A Place of Greater Safety (54 page)

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Authors: Hilary Mantel

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“Popularity is not the issue.”
“Not with Robespierre, no. But you, Danton, where do you go from here?”
“Up. Vergniaud, I wish you would throw in your lot with us.”
“Who exactly is ‘us’?”
Danton began to speak, then paused, struck for the first time by the disreputable quality of the names he had to offer. “Hérault de Séchelles,” he said at length.
Vergniaud raised a heavy eyebrow. “Just the two of you? Messieurs Camille and Fabre d’Églantine suddenly excluded from your confidence? Legendre too busy butchering? Well, I dare say these people are useful to you. But I don’t seek to attach myself to a faction. I favored the war, so I sat with the others who favored it. But I am not a Brissotin, whatever that may be. I am my own man.”
“I wish we all were,” Danton said. “But you will find it does not work out like that.”
 
 
O
ne morning, late March, Camille woke up with a certain thought going around in his head. He had been talking to soldiers—General Dillon amongst others—and they said if there is going to be a war anyway, what is the point of standing out against public opinion and the tide of the times? Was it not better to put yourself at the head of an irresistible movement, rather than be trampled in the rush?
He roused his wife and told her. “I feel sick,” she said.
At 6:30 a.m. he was in Danton’s drawing room, pacing the carpet. Danton called him a fool.
“Why do I always have to agree with you? I’m not allowed any independent thoughts. I can think what I like as long as it happens to be what you think.”
“Go away,” Danton said. “I am not your father.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean that you sound like a fifteen-year-old and what you are trying do is pick a fight, so why don’t you go home for a few days and quarrel with your father? We would be spared political consequences.”
“I shall write—”
“You will not put pen to paper. You do try my temper, exceedingly. Go away, before I make you the first Brissotin martyr. Go to Robespierre, and see if you get a better reception.”
 
 
R
obespierre was ill. The raw spring weather hurt his chest, and his stomach rejected what he fed it.
“So you desert your friends,” he said, wheezing a little.
“This need not affect our friendship,” Camille said grandly.
Robespierre looked away.
“You remind me—what’s the name of that English King?”
“George,” Robespierre snapped.
“I think I mean Canute.”
“You will have to go away,” Robespierre said. “I can’t argue with you this morning. I have to conserve my strength for important things. But if you commit yourself to paper, I shall never trust you again.”
Camille backed out of the room.
Eléonore Duplay was standing outside. He knew she had been listening, because of the sudden vivacity in her dreary eyes. “Ah, it’s Cornélia,” he said. He had never in his life spoken to a woman in that tone; she would have excited cruelty in a mouse.
“We wouldn’t have let you in if we’d known you were going to upset him. Don’t come again. In any case, he won’t see you.”
She ran her eyes over him. I hoped you would quarrel, they said.
“You and your ghastly family, Eléonore. Do you think you own him? Do you think because he condescends to stay under your roof you have the right to decide who comes and goes? Do you think you are going to keep him away from his oldest friend?”
“You are so sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“With reason,” Camille said. “Oh, Cornélia, you are so transparent. I know exactly what your plans are. I know exactly what you think. You think he’ll marry you. Forget it, my dear. He won’t.”
 
 
T
hat was the only spark of satisfaction in the day. Lucile sat waiting for him sadly, her little hands resting on the draped bulk of the child. Life was no fun now. She had reached the stage when women looked at her with lively sympathy: when men’s eyes passed over her as if she were an old sofa.
“There’s a note from Max,” she said. “I opened it. He says he regrets what happened this morning, he spoke hastily and he begs you to forgive him. And Georges called. He said, ‘Sorry.’”
“I had a wonderful row with Eléonore. They’re predatory, those people. I wonder, you know, what would happen to me if Danton and Robespierre ever disagreed?”
“You have a mind of your own.”
“Yes, but you will find it doesn’t work out like that.”
 
 
O
n March 26 the Queen passed to the enemy full details of France’s war plans. On April 20, France declared war on Austria.
 
 
A
pril 25, 1792—Scientific and Democratic Execution of Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, highway robber.
There are bigger crowds than for any ordinary execution, and an air of anticipation. The executioners, of course, have been practicing with dummies; they look quite buoyant, and they are nodding to each other, putting each other on their honor not to make a blunder. Yet there’s nothing to fear, the machine does everything. It is mounted on a scaffold, a big frame with a heavy blade. The criminal ascends with his guards. He is not to suffer, because in France the age of barbarism is over, superseded by a machine, approved by a committee.
Moving quickly, the executioners surround the man, bind him to a plank and slide it forward; swoop of the blade, a soft thud and a sudden carpet of blood. The crowd sighs, its members look at each other in disbelief. It is all over so soon, there is no spectacle. They cannot see that the man can be dead. One of Sanson’s assistants looks up at him, and the master executioner nods. The young man lifts the leather bag into which the head has fallen, and picks out the dripping contents. He holds the head up to the crowed, turning slowly to each quarter to show the empty, expressionless face. Good enough. They are placated. A few women pick up their children so that they can see better. The dead man’s trunk is cut free and rolled into a big wicker basket to be taken away; the severed head is placed between the feet.
All in all, including holding up the head (which will not always be necessary), it has taken just five minutes. The master executioner estimates that the time could be cut almost by half, if time were ever important. He and his assistants and apprentices are divided over the new device. It is convenient, true, and humane; you cannot believe that the man feels any pain. But it looks so easy; people will be thinking that there is no skill in it, that anyone can be an executioner. The profession feels itself undermined. Only the previous year, the Assembly had debated the question of capital punishment, and the popular deputy Robespierre had actually pleaded for it to be abolished. They said he still felt strongly about the question, was hopeful of success. But that
deep-thinking man, M. Sanson, feels that M. Robespierre is out of step with public opinion, on this point.
 
