A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “I should hope it does.”

  “Whom did Madame see at the Jacobins?” Brissot asked. “Which of our friends has she met?”

  “She has met the Marquis de Condorcet—I beg your pardon, I shouldn’t say Marquis—and Deputy Buzot—oh, Madame, do you recall that little fellow at the Jacobins that you took such a dislike to?”

  How rude, Brissot thought: I am a little fellow myself, which is better than you, who are running to fat.

  “That vain, sarcastic man, who looked at the company through a lorgnette?”

  “Yes. Now he is Fabre d’Églantine, a great friend of Danton.”

  “What an odd pair they must make.” She turned. “Ah, here is my husband at last.” She made the introductions. Pétion and Brissot stared at M. Roland in ill-concealed bewilderment, taking in his bald dome, his grave face with its yellow aging skin, his tall, spare, dessicated body. He could have been her father, each thought: and exchanged glances to that effect.

  “Well, my dear,” Roland said, “I hope you’ve been amusing yourself?”

  “I have prepared the abstracts you asked for. The figures are all checked, and I have drafted several possibilities for your deposition to the Assembly. It is up to you to tell me which you prefer, and then I will cast it in its final form. Everything is in order.”

  “My little secretary.” He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Gentlemen—see how lucky I am. I’d be lost without her.”

  “So, Madame,” Brissot said, “perhaps you would like to have a little salon? No, don’t blush, you are not unqualified. We who debate the great questions of the hour need to do so under some gentle feminine influence.” (Pompous arsehole, Pétion thought.) “To lighten the tone, perhaps a few gentlemen from the world of the arts?”

  “No.” Brissot was surprised by the firmness of tone. “No artists, no poets, no actors—not for their own sake. We must establish our seriousness of purpose. If they were also patriots, of course they would be welcome.”

  “You are penetrating, as always,” Pétion said. (You’d be penetrating if you could, Brissot thought.) “You should ask Deputy Buzot—you liked him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. He seemed to me to be a young man of singular integrity, a most valuable patriot. He has moral force.”

  (And such a handsome, pensive face, Pétion thought, which no doubt has something to do with his appeal; God help poor plain Mme. Buzot if this determined little piece sinks her claws into François-Léonard.)

  “And shall I bring Louvet?”

  “I’m not sure of Louvet. Has he not written an improper book?” Pétion looked down at her pityingly. “You are laughing at me because I am a provincial,” she said. “But one has standards.”

  “Of course. But Faublas was really a very harmless book.” He smiled involuntarily, as people always did when they tried to imagine wheyfaced Jean-Baptiste writing a risque bestseller. It was all autobiographical, people said.

  “And Robespierre?” Brissot persisted.

  “Yes, bring Robespierre. He interests me. So reserved. I should like to draw him out.”

  Who knows, Pétion thought, perhaps you’re the girl who will? “Robespierre’s always busy. He has no time for a social life.”

  “My salon will not form part of anyone’s social life,” she corrected sweetly. “It will be a forum for serious discussion of the issues confronting patriots and republicans.”

  I wish she would not talk so much about the republic, Brissot thought. That’s an issue to be tiptoed around. I will teach her a lesson, he thought. “If you wish republicans, I shall bring Camille.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Camille Desmoulins—did nobody point him out at the Jacobins?”

  “Dark, sulky boy with long hair,” Pétion said. “Has a stutter—but no, he didn’t speak, did he?” He looked at Brissot. “He sat next to Fabre, whispering.”

  “Thick as thieves,” Brissot said. “Great patriots, of course, but not what you’d call examples of the civic virtues. Camille’s only been married for weeks, and already—”

  “Gentlemen,” Roland interposed, “is this fit for the ears of my wife?” They had forgotten he was there—so vague and gray a presence beside his blithe vivacious spouse. He turned to her: “M. Desmoulins, my dear, is a clever and scandalous young journalist who is sometimes known as the Lanterne Attorney.”

  A faint blush again on the soft, fresh skin: how quickly the smile could vanish, leaving her mouth a hard, decisive line. “I see no need to meet him.”

  “But it is fashionable to know him, you see.”

