DANTON: Ah, well, I don’t tell her I love her. It might be something far more crude than that. I might be more honest than you.
FRERON: Would you, if you could—?
DANTON: Naturally.
FRERON: But Camille—
DANTON: I could keep Camille quiet. Look, you have to seize the opportunities to get what you want in life.
FRERON: I know.)
Freron was now watching him, trying to read his face and anticipate him. It had gone wrong. Their plans were known at City Hall; Felicite, who always found out what was going on, had probably dropped a word in the ear of Lafayette. Lafayette was moving troops up to the Tuileries; the blond holy fool still had the men, the guns, the whip hand. He had thrown a cordon round the Riding School, to protect the deputies from any incursion; he had rung the tocsin, he had set a curfew. The Jacobins—parading their moderation, their timidity—had refused their support. Freron would have liked to forget the whole thing, and that was why he was saying, “Danton, I don’t think we can pull back now.”
“Is it so hard to convince yourself, Rabbit? Do you have to keep making the point?” The whole room turned at the sound of his voice. They stiffened, shifted their positions. “Camille, go back to the Jacobins.”
“They won’t listen,” Camille said. “They say the law doesn’t allow them to support such a petition, they say the deposition of the King is a matter for the Assembly. So what’s the point? Robespierre is in the chair, but the place is packed with Lafayette’s supporters, so what can he do? Even if he wanted to support us, which is …” His voice tailed off. “Robespierre wants to work within the law.”
“And I have no particular relish for breaking it,” Danton said. Two days of close argument have come to nothing. The petition had been carried about between the Assembly and the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, it had been printed, amended (sometimes covertly) and printed again. They were waiting: the three women, and Freron, Fabre, Legendre, Camille. He remembered Mirabeau at City Hall; you don’t work with people, Danton, you work over them. But how could he have known, he asked himself, that people would be so ready to take orders? Earlier in life, he had never suspected it.
“This time we’ll give you some support,” he said to Camille. “Freron, get together a hundred men. They should be armed.”
“The citizens of this district are never far from their pikes.”
Danton glared at the interruption. Camille was embarrassed by the things Freron said, his false bonhomie, his suspect eagerness.
“Pikes,” Fabre murmured. “I hope he intends it as a figure of speech. I am very far from my pike. I do not have a pike.”
“Do you think, Rabbit,” Camille asked him, “that we are going to skewer the Jacobins to their benches?”
“Call it a show of determination,” Danton said. “Don’t call it a show of force. We don’t want to upset Robespierre. But Rabbit—” Danton’s voice called him back from the door. “Give Camille fifteen minutes to try to persuade them. A decorous interval, you know.”
Around him the room eddied into activity. The women stood up, smoothing their skirts, their eyes forlorn and their lips pinched. Gabrielle tried to meet his eyes for a moment. Apprehension gives a yellow cast to her skin, he has observed. One day he noticed—as one notices rain clouds, or the time on the face of a clock—that he doesn’t love her now.
Evening, the National Guard cleared people off the streets. The volunteer battalions were out, but a lot of Lafayette’s regular companies were in evidence too. “You wonder,” Danton said. “There are patriots among the soldiers, but that old habit of blind obedience dies hard.” And we may need to count on the old habit, he thought, if the rest of Europe moves against us. He tried not to think of that; for now it was someone else’s problem. He had to narrow his thinking, to the next twenty-four hours.
Gabrielle went to bed after midnight. It was difficult to sleep. She heard the tread of horses in the streets. She heard the gate bell, in the Cour du Commerce, and the murmur of voices as people were let in and out. It might have been two o’clock, half-past two, when she gave up the unequal battle; sat up, lit a candle, looked across at Georges’s bed. It was empty and had not been disturbed. It was very hot still; her nightdress clung to her. She slid out of bed, stripped her nightdress off, washed in water that should have been cold but was lukewarm. She found a clean nightdress. She went to her dressing table, sat down, dabbed her temples and her throat with cologne. Her breasts ached. She pulled her long dark hair from its plait, combed out the rippling wave, re-plaited it. Her face seemed hollow, somber in the candlelight. She went to the window. Nothing: the rue des Cordeliers was empty. She pulled on her soft slippers, and left the bedroom for the dark dining room She opened the shutter. The light shone in from the Cour du Commerce below. Shadows seemed to move, behind her; the room was an octagon, paper-strewn, and the papers lifted a little in a merciful night breeze. She leaned out, to feel it on her face. There was no one to be seen, but she could hear a dull thump and clatter. It is Guillaume Brune’s printing press, she thought, or it is Marat’s. What are they doing at this hour? They live by words, she thought; they don’t need sleep.
She closed the shutter, made her way towards the bedroom in the dark. She heard her husband’s voice, from behind the closed door of his study. “Yes, I understand what you are saying. We try our strength, Lafayette tries his. He is the one with the guns.”
The other man spoke. She did not know his voice. “Just a warning,” he said. “Well intentioned. Well meant.”
Georges said, “Well, it’s three o’clock. I’m not going to scramble off now like a debtor on quarter day. We meet here at dawn. Then we’ll see.”
Three o’clock. Francois Robert was sunk into a miserable lethargy. It wasn’t the worst kind of cell—there was no evidence of rats, and at least it was cool—but he would rather have been elsewhere. He could not see why he was here—he had only been about the business of the petition. He and Louise had a broadsheet to publish; the
God in heaven, what is this? Someone with steel-tipped boots must be kicking the door. Other boots, tramping; then a voice, startlingly loud. “Some of these shits have knives.” Then the tramp of feet again, and a flat and drunken voice singing a few bars of one of Fabre’s popular songs: forgetting the words, starting again. The steel- tipped boots on his door, then a few seconds of silence, then a slogan shouter: To the Lanterne.
Francois Robert shivered. Lanteme Attorney, you should be here, he thought.
