by Anne Perry
Certain parts of the club were open to the public if they wished to listen, and in her browns and blues Célie appeared an ordinary enough young, working woman to cause no suspicion as she made her way quietly into the chamber. With a look of great respect in her manner and lowered eyes, she said a discreet ‘Excuse me, Citizen’ and ‘Thank you, Citizen’ as she passed.
She chose a mild-faced young man wearing a woollen jacket and a leather apron to speak to first.
‘Pardon me, Citizen,’ she said politely.
He turned to look at her. A flash of approval lit his face for her fair skin and generous mouth.
‘Yes, Citizeness?’
‘Do you know Deputy Renoir, from Compiègne?’
‘Not to speak to, but I’d recognise him,’ the young man replied. ‘Are you looking for him?’
‘I have a message for him.’ Célie always told the truth if possible. Too many lies become difficult to remember.
‘He’s probably in the chamber,’ he said with half a smile. ‘Camille Desmoulins is speaking. He’s usually worth listening to.’ There was an ambiguous expression in his eyes, as if his opinion jarred with his words, but he had more sense than to say so. Most people thought twice about frankness these days.
She thanked him with an answering smile, and followed him in the direction he led.
There was already a buzz of excitement in the chamber when she squeezed her way in behind him. She found a place to stand, elbow to elbow in the crowd. The room was wood-panelled, which darkened it, and the grey January light from the windows made the candles look yellow. Only the press of bodies warmed it.
A young man with a passionate countenance and the careless dress of an artist was speaking from the rostrum. His words flowed easily, full of grand ideals and hope for a marvellous tomorrow. He praised the virtues of others and seemed convinced of their general goodness. This was Camille Desmoulins, the writer and ardent friend and admirer of Danton.
Célie looked at the faces around her. Everything that Camille was saying she had heard before and could have predicted. Perhaps many of the other people here could as well, but these were the things they wished to hear, and they gave him unqualified approval. She could see him basking in it, his dark eyes glowing, his cheeks flushed.
She dared not ask for Renoir once a speaker had taken the floor. Any interruption would be resented, and she could not afford to incur dislike.
Camille was followed by another equally ardent young man, but he had not spoken for long before Célie realised he had about him a greater pomposity and even less humour. Discreetly she searched the faces around her one after another. Everyone seemed to be listening with total attention. Their expressions were deadly earnest. Perhaps what Bernave said was true: the revolution had taken away everyone’s appreciation of wit.
Was it really necessary to be humourless in order to be good? Could one not possibly bring about social change for the better, and still keep the ability to see the absurd, and to laugh at it?
To judge from those around her, apparently not.
‘Who is he?’ she whispered to the man who had directed her here and who now stood barely a foot away.
‘Fabre d’Eglantine,’ he answered without turning. ‘He is a great poet. He won the Eglantine Laurel a while ago.’
She had never heard of it, but it would obviously not be prudent to say so now. Presumably he had taken his name from the event.
‘How wonderful,’ she replied, knowing he would not understand she meant it was wonderful that anyone so mediocre should win anything.
A middle-aged woman in front told them to hush, and Célie obeyed reluctantly. Almost any conversation would have been more interesting than the tangled nonsense being spoken from the rostrum. If Danton was really this man’s friend, then that fact said more for his loyalty than his political sense, or his literary judgement.
There was no time to waste. If Renoir was not here, where else could she look for him? It would be justifiable to ask further. After all, he was Bernave’s business partner. He had a right to know of Bernave’s death. No one could complain of that.
Fabre came to the end of his speech to enthusiastic applause and his place was taken by a young man with a smooth brow, classic nose and chiselled lips. He would have been beautiful had he shown the slightest warmth or animation. As it was he stared out across the room with the impassivity of a statue, perfectly carved, so flawless as to lack humanity.
