting as their former arrogance, and Lucienne Talbot, seeing it, wept:
“I’m lost! I must win him back now, I must!”
But Jean Paul was not to be won. He told her flatly, “Leave me alone, Lucienne. We are finished, you and I—cannot you understand that?”
She understood that now—and more. She understood that the only way left to buy her own safety was with his life.
So it was that, leaving the Tribunal that fourth day of April, 1794—the day that the rats who ruled France dared pull down a lion, condemning Georges Danton to death, and with him Desmoulins and many more, leaving Robespierre, feline, incredible Robespierre, master of the country—sick with a disgust that filled up the whole world, Jean Paul Marin saw one more thing:
Lucienne Talbot clutching the sleeve of Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, and whispering in his ear.
Jean looked at the pair of them, thinking: I wonder what she’s saying? But he didn’t really care. He perhaps would not have cared if he could have heard her words:
“Send your men to my place, Rue de Sèvres 16—and I will deliver unto you yet another conspirator!”
This, to her, involved a lingering kindness; she co
uld not send the police to arrest Jean Paul in the presence of his poor, blind wife; she would play Delilah to the hilt and deliver him in person.
Jean went once more to the executions, that next day, and saw Georges-Jacques Danton die, drawing himself up like the lion he was, rumbling to himself: “Come, Danton—no weakness!” Then turning to Samson: “Show my head to the people! It is worth showing!”
But when Jean reached home again, worn out and sick, he found Fleurette in tears.
“There was a woman here,” she wept, “a horrible, horrible woman! She called me Chérie! Jean, Jean—how long must I be tormented with your past?”
“Be calm, my dove,” Jean said tiredly. “Who was she? What did she say?”
“She said I was to tell you to come to her this afternoon! A matter of highest importance—even of life and death! Then it was that she called me Chérie! ‘Don’t worry, Chérie,’ she said; ‘I’m not trying to steal your husband. This is strictly— business. . . . ’”
Jean got heavily to his feet.
“You’re not going?” Fleurette said in horror.
“Yes,” Jean said grimly; “but I’m taking my pistols, and my cane. Which of them I shall use depends upon the circumstances.”
“But, Jean, that horrible woman. . . .”
“You’re right,” Jean said grimly, “she is a horror; and in the service of my worst enemies. But I shall deal with her. . . .”
“But, Jean,” Fleurette wailed; “I have something to tell you!”
“It can wait,” Jean Paul said, and went down the stairs.
In her room, Lucienne heard the knocking as he threw open the door. Then she fell back, her eyes dilated, her mouth frozen into a crimson ‘O’, taking one step back, then another, all the colour draining from her face. And Gervais la Moyte stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
“You thought to escape me?” he murmured; “you thought that, Lucienne? You thought I would not enter France again at the risk of my life—nor would I have to take you back, you painted piece of garbage! But to kill you—yes. To hear you scream, to watch you go down on your knees, you lying, treacherous bitch, and beg—for this I am willing to die—and gladly!”