“She’ll not wait. I know what girls are like. My advice to you is to forget her.”
“I am always glad of your advice.”
She threw her head up and glared, suspecting sarcasm. But his face expressed only concern for her. He turned back to his letter:
Dearest Camille,
I flatter myself you won’t be very surprised to learn I’m on my way to Versailles. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward …
Maximilien Robespierre, 1789, in the case of Dupond:
The reward of the virtuous man is his confidence that he has willed the good of his fellow man: after that comes the recognition of the nations, which surrounds his memory, and the honors given him by contemporaries … . I should like to buy these rewards, at the price of a laborious life, even at the price of a premature death.
Paris: on April 1, d‘Anton went out to vote at the church of the Franciscans, whom the Parisians called the Cordeliers. Legendre the master butcher walked down with him—a big, raw, self-educated man who was in the habit of agreeing with anything d’Anton said.
“Now a man like you …” Fréron had said, with careful flattery.
“A man like me can’t afford to stand for election,” d’Anton said. “They’re giving the deputies, what, an eighteen-franc allowance per session? And I’d have to live in Versailles. I’ve a family to support, I can’t let my practice lie fallow.”
“But you’re disappointed,” Fréron suggested.
“Maybe.”
The voters didn’t go home; they stood in groups outside the Cordeliers’ church, gossiping and making predictions. Fabre didn’t have a vote because he didn’t pay enough taxes; the fact was making him spiteful. “Why couldn’t we have the same franchise as the provinces?” he demanded. “I’ll tell you what it is, they regard Paris as a dangerous city, they’re afraid of what would happen if we all had votes.” He engaged in seditious conversation with the truculent Marquis de Saint-Huruge. Louise Robert closed the shop and came out on François’s arm, wearing rouge and a frock left over from better days.
“Think what would happen if women had votes,” she said. She looked up at d‘Anton. “Maître d’Anton believes women have a lot to contribute to political life, don’t you?”
“I do not,” he said mildly.
“The whole district’s out,” Legendre said. He was pleased. He had spent his youth at sea; now he liked to feel he belonged to a place.
Mid-afternoon, a surprise visitor: Hérault de Séchelles.
“Thought I’d drop down to see how you Cordeliers wild men were voting,” he said; but d’Anton had the impression he’d come to look for him. Hérault took a pinch of snuff from a little box with a picture of Voltaire on the lid. He turned the box in his fingers, appreciatively; proffered it to Legendre.
“This is our butcher,” d’Anton said, enjoying the effect.
“Charmed,” Hérault said, not a flicker of surprise on his amiable features; but afterwards d‘Anton caught him surreptitiously checking his cuffs to see if they were free of ox-blood and offal. He turned to d’Anton: “Have you been to the Palais-Royal today?”
“No, I hear there’s some trouble … .”
“That’s right, keep yourself in the clear,” Louise Robert muttered.
“So you’ve not seen Camille?”
“He’s in Guise.”
“No, he’s back. I saw him yesterday in the company of the ineffably verminous Jean-Paul Marat—oh, you don’t know the doctor? Not such a loss—the man has a criminal record in half the countries in Europe.”
“Don’t hold that against a man,” d’Anton said.
“But he has, you know, a long history of imposing on people. He was physician to the Comte d’Artois’s household troops, and it’s said he was the lover of a marquise.”
“Naturally, you don’t believe that.”
“Look, I can’t help my birth,” Hérault said, with a flash of irritation. “I try to atone for it—perhaps you think I should imitate Mlle. de Kéralio and open a shop? Or your butcher might take me on to scrub the floors?” He broke off. “Oh, really, one shouldn’t be talking like this, losing one’s temper. It must be the air in this district. Be careful, Marat will be wanting to move in.”
“But why is this gentleman verminous? You mean it as a figure of speech?”
“I mean it literally. This man abandoned his life, walked out, chooses to live as some sort of tramp.” Hérault shuddered; the story had a horrible grip on his imagination.
“What does he do?”
“He appears to have dedicated himself to the overthrowing of everything.”