‘The vessel of the revolution can arrive in port only on a sea reddened with torrents of blood!’ he cried with ringing fervour, his voice vibrating but his face still curiously impassive. ‘We must not only punish traitors, but all people who are not enthusiastic. There are only two kinds of citizen, the good and the bad. The republic owes the good its protections. To the bad it owes only death!’
Célie looked at the people next to her to see how this extraordinary statement was received. She saw one man wince and his eyes widen. Perhaps he felt the same chill in the stomach and involuntary tightening of muscles that she did. How could all these people stand passively and hear such hysterical words without protest? Did they not have the sense to be frightened? It was as if something in them had died, some laughter and humanity, a sense of proportion to know what was sane, or excessive and absurd.
Except the words were not hysterical in any usual sense. The man who had spoken them remained marble cold as the words poured out of his mouth. There was no ranting, no waving of arms, not even any rise in the pitch of his voice.
‘We will build a new France,’ he went on. ‘Virtues will be paramount. We will sanctify ourselves by our battles, we will be washed clean of vice by our blood. Weakness shall be done away with and we shall rise from the dead in pure, clean power. We shall show the rest of mankind the way forward.’
‘Virtue!’ an old man beside Célie spat the word under his breath, his face creased, the skin rough as if with constant exposure to wind and rain.
She shuffled a trifle to stand closer beside him.
‘Why do you say that, Citizen?’ she whispered.
‘Don’t you know who that is?’ he asked her bitterly.
‘No. Who is it?’
‘Louis Saint-Just,’ he replied with a tiny shiver. ‘He knows anything I would recognise as virtue about as well as I know the King of Spain. He robbed his mother of all her jewels, and ran away to become a worshipper of the Marquis de Sade. He wrote a long, pornographic poem which disgusted even me, and I’m no prude.’
‘Perhaps he’s changed?’ she suggested, not because she believed it, but to see his response.
‘He once wrote to Robespierre telling him “I know you as I know God,” whatever that means,’ the man retaliated with deep sarcasm. She had the conviction that if he had been outside he would have spat on the stones.
‘Not at all, by the sound of it,’ she said, and then wished she had held her tongue, as he looked at her with sudden widening of his eyes, and a flash of warmth, almost hope. That was exactly what Bernave had told her not to do. She realised with a spasm of pain how much she missed his irony, and his courage. She must hurry and find Renoir.
Saint-Just was propounding his plans for the citizens of the future.
‘All boys over five years of age will be taken and cared for by the state,’ he said with humourless determination, gazing out at his silent listeners. ‘They’ll be raised in battalions as soldiers ... or farmers.’
Obviously he had never had a child, never loved it, held it in his arms and felt that protecting it was the most important thing in his life, or he could not have imagined such a world except in nightmare. Célie wondered about girls, but he did not mention them. Perhaps in his world they were not worth it.
‘We shall all wear simple clothes made of coarse cloth, every man alike, ruler and worker and soldier,’ he continued, lost in his dream. ‘We shall sleep on straw mats. He who does not conform must be driven from the gates of the city!’
Célie thought the
idea appalling. If that was freedom, then slavery might well be better. At least it allowed for a little individuality, a little colour. She would like to have said that aloud, to see if anyone else felt the same way—claustrophobia closing in on them, the slow sick fear of something terrible and inescapable—but she dared not. No one around her moved or spoke. Disagreement, even questioning, would be seen as counter-revolutionary, and that was a crime.
Bernave had spoken of the danger of this kind of oppression: uniformity, colourlessness, loss of all warmth and passion and laughter. What was the point of life without them? She remembered his face as he had spoken, the power of emotion in him, as if in that moment he had relived some splendour of the soul which had illuminated and made precious all his life since.
She looked at the cold face of Saint-Just and was overwhelmed by the burning need to save the King’s life. He might be stupid, fat, autocratic and totally ineffectual, but he was human. He loved his wife and his children. His weaknesses were those anyone might possess, however profoundly they deplored them. There was a fear in the unknown which was too vast to find the strength to face. Everything precious and familiar was being engulfed in a spiritual void.
