Danton said, “Jesus Christ,” in an awestruck way, and left.
It was now almost dark. Lucile was at the rue Conde. 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 Adele.”
“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 Adele.”
“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. Adele 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.”