  “What has that to do with anything?”

  “After all,” Pétion said, “one has standards.”

  Brissot chuckled. “Madame doesn’t find much to commend in Danton’s clique.”

  “She’s not alone.” Pétion spoke for Roland’s benefit. “Danton has some qualities, but there is a certain lack of scruple in evidence—he is careless with money, extravagant, and of course one wonders at its source. Fabre’s antecedents are dubious in the extreme. Camille—well, he’s clever, I grant you, and he’s popular, but he’ll never stay the course.”

  “I suggest,” Brissot continued, “that Madame open her apartment to the patriots between the close of business in the Assembly—about four o’clock on a normal day—and the meeting of the Jacobins at six.” (She can open her legs to the patriots a little later, Pétion thought.) “People will come and go, it will be pleasant.”

  “And useful,” she added.

  “I think, gentlemen,” Roland said, “that you will congratulate yourselves on this initiative. As you see, my wife is a woman of culture and sensibility.” He looked down at her, gratified, as if she were an infant daughter taking her first steps.

  Her face glowed with excitement. “To be here—at last,” she said. “For years I’ve watched, studied, fulminated, argued—with myself, of course; I’ve waited, longed, if I had any faith I would have prayed; all my concern has been that a republic should be established in France. Now here I am—in Paris—and it is going to happen.” She smiled at the three men, showing her even white teeth, of which she was very proud. “And soon.”

  Danton saw Mirabeau at City Hall. It was three o’clock, an afternoon in late March. The Comte was leaning against the wall, his mouth slightly ajar as if he were recovering from some exertion. Danton stopped. He saw that the Comte had changed since their last meeting—and he was not one to notice such things. “Mirabeau—”

  Mirabeau smiled dolefully. “You must not call me that. Riquetti is my name now. Titles of nobility have been abolished by the Assembly. The decree was supported by Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Mottié, ci-devant Marquis de Lafayette, and opposed by the Abbé Maury, who is the son of a shoemaker.”

  “Are you quite well?”

  “Yes,” Mirabeau said. “No. No, to tell the truth, Danton, I am ill. I have a pain—here—and my eyesight is failing.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Several. They speak of my choleric disposition, and advise compresses. Do you know what I think of, Danton, these days?” There was agitation in his face.

  “You should rest, at least find yourself a chair.” Danton heard himself speak, unwittingly, as if to a child or an old man.

  “I don’t need a chair, just listen to me.” He put a hand on Danton’s arm. “I think about the old King’s death. When he died, they tell me”—he passed the other hand across his face—“they couldn’t find anyone willing to shroud the corpse. The stench was so atrocious, it was so horrible to look at—none of the family dared risk contagion, and the servants just plain refused. In the end they brought in some poor laboring men, paid them I don’t know what—and they put it in the coffin. That’s how a king ends. They say one of the men died. I don’t know if that’s true. When they were taking the coffin to the crypt the people stood by the roadside spitting and shouting obscenities. ‘There goes Lady’s Pleasure! ’ they said.” He raised his outraged
face to Danton. “Dear God, and they think they are invulnerable. Because they reign by the grace of God they think they have God in their pockets. They ignore my advice, my honest, considered, well-meant advice; I want to save them, and I am the only man who can do it. They think they can ignore all common sense, common humanity.” Mirabeau looked old; his pitted face had reddened with emotion, but beneath the blush it was like clay. “And I feel so mortally tired. The time has all got used up. Danton, if I believed in slow poisons I should say that someone has poisoned me, because I feel as if I am dying by degrees.” He blinked. There was a tear in his eye. He seemed to shake himself like a big dog. “My regards to your dear wife. And to that poor little Camille. Work,” he said to himself. “Get back to work.”

  On March 27 the ci-devant Comte de Mirabeau collapsed suddenly in great pain and was taken to his house on the rue Chaussée-de-l’Antin. He died in a coma on April 2, at 8:30 in the morning.

  Lately Camille had retreated to the blue chaise-longue, fenced in by books, his long legs curled up beneath him as if to disassociate himself from Lucile’s taste in carpets. It was late afternoon. The light was failing, and the street was almost deserted. Today the shops were shut, as a mark of respect. The funeral was tonight, by torchlight.

