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Authors: Hilary Mantel

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A. No.
Q. Had he counsel?
A. No.
We nominate, therefore, Chauveau-Lagarde.
 
 
L
ucile and Annette go to the Luxembourg Gardens. They stand with their faces raised to the façade, eyes hopelessly searching. The child in his mother’s arms cries; he wants to go home. Somewhere at one of the windows Camille stands. In the half-lit room behind him is the table where he has sat for most of the day, drafting a defense to charges of which he has not yet been notified. The raw April breeze rips through Lucile’s hair, snaking it away from her head like the hair of a woman drowned. Her head turns; eyes still searching. He can see her; she can’t see him.
 
 
C
amille Desmoulins to Lucile Desmoulins:
Yesterday, when the citizen who brought you my letter came back, “Well, have you seen her?” I said, just as I used to say to the Abbé Laudréville; and I caught myself looking at him as if something of you lingered about his person or his clothes … .
T
he cell door closed. “He said he knew I’d come.” Robespierre leaned back against the wall. He closed his eyes. His hair, unpowdered, glinted red in the torchlight. “I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have come. But I wanted … I couldn’t prevent myself.”
“No deal then,” Fouquier said. His face expressed impatience, some derision; it was impossible to say at whom it was directed.
“No deal. He says Danton gives us three months.” In the dimness, his blue-green eyes sought Fouquier’s, inquiringly.
“It is just something they say.”
“I think that, for a minute, he thought I’d come to offer him the chance to escape before the trial.”
“Really?” Fouquier said. “You’re not that sort of person. He should know that.”
“Yes, he should, shouldn’t he?” He straightened up from the wall, then put his hand out, let his fingers brush the plaster. “Good-bye,” he whispered. They walked away in silence. Suddenly Robespierre stopped dead. “Listen.” From behind a closed door they heard the murmur of voices, and over the top of them a huge, unforced laugh. “Danton,” Robespierre whispered. His face was awestruck.
“Come,” Fouquier said: but Robespierre stood and listened.
“How can he? How can he laugh?”
“Are you going to stand there all night?” Fouquier demanded. With the Incorruptible he had always been warily correct, but where was the Incorruptible now? Sneaking around the prisons with deals and offers and promises. Fouquier saw an undergrown young man, numb and shaking with misery, his sandy lashes wet. “Move Danton’s mob to the Conciergerie,” Fouquier said, over his shoulder. “Look,” he said, turning back, “you’ll get over him.”
He took the Candle of Arras by the arm, and hustled him out into the night.
 
 
P
alais de Justice, 13 Germinal, 8 a.m.: “Let’s get right down to business, gentlemen,” Fouquier said to his two deputy prosecutors. “We have in
the dock today a disparate company of forgers, swindlers and con men, plus half a dozen eminent politicians. If you look out of the window, you will see the crowds; in fact, there is no need, you can hear them. These are the people who, if mishandled, could send this business lurching the wrong way and threaten the security of the capital.”
“It is a pity there is not some way to exclude them,” Citizen Fleuriot said.
“The Republic has no provision for trials in camera,” Fouquier said. “You know quite well the importance of doing these things in the public eye. However, there is to be nothing in the press. Now—as for our case, it is non-existent. The report we were handed by Saint-Just is—well, it is a political document.”
“You mean lies,” Liendon suggested.
“Yes, substantially. I have no doubt, personally, that Danton is guilty of enough to get him executed several times over, but that doesn’t mean he is guilty of the things we will charge him with. We have had no time to prepare a coherent case against these men. There are no witnesses we can put up without the fear that they will blurt out something extremely inconvenient for the Committee.”
“I find your attitude defeatist,” Fleuriot remarked.
“My dear Fleuriot, we all know that you are here to spy for Citizen Robespierre. But our job is to pull nasty forensic tricks—not to mouth slogans and pat phrases. Now—please consider the opposition.”
“I take it,” Liendon said, “that by ‘the opposition’ you don’t mean those unfortunates selected as defense counsel.”
“I doubt they will dare to speak to their clients. Danton is of course well known to the people; he is the most forceful orator in Paris, and also a much better lawyer than either of you two. Fabre we need not worry about. His case has received a lot of publicity, all of it unfavorable to him, and as he is very ill he’ll not be able to give us any trouble. Hérault is a different matter. If he condescends to argue, he could be very dangerous, as we have almost no case against him.”
“I think you have a certain document, relating to the woman Capet?”
“Yes, but as I have had to arrange for alterations to it I am not very anxious for it to be brought forward. Now, we must not underestimate Deputy Philippeaux. He is less well known than the others but I am afraid he is utterly intransigent and appears not to be afraid of anything we can do to him. Deputy Lacroix is of course a cool-headed man, something of a gambler. Our informant reports that so far he treats the whole thing rather as a joke.”
“Who is our informant?”
“In the prison? A man called Laflotte.”
“I am afraid of your cousin Camille,” Fleuriot said.
“Again, our informant has made useful observations. He describes him as hysterical and distraught. It seems he claims that Citizen Robespierre visited him secretly at the Luxembourg, and offered him his life to testify for the prosecution. An absurd story, of course.”
“He must be out of his mind,” Liendon said.
“Yes,” Fouquier said. “Perhaps he is. Our aim from the first hour of the trial must be to unnerve, browbeat and terrorize him; this is not particularly difficult, but it is essential that he be prevented from putting up any sort of defense, as the people who remember ’89 are somewhat attached to him. But now, Fleuriot—what are our assets, would you say?”
“Time, Citizen.”
“Precisely. Time is on our side. Procedure since Brissot’s trial is that if after three days the jury declares itself satisfied, the trial can be closed. What does that suggest, Liendon?”
“Take care in selecting the jury.”
“You know, you two are really getting quite good. Shall we get on with it then?” Fouquier took out his list of the regular jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal. “Trinchard the joiner, Desboisseaux the cobbler—they sound a staunch plebeian pair.”
“Reliable men,” Fleuriot said.
“And Maurice Duplay—who could be sounder?”
“No. Citizen Robespierre himself has vetoed his presence on the jury.”
Fourquier bit his lip. “I shall never understand that man. Well then—Ganney the wig maker, he’s always cooperative. I suppose he needs the job—there can’t be much call for wigs. And Lumière.” He ticked off another name. “He may need some encouragement. But we’ll provide it.”
Liendon peered over the Public Prosecutor’s shoulder.
“How about Tenth-of-August Leroy?”
“Excellent,” Fouquier said. He put a mark by the name of the man who had once been Leroy de Montflobert, Marquis of France. “And now?”
“We’ll have to put in Souberbielle.”
“He’s a friend of Danton and Robespierre both.”
“But I think he has the right principles,” Fleuriot said. “Or can be helped to develop them.”
“To balance him out,” Fouquier said, “we’ll have Renaudin the violin maker.”
Fleuriot laughed. “Excellent. I was at the Jacobins myself that night
he knocked Camille down. But what was the cause of the quarrel? I never knew.”
“Only God knows,” Fouquier said. “Renaudin is no doubt demonstrably insane. Can you remember, if you address my cousin in court, not to call him by his Christian name?” He frowned over the list. “I don’t know who else is absolutely solid.”
“Him?” said Liendon, pointing.
“Oh no, no. He is fond of reasoning, and we don’t want people who reason. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to go ahead with a jury of seven. Oh well, they’re hardly in a position to argue. You see, I’ve been talking as if there were some sort of contest. But we aren’t, here, playing any game we can lose. See you in court at eleven o’clock.”
 
