A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “You don’t believe they would dare.” Mockery. She approached him, tilted up her yellow wide-lipped face. “Do you know me?” she asked. “Tell me, Citizen, when were we ever wrong?”

  Rue Honoré: “You’re wasting my time,” Robespierre said. “I told you my intentions before the Convention met. The papers for Hérault and Fabre are with the Public Prosecutor. You may draw up warrants for the arrest of Deputy Philippeaux and Deputy Lacroix. But for no one else.”

  Saint-Just’s voice shook the little sitting room. His fist hammered a table. “Leave Danton at large and you will be locked up yourself tomorrow. Your head will be off before the week is out.”

  “There is no need for this. Calm yourself. I know Danton. He has always been a cautious man, a man who weighs a situation. He will make no move unless he is forced into it. He must be aware you are collecting evidence against him. He is no doubt preparing to refute it.”

  “Yes—to refute it by force of arms, that will be his idea. Look—call in Philippe Lebas. Call in the Police Committee. Call in every patriot in the Jacobin Club, and they will tell you what I am telling you now.” Scarlet flared against his perfect white skin: his dark eyes shone. He is enjoying himself, Robespierre thought in disgust. “Danton is a traitor to the Republic, he is a killer, he has never in his life known how to compromise. If we don’t act today he will leave none of us alive to oppose him.”

  “You contradict yourself. First you say, he has never been a republican, he has accommodated every counter-revolutionary from Lafayette to Brissot. Then you say, he has never compromised.”

  “You are quibbling. What do you think, that Danton is fit to be at large in the Republic?”

  Robespierre looked down, considering. He understood the nature of it, this republic that Saint-Just spoke of. It was not the Republic that was bounded by the Pyrenees and the Rhine, but the republic of the spirit; not the city of flesh and stone, but the stronghold of virtue, the dominion of the just. “I cannot be sure,” he said. “I cannot make up my mind.” His own face looked back at him, appraisingly, from the wall. He turned. “Philippe?”

  Philippe Lebas stood in the doorway between the little parlor and the Duplays’ larger sitting room. “There is something which may help make up your mind,” he said.

  “Something from Vadier,” Robespierre said skeptically. “From the Police Committee.”

  “No, something from Babette.”

  “Babette? Is she here? I don’t follow you.”

  “Would you come in here, please? It won’t take very long.” Robespierre hesitated. “For God’s sake,” Lebas said passionately, “you wanted to know if Danton was fit to live. Saint-Just, will you come and listen?”

  “Very well,” Robespierre said. “But another time, I should prefer not to conduct these arguments in my own house.”

  All the Duplays were present in the salon. He looked around them. The room was live with tension; his skin crawled. “What is this?” he asked gently. “I don’t understand.”

  No one spoke. Babette sat alone at the big table, as if she were facing some sort of commission. He bent to kiss her forehead. “If I’d known you were here, I’d have cut this stupid argument short. Well?”

  Still no one spoke. Seeing nothing else to do, he pulled up a chair and sat down beside her at the table. She gave him her soft little hand. Babette was five or six months pregnant, round and flushed and pretty. She was only a few months older than Danton’s little child bride, and he could not look at her without an uprush of fear.

  Maurice was sitting on a stool by the fire, his head lowered: as if he had heard something that had humbled him. But now he cleared his throat, and looked up. “You’ve been a son to us,” he said.

  “Oh, come now,” Robespierre said. He smiled, squeezed Babette’s hand. “This is beginning to seem like the third act of some dreadful play.”

  “It is an ordeal for the girl,” Duplay said.

  “It’s all right,” Elisabeth said. She dropped her head, blushed; her china-blue eyes were half-hidden by their lids. Saint-Just leaned against the wall, his own eyes half-closed.

  Philippe Lebas took up his station behind Babette’s chair. He wrapped his fingers tightly round the back of it. Robespierre glanced up at him. “Citizen, what is this?”

  “You were debating the character of Citizen Danton,” Babette said softly. “I know nothing of politics, it is not a woman’s province.”