Was she as alone here as she felt? Or did any of these people packed around her, with their overcoats steaming, boots sodden, feel as horrified as she did by Saint-Just’s vision? Could it possibly be what they wanted? Or thought they wanted?
She remembered Madame de Staël, her wit and conversation, the endless vivid discussions that would go on all night, full of energy and great bursts of laughter. Perhaps they were unaware of the cold and the hungry thousands shivering only a few hundred yards away on the streets beyond their beautiful houses. But were Saint-Just and his like any more aware?
Célie looked back at the rostrum. Saint-Just was talking about blood again. He seemed obsessed with it. It was disgusting.
But part of her revulsion was because she understood the craving for revenge too hideously well. She would not be here now if she had not betrayed Georges to the National Guard for what she had imagined he had done to cause Jean-Pierre’s death. She could remember the emotions she had felt very clearly, the white-hot hatred, the tireless energy even when her body ached and her mind was exhausted. Nothing had been too hard, if it had served the cause of Georges’ destruction.
Now she was even more ashamed of it. It was not what she wanted to be: a destroyer, consumed with rage and hatred, who damaged everything she touched and spread misery all around her, like someone who carried the plague. Such people incurred hatred in return, or fear, or pity ... never love. They created nothing, gave nothing.
Saint-Just seemed the embodiment of it all as he finally stepped down to tumultuous applause. He did not smile even now.
His place was taken by the huge figure of Danton, who was as unlike him as any man could be. There was nothing cold about him, from his expansive gestures, his volatile temper, his laughter, his appetite, to the plainness of his choice of words. He was as homely as a farmyard, and just as immediate in his impact.
Célie wanted to get out, go and search the other rooms for Renoir, but she could not move without treading on someone’s foot. She would cause a stir if she forced her way. People would notice her and perhaps remember her afterwards. She could not afford that.
She might as well stay here and listen. She studied Danton and wondered what he was like as a person, a friend, even a husband. Bernave had said that he adored his wife, who was a gentle, pretty woman, an innkeeper’s daughter, and a devout Catholic. She remembered the softness in his voice as he had said that, as if she reminded him of someone else. Danton had two sons. Remembering that made him seem more reachable, someone who could speak of realities, not the arid dreams of St-Just or the flowery rhetoric of Fabre d’Eglantine.
The people around her seemed to have relaxed also, as if this was a man they could understand. The room had grown more comfortable. People felt free to glance at each other and exchange a moment of understanding, even a smile. They were no longer afraid of their own thoughts.
Célie could not help wondering what Danton really felt about the King. Had he tried to save him? Would he still, if he could do it without risking his own head? He was not talking about torrents of blood, but rather about real, sensible things: food and boots, and guns for the army in Belgium.
Someone mentioned Marat’s name, and there was a murmur of anger, but it was impossible to tell at whom it was directed. There was a restless energy again, and even the bold sanity of Danton’s voice could not override it. Several people stood rigidly, shifting from one foot to the other as if impatient to move. It was growing hot and airless with the press of bodies. Célie was hemmed in. It was hard to breathe.
Danton was pouring scorn over the ineptitudes of the Girondin government, which had left the armies hungry, half clothed and weaponless. His anger was mounting; his great face twisted with outrage. His voice bellowed. He raised a fist like a ham, clenched as if to shake someone like a rat. If he had punched with it, he could have felled an ox.
All around Célie there were murmurs of uneasy anger. Did the crowd even begin to understand that he was talking about war against France, real violent war with soldiers dead and Belgians or Prussians or Austrians marching unhindered on to French soil, into French towns? Did they see the looting and the burning, the refugees, the dead? Danton had seen it. He had been in Belgium in the midst of war until only a day or two ago.
Didn’t anybody realise that if they executed the King, they would have the English navy down on them as well, and possibly Spanish soldiers on the southern borders?
Without realising it, Célie was clenching her fists too.