 
“M
y name is Danton. It is a name tolerably well known in the Revolution. I am a lawyer by profession, and I was born at Arcis, in the Aube country. In a few days’ time, my abode will be oblivion. My place of residence will be History.”
Day One.
“That sounds distinctly pessimistic,” Lacroix says to Philippeaux. “Who are all these people?”
“Fabre of course you know, this is Chabot—delighted to see you looking so well, Citizen—Diedrichsen, this is Philippeaux—this is Emmanuel Frei, Junius Frei—you are supposed to have conspired with them.”
“Delighted to meet you, Deputy Philippeaux,” one of the Frei brothers says. “What did you do?”
“I criticized the Committee.”
“Ah.”
Philippeaux is counting heads. “There are fourteen of us. They’re going to try the whole East India fraud. If there were any justice, that would take a court three months. We have three days.”
Camille Desmoulins is on his feet. “Challenge,” he says, indicating the jury. He is being as brief as possible in the hope that he can avoid stuttering.
“Route it through your counsel,” Hermann says shortly.
“I am defending myself,” Desmoulins snaps back. “I object to Renaudin.”
“On what grounds?”
“He has threatened my life. I could call several hundred witnesses.”
“That is a frivolous objection.”
 
 
T
he report of the Police Committee is read out, relating to the East India affair. Two hours. The indictments are read. One hour more. Behind the waist-high barriers at the back of the court, the spectators stand packed to the doors: out of the doors, and along the street. “They say the line of people stretches as far as the Mint,” Fabre whispers.
Lacroix turns his head in the direction of the forgers. “How ironic,” he mumurs.
Fabre passes a hand over his face. He is slumped in the armchair which is normally reserved for the chief person accused. Last night when the prisoners were transferred to the Conciergerie he was hardly able to walk, and two guards had assisted him into the closed carriage. Occasionally one of his fits of coughing drowns out the voice of Fabricius Paris, and the Clerk of the Court seizes the opportunity to pause for breath; his eyes travel again and again to the impassive face of his patron, Danton. Fabre takes out a handkerchief and holds it to his mouth. His skin looks damp and bloodless. Sometimes Danton turns to look into his face; another few minutes, and he will turn to watch Camille. From above the jury, corrosive shafts of sunlight scour the black-and-white marble. Afternoon wears on, and an unmerited halo forms above the head of Tenth-of-August Leroy. In the Palais-Royal, the lilac trees are in bloom.
 
 
D
anton: “This must stop. I demand to be heard now. I demand permission to write to the Convention. I demand to have a commission appointed. Camille Desmoulins and myself wish to denounce dictatorial practices in the Committee of Public—”
The roar of applause drowns him. They call his name; they clap their hands, stamp their feet and sing the “Marseillaise.” The riot travels backwards into the street, and the tumult becomes so great that the president’s bell is inaudible; in frenetic dumb show, he shakes the bell at the accused, and Lacroix shakes his fist back at the president. Don’t panic, don’t panic, Fouquier mouths: and when Hermann makes his voice heard, it is to adjourn the session. The prisoners are led below to their cells. “Bastards,” Danton says succinctly. “I’ll make mincemeat out of them tomorrow.”
 
 
“S
old? I,
sold
? There is not a price high enough for a man like me.”
Day Two.
“Who is this?”
“Oh, not another,” Philippeaux says. “Who is this man?”
Danton looks over his shoulder. “That is Citizen Lhuillier. He is the Attorney—General-or used to be. Citizen, what are you doing here?”
Lhuillier takes his place with the accused. He does not speak, and he looks stunned.
“Fouquier, what do you say this man’s done?”
Fouquier looks up to glare at the accused, and then back to the list he holds in his hand. He confers with his deputies in a furious whisper. “But you
said
so—” Fleuriot insists.

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