  He had been to Mirabeau’s house. He’s in great pain, they said, he can’t see you. He had begged: just for a moment, please, please. Put your name in the book of well-wishers, they said. There, by the door.

  Then a Genevan, in passing, too late: “Mirabeau asked for you, at the last. But we had to say you were not there.”

  The Court had sent twice a day to inquire: time was, when Mirabeau could have helped them, that they did not send at all. All forget now, the distrust, the evasions, the pride: the grasping egotist’s hand on the nation’s future, rifling through circumstance as through a greasy sheaf of promissory notes. Strangers stop each other in the streets, to commiserate and express dread of the future.

  On Camille’s desk, a scribbled-over sheet, almost illegible. Danton picked it up. “‘Go then, witless people, and prostrate yourself before the tomb of this god’—what does it say then?”

  “‘This god of liars and thieves.’”

  Danton put down the paper, appalled. “You can’t write that. Every newspaper in the country is given over to panegyrics. Barnave, who was his staunch opponent, has pronounced his eulogy at the Jacobins. Tonight the Commune and the whole Assembly will walk in his funeral procession. His most obdurate enemies are praising him. Camille, if you write that, you may be torn to pieces the next time you appear in public. I mean, literally.”

  “I can write what I like,” he snapped. “Opinion is free. If the rest of the world are hypocrites and self-deluders, does it therefore follow—am I bound to alter my views because the man is dead?”

  Danton said, “Jesus Christ,” in an awestruck way, and left.

  It was now almost dark. Lucile was at the rue Condé. Ten minutes passed; Camille sat in the unlit room. Jeanette put her head in at the door. “Don’t you want to talk to anybody?”

  “No.”

  “Only Deputy Robespierre is here.”

  “Oh yes, I want to talk to Robespierre.”

  He could hear the woman’s tactful lower-class voice outside the door. I am forever coming into mothers, he thought: mothers and friends.

  Robespierre looked haggard and uneasy, a sallow tinge on his fair skin. He pulled up a hard chair uncertainly, and sat facing Camille. “Are you not sleeping?” Camille asked.

  “Not very well, these last few nights. I have a nightmare, and when I wake up it is difficult to breathe.” He put his hand tentatively against his rib cage. He dreaded the summer ahead, the suffocating blanket of walls and streets and public buildings. “I wish I had better health. My hours at the moment are trying my strength.”

  “Shall we open a bottle of something and drink to the glorious dead?”

  “No thanks. I’ve been drinking too much,” he said apologetically. “I have to try to keep off it in the afternoons.”

  “I don’t call this afternoon,” Camille said. “Max, what’s going to happen next?”

  “The Court will be looking for a new adviser. And the Assembly for a new master. He was their master, and they have a slavish nature—or so Marat would say.” Robespierre brought his chair an inch or two forward. The complicity was total; they had understood Mirabeau, and they alone. “Barnave will loom large now. Though he is hardly a Mirabeau.”

  “You hated Mirabeau, Max.”

  “No.” He looked up quickly. “I don’t hate. It blurs the judgement.”

  “I have no judgement.”

  “No. That’s why I try to guide you. You can judge events, but not men. You were too much attached to Mirabeau. It was dangerous for you.”

  “Yes. But I liked him.”

  “I know. I accept that he was generous to you, he built your confidence. I almost think—he wished to be a father to you.”

  Goodness, Camille thought: is that the impression you carried away? I think perhaps my sentiments were not entirely filial. “Fathers can be deceptive creatures,” he said.

  Max was silent for a moment. Then he said, “In the future, we must be careful of personal ties. We may have to break free of them—” He stopped, conscious that he had suddenly said what he came to say.

  Camille looked at him without speaking. After a moment: “Perhaps you did not come to discuss Mirabeau,” he said. “Perhaps I am quite wrong, but perhaps you have chosen this evening to tell me that you don’t intend to marry Adèle.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anybody. That’s the reason, really.”

  Robespierre avoided his eyes. They sat for a moment in silence. Jeanette came in, smiled at them both and lit the lamps. When she had gone, Camille flung himself to his feet. “You’ll have to do better than that.” He was very angry.

