spoken to me about his personal life. What I know of him, I know from Camille. I suppose that, returning to find Paris full of new men running things, he looks on me as an old comrade-in-arms. I comforted myself that he had forgiven me for the jokes I made at his expense when he broke off his engagement to Adele.
“So what do you make of the new Assembly?” I asked him.
“I suppose they’re an improvement on the last lot.” A lack of warmth in his tone.
“But?”
“These people from Bordeaux—they have a great opinion of themselves. I wonder about their motives, that’s all.” Then he began to talk about Lazare Camot, a military man he’s known for years, who is now a deputy; Carnot was the first soldier I heard him praise, and probably the only one. “And Couthon,” he said, “have you met him?”
I had. Couthon is a cripple, and has an attendant who wheels him about in a special chair; when there are steps, the attendant lifts him onto his back and carries him, his withered legs trailing. Some helpful person brings the chair up, the poor man is dropped back in and off they go. Despite being crippled he has enjoyed, like Robespierre, a sparkling career as a poor man’s lawyer. Couthon’s spine is diseased, he has constant pain. Robespierre says this does not embitter him. Only Robespierre could believe this.
He was worried, he said, about the warmongers—in other words, “Brissot’s people.”
“You’ve just come from England, Danton. Do they mean to fight us?”
I was able to assure him that only extreme provocation would bring them to it.
“Danton, war would be disastrous, wouldn’t it?”
“Beyond doubt. We have no money. Our army is led by aristocrats whose sympathy might well be with the enemy. Our navy’s a disgrace. We’ve political dissension at home.”
“Half our officers, perhaps more, have emigrated. If we have a war, it will have to be fought by peasants with pitchforks. Or pikes, if we can stand the expense.”
“It might benefit some people,” I said.
“Yes, the Court. Because they think that the chaos war brings will force us to turn back to the monarchy, and that when our Revolution is crippled and brought to its knees we’ll come crawling to them, begging them to help us forget that we were ever free. If that were attained, what would they care if Prussian troops burn our homes and slaughter our children? It would be meat and drink to them to see that day.”
“Robespierre—”
But he could not be stopped. “So the Court will support war, even if it is against Antoinette’s own people. And there are men who sit in the Assembly, calling themselves patriots, who will grasp any chance to distract attention from the real revolutionary struggle.”
“You mean Brissot’s people?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you suppose that they want to, as you put it, distract attention?”
“Because they’re afraid of the people. They want to contain the Revolution, hold it back, because they’re afraid of the real exercise of the people’s will. They want a revolution to suit their own ends. They want to line their pockets. I’ll tell you why people always want war—it’s because there’s easy money to be made out of it.”
I was amazed at this grim conclusion: not that I had not come to it, but that Robespierre should come to it, Robespierre of the clean mind and the noble motive.
“They talk,” I said, “of a crusade to bring liberty to Europe. Of how it’s our duty to spread the gospel of fraternity.”
“Spread the gospel? Well, ask yourself—who loves armed missionaries?”
“Who indeed?”
“They speak as if they had the interests of the people at heart, but the end of it will be military dictatorship.”
I nodded. I felt he was right, but I didn’t like the way he spoke; he spoke, if you follow me, as if it were beyond dispute. “Don’t you think,” I said, “that Brissot and his friends might be given credit for good intentions? They think a war would pull the country together and make the Revolution secure and get the rest of Europe off our backs.”
“Do you thing that?”
“Personally, no.”
“Are you a fool? Am I?”
“No.”
“Isn’t the reasoning clear? With France as she is, poor and unarmed, war means defeat. Defeat means either a military dictator who will salvage what he can and set up a new tyranny, or it means a total collapse and the return of absolute monarchy. It could mean both, one after the other. After ten years not a single one of our achievements will remain, and to your son liberty will be an old man’s daydream. This is what will happen, Danton. No one can sincerely maintain the contrary. So if they do maintain it, they are not sincere, they are not patriots and their war policy is a conspiracy against the people.”
“You are saying, in effect, they are traitors.”
“In effect. Potentially. And so we must strengthen our own position against them.”
“If we could win the war, would you favor it?”
“I hate all war.” A forced smile. “I hate all unnecessary violence. I hate quarrels, even dissension among