 
A
n estimate by M. Guérdon, formerly master carpenter to the Parlement of Paris:
To the steps
1,700 livres
To three blades (two in reserve)
600 livres
To pulley and copper grooves
300 livres
To the iron drop-weight (for the blade)
300 livres
To rope and rigging
60 livres
To constructing the whole, testing it and time spent discussing it
1,200 livres
To a small scale model for demonstrations, to prevent accidents
1,200 livres
TOTAL
5,360 livres
W
armly recommending the new invention to the Assembly, the public health expert Dr. Guillotin said: “With this machine I can have your head off in a flash and you won’t suffer at all.” (Laughter.)
 
 
D
anton: Robespierre called at Camille’s apartment late at night, looking for him. I was there with Lucile. It was harmless enough. The servant Jeanette was about the place, sitting up rather pointedly. Though what they all think I would be doing, with the girl six months pregnant … And where was Camille? Everybody must be in when Robespierre calls. Young Maximilien was faintly annoyed. Lucile caught my eye. She didn’t know where he was.
“I can suggest some places,” I said. “But I wouldn’t advise you to try them, Max, not personally.”
He blushed. What it is to be evil-minded, I thought. In fact I had an idea that Camille was across the river, addressing one of these freakish women’s groups with which he and Marat are involved—Society of Young Ladies for Maiming Marquises, Fishwives for Democracy, you know the sort of thing. And I really thought that, as the Incorruptible has such a large female following, if he walked in while they were already adoring Camille the ladies might lose all restraint and begin attacking people on the streets.
He asked if he might wait. It was important.
“What won’t keep till morning?”
“I don’t keep conventional hours,” he explained to me. “Neither, as you know, does Camille. When I need him he is usually available.”
“Not this time,” I said. Lucile looked at me beseechingly.
So we sat for an hour or more, and how hard it is to make small talk with Maximilien. It was then that Lolotte asked him to be godfather to the child. He was pleased. She reminded him that it was his privilege to choose the name. He felt somehow it would be a boy, he said; we should give him a name that was inspiring, the name of a great man, someone distinguished for his possession of the republican virtues; for we already talked of the republic, not as a political phenomenon but as a state of mind. He mulled over in his mind the Greeks and Romans, and decided that he should be named for the poet Horace. I said, “What if it’s a girl?”
Lucile said gently that it was a most suitable name, and I could see her calculating already, we won’t use it, that’s not what he’ll actually be called. Perhaps, she said, for a second name we could call him Camille? Robespierre smiled, saying, “And there is much honor in that too.”
Then we sat and looked at each other; by this time I had made him uncomfortably suspicious that the honorable original was out whoring.
He slipped in about two o’clock, inquired which of us had arrived first; being told, looked knowing but not put out. Lucile did not ask where he had been. Ah, I thought, for such a wife. I said good night, Robespierre began to talk of some business of the Commune’s, as if it were two in the afternoon and harsh words had never been invented.
 
 
R
obespierre: There were such people as Lucile. Rousseau said so. Robespierre laid the book aside, but marked the passage.
One proof of the amiable woman’s character is that all who loved her loved each other, jealousy and rivalry submitting to the more powerful sentiment with which she inspired them; and I never saw those who surrounded her entertain the least ill will among themselves. Let the reader pause a moment, and if he can recollect any other woman who deserves this praise, let him attach himself to her if he would obtain happiness.
It must be applicable. Life was strangely calm in the Desmoulins household. Of course, they might be keeping things from him. People did tend to keep things from him.
They had asked him to be godfather to the child—or whatever was the equivalent, because he did not suppose it would be baptized within the Roman rite. It was Lucile who had asked him one evening when he called (late, almost midnight) and found her alone with Danton. He hoped those rumors were not true. He hoped to be able to believe that they were not.
The servant removed herself as soon as he appeared: at which Danton, unaccountably, laughed.
There were things he needed to talk over with Danton, and he could have spoken freely in front of her; she understood situations, and her opinions were worth having. But Danton seemed to be in some singular mood—half—aggressive, half-joking. He had not been able to find the key to this mood, and they had fallen back on desultory conversation. Then at one point he felt an almost physical force pushing against him. That was Danton’s will. He wanted him to go. Ridiculous as it seemed, in retrospect, he had to put out a hand to grip the arm of his chair and steady himself. It was just then that Lucile raised the topic of the baby.
He was pleased. Of course, it was right, because he was Camille’s oldest friend. And he thought it unlikely now that he would have children of his own.
They had spent some time discussing a name. Perhaps it was sentimental of him, but he remembered all the poetry that Camille used to write. Did he write any now? Oh no, Lucile said. She laughed edgily. In fact, whenever he found some of the old stuff, he’d exclaim, “worse than Saint-Just, worse than Saint-Just,” and burn it. For a moment Robespierre felt deeply affronted, wounded: as if his judgement had been called into question.

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