“Ah, the overthrowing of everything. Lucrative business, that. Business to put your son into.”
“What I am telling you is perfectly true—but look now, I’m getting diverted. I came to ask you to do something about Camille, as a matter of urgency—”
“Oh, Camille,” Legendre said. He added a phrase he had seldom used since his merchant navy days.
“Well, quite,” Hérault said. “But one doesn’t want to see him taken up by the police. The Palais-Royal is full of people standing on chairs making inflammatory speeches. I don’t know if he is there now, but he was there yesterday, and the day before—”
“Camille is making a speech?”
This seemed unlikely: and yet, possible. A picture came into d‘Anton’s mind. It was some weeks ago, late at night. Fabre had been drinking. They had all been drinking. Fabre said, we are going to be public men. He said, d’Anton, you know what I told you about your voice when we first met, when you were a boy? I told you, you’ve got to be able to speak for hours, you’ve got to fetch up your voice from here, from here—well, you’re good, but you’re not that good yet. Courtrooms are one thing, but we’re growing out of courtrooms.
Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d‘Anton’s temples. “Put your fingers here,” he said. “Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.” He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. “I’ll teach you like an actor,” he said. “This city is our stage.”
Camille said: “Book of Ezekiel. ‘This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh’ ...”
Fabre turned. “This stutter,” he said. “You don’t have to do it.”
Camille put his hands over his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said.
“Even you.” Fabre’s face was incandescent. “Even you, I am going to teach.”
He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re going to talk properly,” Fabre said. “Even if it kills one of us.”
Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.
Now, in bright sunlight, on an April morning, he wondered if this scene could really have occurred. Nevertheless, he began to walk.
The gardens of the Palais-Royal were full to overflowing. It seemed to be hotter here than anywhere else, as if it were high summer. The shops in the arcades were all open, doing brisk business, and people were arguing, laughing, parading; the stockbrokers from the bourse had wrenched their cravats off and were drinking lemonade, and the patrons of the cafés had spilled into the gardens and were fanning themselves with their hats. Young girls had come out to take the air and show off their summer dresses and compare themselves with the prostitutes, who saw chances of midday trade and were out in force. Stray dogs ran about grinning; broadsheet sellers bawled. There was an air of holiday: dangerous holiday, holiday with an edge.
Camille stood on a chair, the light breeze fanning out his hair. He was holding a piece of paper, and was reading from what appeared to be a police file. When he had finished he held the piece of paper at arm’s length between finger and thumb and released it to let it flutter to the ground. The crowd hooted with laughter. Two men exchanged glances and melted away from the back of the crowd. “Informers,” Fréron said. Then Camille spoke o
f the Queen with cordial contempt, and the crowd hissed and groaned; he spoke of delivering the King from evil advisers, and praised M. Necker, and the crowd clapped its hands. He spoke of Good Duke Philippe and his concern for the people, and the crowd threw its hat into the air and cheered.
“They’ll arrest him,” Hérault said.
“What, in the face of this crowd?” Fabre said.
“They’ll pick him up afterwards.”
D’Anton looked very grave. The crowd was increasing. Camille’s voice reached out to them without a trace of hesitation. By accident or design he had developed a marked Parisian accent. People were drifting over from across the gardens. From the upper window of a jeweler’s shop, the Duke’s man Laclos gazed down dispassionately, sipping from time to time from a glass of water and jotting down notes for his files. Hot, getting hotter: Laclos alone was cool. Camille flicked his fingers across his forehead, brushing the sweat away. He launched into grain speculators. Laclos wrote, “The best this week.”
“I’m glad you came to tell us, Hérault,” d’Anton said. “But I don’t see any chance of stopping him now.”
“It’s all my doing,” Fabre said. His face shone with pleasure. “I told you, you have to take a firm line with Camille. You have to hit him.”
That evening, as Camille was leaving Fréron’s apartment, two gentlemen intercepted him and asked him politely to accompany them to the Duc de Biron’s house. A carriage was waiting. On the way, no one spoke.
