A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

gloves, easing them off finger by finger, raising his eyes to Danton’s. “There are things we must discuss,” he said pleasantly.

Three hours later he replaced his gloves by a similar careful process, and left.

Paris without the King. Some wit hung a placard on the railing of the Tuileries: PREMISES TO LET. All over town, Danton talked about the republic. At the Jacobins, Robespierre rose to reply to him, adjusting his cravat minutely with his small fingers with the bitten nails. “What is a republic?” he asked.

Danton must define his terms, he sees. Maximilien Robespierre takes nothing on trust.

The Duke brought his fist down hard on a fragile table, inlaid with a pattern of roses, ribbons and violins.

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a three-year-old,” he snarled.

Felicite de Genlis was a patient woman. She smiled faintly. She was prepared to argue, if necessary, all day.

“The Assembly have asked you to accept the throne, should it become vacant,” she said.

“There you are,” the Duke bellowed. “You’re doing it again. We’ve established that, haven’t we? We all know that. You are a tiresome woman.”

“Don’t bluster, dear. Firstly, may I point out that it is unlikely that the throne will become vacant? I hear that your cousin’s journey has been interrupted. He is on his way back to Paris.”

“Yes,” the Duke said with relish. “The booby. Let himself get caught. They’ve sent Barnave and Petion to fetch them back. I hope Deputy Petion is bloody rude to them all the way.”

Felicite did not doubt that he would be. “You know,” she went on, “that now the Assembly has the new constitution framed and ready for the King’s signature, it—I mean the Assembly—is most anxious for stability. Change has gone so far and so fast, and I believe people are aching for a return to good order. It is possible that a month from now Louis will be replaced firmly on the throne. It will be as if all this had never happened.”

“But dammit, he ran away. He’s supposed to be King of this country, and he was running away from it.”

“The Assembly may not put that construction on his actions.”

“What other is there? Forgive me, I’m a simple man—”

“They aren’t. They’re really quite ingenious. Lawyers, mostly.”

“Don’t trust ’em,” Philippe said. “As a breed.”

“Think then, my dear—if Louis is restored—think how it will antagonize him if you appear so anxious to step into his shoes.”

“But I am, aren’t I?” Philippe gaped at her. What was she trying to do to him? Wasn’t this what all the fuss was about, over the last three years and more? Wasn’t it to be King that he had endured the company of people who weren’t gentlemen, who didn’t hunt, who didn’t know the nose of a racehorse from its tail? Wasn’t it in order to be King that he had allowed himself to be patronized by that fish-eyed Laclos? Wasn’t it to be King that he had endured that scar-faced thug Danton at his own dinner table, quite blatantly eyeing up his mistress Agnes and his ex- mistress Grace? Wasn’t it to be King that he had paid, paid, paid?

Felicite closed her eyes. Carefully, she thought. Speak carefully, but do speak: for the nation, for this man’s children, whom I have brought up. And for our lives.

“Think,” she said.

“Think!” The Duke exploded. “Very well, you don’t trust my supporters. Neither do I. I have their measure, I tell you.”

“I doubt it.”

“You think I’d let those low types push me around?”

“Philippe, you’re not the man to set limits to their ambition. They’ll swallow you up, you and your children—and everything, everybody that is close to your heart. Don’t you realize that the men who can destroy one King can destroy another? Do you think they’d have any scruple, if you didn’t do everything exactly as they wished? And you’d only be, at best, a stop gap for them—until they felt they could get along without you, till they felt they didn’t need any King at all.” She took a breath. “Think back, Philippe—think back to before the Bastille fell. Louis used to tell you, go here, go there—come back to Versailles, keep away from Versailles—you know how it was? Your life wasn’t your own, you used to say. You had no freedom. Now, from the moment you say, ‘Yes, I want to be King,’ you give your freedom away again. From that day on, you will be in prison. Oh, not a prison with bars and chains—but a pleasant gaol that M. Danton will make for you. A gaol with a civil list and protocol and precedent and the most charming social occasions, ballets and masked balls and, yes, even horse-racing.”

“Don’t like ballet,” the Duke said. “Bores me.”

Felicite smoothed her skirt, glanced down at her hands. A woman’s hands show her age, she thought; they give everything away. Once there’d been hope. Once there’d been the promise of a fairer, cleaner world; and no one had hoped harder, no one had worked for it more assiduously than she had. “A gaol,” she said. “They’ll trick you, amuse you, occupy you—while they carve up the country between them. That is their object.”

He looked up at her, this middle-aged child of hers. “You think they’re cleverer than me, do you?”

“Oh, much, my darling: much, much, much.”

He avoided her eye now. “I’ve always known my limitations.”

“Which makes you wiser than most men. And wiser than these manipulators give you credit for.”

That pleased him. It came to him vaguely that he might outsmart them. She had spoken so softly, as if the thought were his own. “What’s the best thing to do? Tell me, Felicite, please.”

“Disassociate yourself. Keep your name clear. Refuse to be their dupe.”

“So you want me”—he struggled—“to go to the Assembly, and say, no, I don’t want the throne, you may have