  “If you want to have your say, you can do. In my opinion, women have as much discernment as men.” He gave Saint-Just a venomous glance, begging contradiction. Saint-Just smiled lazily.

  “I thought you might like to know what happened to me.”

  “When?”

  “Let her tell you in her own way,” Duplay said.

  Babette slid her hand out of his. She joined her fingers on the polished tabletop, and her face was dimly reflected in it as she began to speak. “You remember when I went to Sèvres, last autumn? Mother thought I needed some fresh air, so I went to stay with Citizeness Panis.”

  Citizeness Panis: respectable wife of a Paris deputy, Étienne Panis: a good Montagnard, with a record of sterling service on August 10, the day the monarchs were overthrown.

  “I remember,” Robespierre said. “Not the date—it would be October, November?”

  “Yes—well, Citizen Danton was there at that time, with Louise. I thought it would be nice to call on her. She’s nearly the same age as me, and I thought she might be lonely, and want someone to talk to. I’d been thinking, you know, about what she has to put up with.”

  “What is that?”

  “Well, some people say that her husband married her for love, and other people say he married her because she was happy to look after his children and run his household while he was occupied with Citizeness Desmoulins. Though most people say, of course, that the Citizeness likes General Dillon best.”

  “Babette, keep to the point,” Lebas said.

  “So I went to call on her, and she wasn’t at home. And Citizen Danton was. He can be—well, very pleasant, quite charming. I felt a bit sorry for him—he was the one who seemed to need someone to talk to, and I thought, perhaps Louise is not very intelligent. He said, stay and keep me company.”

  “She didn’t realize that they were alone in the house,” Lebas said.

  “No, of course—I had no way of knowing. We talked: about this and that. Of course, I had no idea what it was leading up to.”

  “And what was it leading up to?” Robespierre sounded faintly impatient.

  She looked up at him. “Don’t be angry with me.”

  “No, of course—I’m not angry. Did I sound angry? I’m sorry. Now, the thing is—Danton made some remark, in the course of your conversation, which you feel you must report. You are a good girl, and you are doing what you see as your duty. No one will blame you for that. Tell me what he said—and then I can see what weight to give it.”

  “No, no,” Mme. Duplay said faintly. “He is so good. He has no idea of half the things that happen in the world.”

  He glared at the interruption. “Now, Babette.” He took her hand again, or did rather less than that: he placed the tips of his fingers against the back of her hand.

  “Come on,” her husband said: more roughly than he would have liked. “Say what happened, Babette.”

  “Oh, he put his arm around me. I didn’t want to make a fuss—one must grow up, I suppose, and after all—he put his hand inside my dress, but I thought, of course, he’s been seen in the most respectable company to—well, I mean the things he has done with Citizeness Desmoulins, I have heard people say that he has quite fallen upon her, in public, and of course that it is of no consequence, because he won’t actually go to the extreme. All the same, I did try very hard to pull away from him. But he is a very strong man you know, and the words he used—I couldn’t repeat them—”

  “I think you must,” Robespierre said. His voice was frozen.

  “Oh, he said that
he wanted to show me how much better it could be with a man who had experience with women than with some high-minded Robespierrist virgin—then he tried—” She put her hands, fingers interlaced, before her face. Her voice came almost inaudibly from behind them. “Of course, I struggled. He said, your sister Eléonore is not so moral. He said, she knows just what we republicans want. I think, then, that I fainted.”

  “Is there any need to go on?” Lebas said. He moved: transferred his hands to the back of Robespierre’s chair, so that he stood looking down at the nape of his neck.

  “Don’t stand over me like that,” Robespierre said sharply. But Lebas didn’t move. Robespierre looked around the room, wanting a corner, an angle, a place to turn his face and compose it. But from everywhere in the room, the eyes of the Duplay family stared back. “So, when you came to yourself?” he said. “Where were you then?”

  “I was in the room.” Her mouth quivered. “My clothes were disordered, my skirt—”

  “Yes,” Robespierre said. “We don’t need details.”

  “There was no one else in the room. I composed myself and I stood up and looked around. I saw no one so I—I ran out of the front door.”