Camille was glad of this. His throat hurt. His stutter had come back. Sometimes in court he had managed to lose it, when he was caught up in the excitement of a case. When he was angry it would go, when he was beside himself, possessed; but it would be back. And now it was back, and he must revert to his old tactics: he couldn’t get through a sentence without the need for his mind to dart ahead, four or five sentences ahead, to see words coming that he wouldn’t be able to pronounce. Then he must think of synonyms—the most bizarre ones, at times—or he must simply alter what he’s going to say … . He remembered Fabre, banging his head rather painfully against the arm of a chair.
The Duc de Biron made only the briefest appearance; he accorded Camille a nod, and then he was whisked through a gallery, away, into the interior of the house. The air was close; sconces diffused the light. On walls of muffling tapestry, dim figures of goddesses, horses, men: woolen arms, woolen hooves, draperies exuding the scent of camphor and damp. The topic was the thrill of the chase; he saw hounds and spaniels with dripping jaws, dough-faced huntsmen in costumes antique: a cornered stag foundered in a stream. He stopped suddenly, gripped by panic, by an impulse to cut and run. One of his escorts took him—quite gently—by the arm and steered him on.
Laclos waited for him in a little room with walls of green silk. “Sit down,” he said. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me what was going through your mind when you got up there today.” Self-contained, constrained, he could not imagine how anyone could parade his raw nerves to such effect.
The Duke’s friend de Sillery drifted in, and gave Camille some champagne. There was no gaming tonight, and he was bored: may as well talk to this extraordinary little agitator. “I suppose you have financial worries,” Laclos said. “We could relieve you of those.”
When he had finished his questions he made an imperceptible signal, and the two silent gentlemen reappeared, and the process was reversed: the chill of marble underfoot, the murmur of voices behind closed doors, the sudden swell of laughter and music from unseen rooms. The tapestries had, he saw, borders of lilies, roses, blue pears. Outside the air was no cooler. A footman held up a flambeau. The carriage was back at the door.
Camille let his head drop back against the cushions. One of his escorts drew a velvet curtain, to shield their faces from the streets. Laclos declined supper and returned to his paperwork. The Duke is well served by crowd pleasers, he said, by unbalanced brats like that.
On the evening of April 22, a Wednesday, Gabrielle’s year-old son refused his food, pushed the spoon away, lay whimpering and listless in his crib. She took him into her own bed, and he slept; but at dawn, she felt his forehead against her cheek, burning and dry.
Catherine ran for Dr. Souberbielle. “Coughing?” said the doctor. “Still not eaten? Well, don’t fuss. I don’t call this a healthy time of year.” He patted her hand. “Try to get some rest yourself, my dear.”
By evening there was no improvement. Gabrielle slept for an hour or two, then came to relieve Catherine. She wedged herself into an upright chair, listening to the baby’s breathing. She could not stop herself touching him every few minutes—just a fingertip on cheek, a little pat to the sore chest.
By four o’clock he seemed better. His temperature had dropped, his fists unclenched, his eyelids drooped into a doze. She leaned back, relieved, her limbs turned to jelly with fatigue.
The next thing she heard was the clock striking five. Wrenched out of a dream, she jerked in her chair, almost fell. She stood up, sick and cold, steadying herself with a hand on the crib. She leaned over it. The baby lay belly-down, quite still. She knew without touching him that he was dead.
At the crossroads of the rue Montreuil and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine there was a great house known to the people who lived there as Titonville. On the first floor were the (allegedly sumptuous) apartments occupied by one M. Réveillon. Below ground were vast cellars, where notable vintages appreciated in the dusk. On the ground floor was the source of M. Réveillon’s wealth—a wallpaper factory employing 350 people.
M. Réveillon had acquired Titonville after its original owner went bankrupt; he had built up a flourishing export trade. He was a rich man, and one of the largest employers in Paris, and it was natural that he should stand for the Estates-General. On April 24 he went with high hopes to the election meeting of the Sainte-Marguerite division, where his neighbors listened to him with deference. Good man, Réveillon. Knows his stuff.