Danton finished and she turned and tried to move towards the door, pushing her way without speaking. But before she reached it, the neat, meticulous figure of Robespierre was on the rostrum in Danton’s place, and again she was trapped.
Instantly the shuffling and fidgeting ceased. Robespierre began softly. Around her people strained to hear him. His voice was hoarse, a little whispery, as if he were speaking not to a crowd, but to a few friends in his own salon. Yet his language was pompous and completely impersonal. Célie could not imagine using such a manner towards anyone she knew.
She watched as he leaned forward a little over the rostrum, pushing his green-tinted spectacles up into his head and peering around the room.
‘My friend Danton speaks of food and clothing for our armies in Belgium, and rightly is he concerned for them, as we all are,’ he began. ‘And I defy any man here to prove his interest is in the slightest way shallow, unworthy or dictated by selfish concerns, or the desire for personal gain, the love of indulgence of the fleshly appetites or of beautiful possessions. All who say so are liars, and worse, are blackguards desirous of bringing into disrepute one of the staunchest allies of the revolution, one of the architects of the great new republic we shall build upon the ashes ...’ He hesitated, blinking.
Everyone let out their breath, presuming he had finished.
Then suddenly he went on, a continuation of the same prolonged sentence.
‘... of all the sin of the past, washed clean in the baptism of blood.’
He drew in his breath, his little, nail-bitten hands fluttering. ‘Those who say Danton is carousing with loose women, camp-followers and the like, do not know him as I do.’ He poked the air. ‘I challenge them to put forward their names, and repeat such villainous charges here, from this stand, where we can all judge the worth of them.’ Again he stopped. He stared around the room. No one moved or looked away from his mesmeric gaze. ‘You see!’ he said triumphantly. ‘No one dares repeat such a slander in front of me ... in front of us!’
Silence. Not even a rustle disturbed the room. Beside Célie an old man breathed in raspingly.
‘But we must not lose sight of the real goal, which is a pure, new society,’ Robespierre suddenly went on again. ‘Built upon the virtue of the people, those hard-working men and wom
en who have placed their trust in us ...’ He poured out endless, convoluted sentences, so abstruse and full of hesitations that it was impossible to follow his meaning, but again and again he used words like ‘virtue,’ ‘blood,’ ‘purity’ and ‘hope’.
Célie had an increasingly uncomfortable feeling that for all his protestations of loyalty and admiration, he had planted more suspicion of Danton’s motives than any he had allayed. Was that clumsiness, or intent?
At last he finished. Célie was free to leave. Before anyone else could reach the rostrum and begin she turned to the man who had brought her in.
‘Have you seen Citizen Renoir?’ she asked him.
‘No.’ He shook his head slightly. ‘No, he does not seem to be in here.’
‘Then I must go and look in the rest of the rooms. If you would be good enough to tell me where else I should try, I would be most grateful.’ She must find him. He might have known Bernave long enough, and well enough, to be certain where his loyalties lay. They had trusted each other with money and judgement of business, perhaps Bernave had also trusted him with the plan. She could not help the surge of hope that Renoir would know who was to take the King’s place. It might even be himself.
The man she’d asked was leading the way out and she followed him, elbowing her way through the throng and out into the corridor where it was cooler, and far less suffocating. Which way now? She looked at her guide.
‘I need to see Citizen Barbaroux,’ he excused himself. ‘But you should try that way.’ He indicated, and she thanked him and turned.
Ahead of her a little group of men were huddled close together, talking in voices so low she had to concentrate to hear.
‘I’ve just come from the north,’ one of them said urgently, his thin face pinched with worry, fair hair straggling over his brow and collar. He moved agitatedly from one foot to the other. ‘The news from Austria is bad. I saw soldiers in a terrible state, ragged, boots worn to bits. They said it’s chaos up in the battle lines. Mud everywhere.’ His voice was sharp. ‘Nobody knows what they’re doing. They’re desperate for news from Paris and can’t understand why we don’t help them.’