  “Are you—let’s be quite clear—are you telling me Danton raped you?”

  “I struggled for as long as I could.” She began to cry.

  “And what happened then?”

  “Then?”

  “Presumably you got home. What did Panis’s wife say?”

  She raised her face. A perfect tear rolled down her cheek. “She said I must never tell anyone anything about it. Because it would make the most dreadful trouble.”

  “So you didn’t.”

  “Until now. I thought I must—” She dissolved into tears again. Unexpectedly, Saint-Just straightened up from the wall, leaned over her, patted her shoulder.

  “Babette,” Robespierre said. “Now, dry your tears, listen to me. When this happened, where were Danton’s servants? He is not a man to do without them, there must have been somebody in the house?”

  “I don’t know. I cried out, I screamed—nobody came.”

  Mme. Duplay spoke. She had been, of course, extraordinarily forbearing, to keep silent for so long, and now she was hesitant. “You see, Maximilien—the fact of what happened is bad enough, but there is a further problem—”

  “I’m sure he can count on his fingers,” Saint-Just said.

  It was a moment before he understood. “So then, Babette-at that date, you didn’t know—”

  “No.” She dropped her face again. “How can I know? Perhaps I had already conceived—I can’t be sure. Of course, I hope I had. I hope I’m not carrying his child.”

  She had said it out loud: they had all arrived at the idea, but now it was spoken out loud it made them gasp with shock.

  Only he, Robespierre, exercised self-control. To resist temptation is important now: temptation to look in like a beggar at the lighted window of emotion. “Listen, Babette,” he said. “This is very important. Did anyone suggest to you that you should tell this story to me today?”

  “No. How could anyone? Until today, nobody knew.”

  “You see, Elisabeth, if this were a courtroom—well, I would ask you a lot of questions.”

  “It is not a courtroom,” Duplay said. “It is your family. I saved your life, three years ago in the street, and since then we have cared for you as if you were a child of our own. And your sister, and your brother Augustin—you were orphans, and you had nobody except each other, and we have done our best to be everything to you.”

  “Yes.” Defeated, he sat at the head of the table, facing Elisabeth. Mme. Duplay moved, brushing lightly against him, to take her daughter in her arms. Elisabeth began to sob, with a sound that pierced him like steel.

  Saint-Just cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to take you away now, but the Police Committee will be meeting our Committee in an hour. I have drawn up a preliminary report regarding Danton—but it needs supplementation.”

  “Duplay,” Robespierre said, “you understand that this matter cannot come to court. There is no need, really—in the context of other charges, I’m afraid it’s trivial. You will not sit as a juror at Danton’s trial. I shall tell Fouquier to exempt you. It would not be just.” He shook his head. “No, it would not be equitable.”

  “Before we leave,” Saint-Just asked, “would you go upstairs and get those notebooks of yours?”

  The Tuileries, 8 p.m.: “I am going to be very plain with you, Citizen,” the Inquisitor said. Robespierre transferred his attention from Vadier’s long sallow face to his hands, to his peculiar fingers obsessively re-sorting papers on the green-draped oval table. “I shall be plain with you, on behalf of your own colleagues, and my colleagues on the Police Committee.”

  “Then please do proceed.” His mouth was tight. His chest hurt. There was blood in his mouth. He knew what they wanted.

  “You will agree with me,” Vadier said, “that Danton is a powerful and resourceful man.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a traitor.”

  “Why are you asking me? The Tribunal will determine what he is.”

  “But the trial, in itself, is a dangerous business.”

  “Yes.”

  “So every precaution must be taken.”

  “Yes.”

  “And every circumstance that might unfavorably influence the course of the trial must be attended to.”