M. Réveillon remarked that the price of bread was too high. There was a murmur of agreement and a little sycophantic applause: as if the observation were original. If the price of bread were to come down, M. Réveillon said, employers could cut wages; this would lead to a reduction in the price of manufactured articles. Otherwise, M. Réveillon said, where would it all end? Prices up, wages up, prices up, wages up …
M. Hanriot, who owned the saltpeter works, warmly seconded these observations. People lounged near the door, and handed out scraps of news to the unenfranchised, who stood outside in the gutter.
Only one part of M. Réveillon’s program caught the public attention—his proposal to cut wages. Saint-Antoine came out on the street.
De Crosne, the Lieutenant of Police, had already warned that there could be trouble in the district. It was teeming with migrant workers, unemployment was high, it was cramped, talkative, inflammable. News spread slowly across the city; but Saint-Marcel heard, and a group of demonstrators began a march towards the river. A drummer at their head set the pace, and they shouted for death:
Death to the rich
Death to the aristocrats
Death to the hoarders
Death to the priests.
They were carrying a gibbet knocked together in five minutes by a carpenter’s apprentice anxious to oblige: dangling from it were two eyeless straw dolls with their straw limbs pushed into old clothes and their names, Hanriot and Réveillon, chalked on their chests. Shopkeepers put up their shutters when they heard them coming. The dolls were executed with full ceremony in the Place de Grève.
All this is not so unusual. So far, the demonstrators have not even killed a cat. The mock executions are a ritual, they diffuse anger. The colonel of the French Guards sent fifty men to stand about near Titonville, in case anger was not quite diffused. But he neglected Hanriot’s house, and it was a simple matter for a group of the marchers to wheel up the rue Cotte, batter the doors down and start a fire. M. Hanriot got out unharmed. There were no casualties. M. Réveillon was elected a deputy.
But by Monday, the situation looked more serious. There were fresh crowds on the rue Saint-Antoine, and another incursion from Saint-Marcel. As the demonstrators marched along the embankments, stevedores fell in with them, and the workers on the woodpiles, and the down-and-outs who slept under the bridges; the workers at the royal glass factory downed tools and came streaming out into the streets. Another two hundred French Guards were dispatched; they fell back in front of Titonville, commandeered carts and barricaded themselves in. It was at this point that their officers felt the stirrings of panic. There could be five thousand people beyond the barricades, or there could be ten thousand; there was no way of telling. There had been some sharp action these last few months; but this was different.
As it happened, that day there was a race-meeting at Vincennes. As the fashionable carriages crossed the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, nervous ladies and gentlemen dressed a l’Anglais were haled out onto the sewage and cobblestones. They were required to shout, “Down with the profiteers,” then roughly assisted back into their seats. Many of the gentlemen parted with sums of money to ensure good will, and some of the ladies had to kiss lousy apprentices and stinking draymen, as a sign of solidarity. When the carriage of the Duke of Orléans appeared, there was cheering. The Duke got out, said a few soothing words, and emptied his purse among the crowd. The carriages behind were forced to halt. “The Duke is reviewing his troops,” said one high, carrying aristocratic voice.
The guardsmen loaded their guns and waited. The crowd milled about, sometimes approaching the carts to talk to the soldiers, but showing no inclination to attack the barricades. Out at Vincennes the Anglophiles urged their favorites past the post. The afternoon went by.
Some attempt was made to divert the returning race-goers, but when the carriage of the Duchess of Orléans appeared the situation became difficult. Up there was where she wanted to go, the Duchess’s coachman said: past those barricades. The problem was explained. The reticent Duchess did not alter her orders. Etiquette confronted expediency. Etiquette prevailed. Soldiers and bystanders began to take down the barricades. The mood altered, swung about; the idleness of the afternoon dissipated, slogans were shouted, weapons reappeared. The crowd surged through, after the Duchess’s carriage. After a few minutes there was nothing left of Titonville worth burning, smashing or carrying away.
A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel Page 19