A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

our Minister of Finance, he’s honest they say. We’ll repatriate Marat and let him give fleas to the Swiss. We’ll —”

“Laclos, this is not serious.”

“Oh, I know.” Laclos got unsteadily to his feet. “I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter, deceased—it really is a bad stretch of road. Philippe’s heirs and assigns having coincidentally expired, end of the monarchy, reign of M. Danton.”

“How your imagination runs away with you.”

“They do say that if you keep drinking you start to see snakes,” Laclos said. “Great serpent things, dragons and similar. Would you do it, Danton? Would you risk it with me?”

Danton didn’t answer.

“You would, you would.” Laclos stood up, swaying a little, and held out his arms. “Triumph and glory.” He dropped his arms to his side. “And then perhaps you’ll kill me. I’ll risk it. For a footnote in the history books. I dread obscurity, do you see? The meager and unrewarded old age, the piddling end of mediocrity, sans everything, as the English poet says. ‘There goes poor old Laclos, he wrote a book once, the title escapes me.’ I’m going away now,” he said with dignity. “All I ask is that you think it over.” He lurched towards the door, and met Gabrielle coming in. “Nice little woman,” he said under his breath. They heard him stumble on the stairs.

“I thought you’d want to know,” she said. “They’re back.”

“The Capet family?” Camille asked.

“The royal family. Yes.” She withdrew from the room, closing the door softly behind her. They listened. Heat and silence lay over the city.

“I like a crisis,” Camille said. A short pause. Danton looked not at him, but through him. “I’ll keep you to the spirit of your recent republican mouthings. I was thinking about it, when Laclos was ranting—and I’m sorry for it, but I think Philippe will have to go. You can use him and dispense with him later.”

“Oh, you are as cold-blooded—” Danton stopped. He couldn’t think what was as cold-blooded as Camille, pushing his hair back with a flick of his wrist and saying use him and dispense with him later. “Were you born with that gesture,” he asked, “or did you pick it up from some prostitute?”

“First get rid of Louis, then we can battle it out.”

“We might lose everything,” Danton said. But he had made his calculations: always, when he seemed to flare up for a moment into some unreasoning, sneering aggression, his mind was moving quite coldly, quite calmly, in a certain direction. Now his mind was made up. He was going to do it.

The royal party had been intercepted at Varennes; they had traveled 165 miles from inept beginning to blundering end. Six thousand people surrounded the two carriages on the first stage of their journey home. A day later the company was joined by three deputies of the National Assembly. Barnave and Petion sat with the family inside the berlin. The Dauphin took a liking to Barnave. He chattered to him and played with the buttons on his coat, reading out the legend engraved there: “Live free, or die.” “We must show character,” the Queen repeated, over and over again.

By the end of the journey, the future for Deputy Barnave was plain. Mirabeau dead, he would replace him as secret adviser to the court. Petion believed that the King’s plump little sister, Mme. Elisabeth, had fallen in love with him; it was true that, on the long road back, she had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder. Petion burbled incessantly about it, for a month or two.

On a day of blazing heat, the King re-entered Paris. Vast silent crowds lined the routes. The berlin was filled with choking dust from the road, and there appeared at the window the lined, harried face of a gray-haired woman: Antoinette. They arrived at the Tuileries. When they were installed, Lafayette placed his guards and hurried to the King. “Your Majesty’s orders for the day?”

“It appears,” Louis said, “that I am more at your orders than you at mine.”

As they passed through the city, the ranks of soldiers lining the route had presented arms with the butts reversed, as if it were a funeral: which, in a manner of speaking, it was.

Camille Desmoulins, Revolutions de France, No. 83:

When Louis XVI re-entered his apartment at the Tuileries, he threw himself into an armchair, saying “It’s devilish hot,” then, “That was a ———journey. However, I have had it in my head to do it for a long time.” Afterwards, looking towards the National Guardsmen who were present, he said, “I have done a foolish thing, I admit. But must I not have my follies, like other people? Come along, bring me a chicken.” One of his valets came in. “Ah, there you are,” he said, “and here I am.” They brought the chicken, and Louis XVI ate and drank with an appetite that would have done honor to the King of Cockayne.

And Hebert has changed his royalist opinions:

We will stuff you into Charenton and your whore into the Hopital. When you are finally walled up, both of you, and when you no longer have a civil list, put an axe in me if you get away.

Pere Duchesne, No. 61

From here, sprawled in this chair, Danton could see Louise Robert, arguing, wanting to cry and just managing not to. Her husband had been arrested, was in prison. “Demand his release,” she was saying. “Force it.”

He spoke to her across the room. “Not much of the big tough republican now, are you?”

She gave him a glance that surprised him by its intensity of dislike. “Let me think,” he said. “Just let me think.”

His eyes half-closed, he watched the room. Lucile sat fiddling with her wedding ring, signs of strain on her child’s face. He found her, these days, always on his mind; hers was the first face he saw when he came into a room. He spent time chiding himself; called it remarkable disloyalty to the mother of his children.

(FRERON: I’ve loved her for years.

DANTON: Rubbish.

FRERON: You may say so. What do you know?

DANTON: I know you.

FRERON: But you seem to entertain certain expectations yourself. At least, everybody remarks on it.