  Vadier took his silence for consent. Slowly, like primitive animals, the Inquisitor’s fingers curled up. They formed a fist. It hit the table. “Then how do you expect us to leave this aristocrat journalist at large? If Danton’s course since ‘89 has been treasonable, how do you exonerate his closest associate? Before the Revolution, his friends were the traitor Brissot and the traitor d’Églantine. No, don’t interrupt me. He has no acquaintance with Mirabeau—yet suddenly, he moves in with him at Versailles. For months—the months when Mirabeau was plotting his treason—he was never out of his company. He is impecunious, unknown—then suddenly he appears nightly at Orléans’s supper table. He was Danton’s secretary during his treasonable tenure at the Ministry of Justice. He is a rich man, or he lives like one—and his private life does not bear discussion.”

  “Yes.” Robespierre said. “And he led the people, on July 12. He raised revolt, and then the Bastille fell.”

  “How can you exonerate this man?” Vadier bawled at him. “One person to whom the misguided people may have some—some sentimental attachment?” He made a sound expressive of disgust. “You think you can leave him at liberty, while his friend Danton is on trial? Because once, five years ago, he was bribed to talk to a mob?”

  “No, that is not why,” Saint-Just said smoothly. “The reason is that he himself has a sentimental attachment. He appears to put his personal feelings before the welfare of the Republic.”

  “Camille has made a fool of you for too long,” Billaud said.

  Robespierre looked up. “You slander me, Saint-Just. I put nothing before the welfare of the Republic. I do not have it in me to do so.”

  “Let me just say this.” Vadier’s yellow fingers uncurled themselves again. “No one, not even your admirable and patriotic self, may stand out against the people’s will. We are all against you. You are on your own. You must bow to the majority, or else here and now, tonight and in this room, your career is finished.”

  “Citizen Vadier,” Saint-Just said, “sign the order for arrest, then pass it around the table.”

  Vadier reached out for a pen. But Billaud’s hand leapt out, like a snake from a hole; he snatched the document and signed his name with a flourish.

  “He wanted to be first,” his friend Collot explained.

  “Was Danton so tyrannical an employer?” Robert Lindet asked. Vadier took back the paper, signed it himself, and pushed it along the table. “Rühl?”

  Rühl, of the Police Committee, shook his head.

  “He is senile,” Collot suggested. “He shoul
d be turned out of govemment.”

  “Perhaps he’s just deaf.” Billaud’s forefinger stabbed at the paper. “Sign, old man.”

  “Because I am old, as you say, you can’t browbeat me by threatening to end my career. I do not believe that Danton is a traitor. Therefore I will not sign.”

  “Your career may end sooner than you think, then.”

  “No matter,” Rühl said.

  “Then pass the paper on to me,” Lebas said savagely. “Stop wasting the Republic’s time.”

  Carnot took it. He looked at it thoughtfully. “I sign for the sake of the unity of the committees. No other reason.” He did so, and laid the paper in front of Lebas. “A few weeks, gentlemen, three months at the outside, and you’ll be wishing you had Danton to rally the city for you. If you proceed against him, you pass into a new phase of history, for which I think you are ill-prepared. I tell you, gentlemen—you will be consulting necromancers.”

  “Quickly,” Collot said. He snatched the paper from a member of the Police Committee, and scribbled his name. “There you are, Saint-Just—quickly, quickly.”

  Robert Lindet took the warrant. Without glancing at it, he passed it on to his neighbor. Saint-Just’s eyes narrowed. “No,” Lindet said shortly.

  “Why not?”

  “I am not obliged to give my reasons to you.”

  “Then we are bound to put the worst construction on them,” Vadier said.

  “I am sorry you feel so bound. You have put me in charge of supply. I am here to feed patriots, not to murder them.”

  “There is no need for unanimity,” Saint-Just said. “It would have been desirable, but let’s get on. There are only two signatures wanting, I think, besides those who have refused. Citizen Lacoste, you next—then be so good as to put the paper in front of Citizen Robespierre, and move the ink a little nearer.”

  The Committees of Public Safety and General Security hereby decree that Danton, Lacroix (of the Eure-et-Loire département), Camille Desmoulins and Philippeaux, all members of the National Convention, shall be arrested and taken to the Luxembourg, there to be kept in secret and solitary confinement. And they do command the Mayor of Paris to execute this present decree immediately on receipt thereof.