  “It’s hard to explain. Have patience for a minute.”

  “And I’m to tell her. Is that it?”

  “I hoped you would. I honestly don’t know what I would say. You must realize, I feel I hardly know Adèle.”

  “You knew what you were doing.”

  “Don’t yell at me. There was no definite arrangement of any kind, nothing was settled. And I can’t go on with it. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets. There are plenty of people for her to marry, better than me. I don’t even know how the whole thing got started. Am I in a position to marry?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “Because—because I work all the time. I work because it’s my duty, so it seems to me. I have no time to devote to a family.”

  “But you have to eat, Max, you have to sleep somewhere, you have to have a home. Even you have to take an hour off occasionally. Adèle knows what to expect.”

  “That’s not the whole point. You see, I might have to make sacrifices for the sake of the Revolution. I’d be very happy to do it, it’s what I—”

  “What kind of sacrifices?”

  “Suppose it were necessary for me to die?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It would leave her a widow for the second time.”

  “Have you been talking to Lucile? She has it all worked out. How there might be an outbreak of bubonic plague. Or one might be run over by a carriage. Or be shot by the Austrians, which I admit is quite likely. All right—one day you’re going to die. But if everybody proceeded on your assumptions, the human race would come to an end, because no one would have children.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said awkwardly. “It’s right for you to marry, even though your life may be in danger. But not for me. It’s not right for me.”

  “Priests now marry. You campaigned in the Assembly for their right to do so. You run contrary to the spirit of the times.”

  “What the priests do and what I do are two separate questions. Most of them couldn’t remain celibate, we ended an abuse.”

  “Do you find celibacy so easy?”

&nb
sp; “The easiness of it isn’t the question.”

  “What about the girl in Arras—Anaïs, wasn’t it? Would you have married her, if things had gone differently?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s not Adèle?”

  “No.”

  “You just don’t want to be married?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But not for the reasons you give me.”

  “Don’t browbeat me, you haven’t got me in court.” He got up, in great distress. “Oh, you think I’m callous, but I’m not. I want everything that people do want—but it just doesn’t work out, for me. I can’t commit myself, knowing—I mean, fearing—what the future may hold.”

  “Are you afraid of women?”

  “No.”

  “Give the question your honest consideration.”

  “I try always to be honest.”

  “As a practical matter,” Camille said scathingly, “life will be difficult for you now. You may not like the fact, but it seems that you’re attractive to women. In company they pin you against walls and heave their bosoms at you. There is a positive rustle of carnality from the public galleries when you make an intervention. The belief that you had an attachment has held them back so far, but what now? They’ll be pursuing you in public places and ripping your clothes off. Think of that.”

  Robespierre had sat down again, his face frozen by consternation and distaste.

  “Go on. Tell me your real reason.”

  “You have it already. I can’t explain anymore.” At the back of his mind, something moved, full of dread. A woman, her pinched mouth, her hair scraped back into a band; the crackle of firewood, the drone of flies. He looked up, helpless. “Either you understand or you don’t. I think there was something I wanted to say … but you shouldn’t have flown into a rage because now I can’t remember what it was. But I need your help.”

  Camille dropped into a chair. He looked at the ceiling for a while, his arms hanging loose over the chair’s arms. “It’s all right,” he said softly. “I’ll sort it out. Don’t think about it anymore. Your fear is, that if you marry Adèle, you will love her. If you have children, you will love them more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy. If your children grow up, and prove traitors to the people, will you be able to demand their deaths, as the Romans did? Perhaps you will, but perhaps you will not be able to do it. You’re afraid that if you love people you may be deflected from your duty, but it’s because of another kind of love, isn’t it, that the duty is laid upon you? It is really my fault, this business, mine and Annette’s. We liked the idea, so we set it up. You were too polite to upset our arrangements. You’ve never so much as kissed her. Of course, you wouldn’t. I know, there is your work. No one else is going to do what you are going to do, and you come to the point of renouncing, as much as you can, human needs and human weaknesses. I wish—I wish I could help you more.”