addressing one of these freakish women’s groups with which he and Marat are involved—Society of Young Ladies for Maiming Marquises, Fishwives for Democracy, you know the sort of thing. And I really thought that, as the Incorruptible has such a large female following, if he walked in while they were already adoring Camille the ladies might lose all restraint and begin attacking people on the streets.
He asked if he might wait. It was important.
“What won’t keep till morning?”
“I don’t keep conventional hours,” he explained to me. “Neither, as you know, does Camille. When I need him he is usually available.”
“Not this time,” I said. Lucile looked at me beseechingly.
So we sat for an hour or more, and how hard it is to make small talk with Maximilien. It was then that Lolotte asked him to be godfather to the child. He was pleased. She reminded him that it was his privilege to choose the name. He felt somehow it would be a boy, he said; we should give him a name that was inspiring, the name of a great man, someone distinguished for his possession of the republican virtues; for we already talked of the republic, not as a political phenomenon but as a state of mind. He mulled over in his mind the Greeks and Romans, and decided that he should be named for the poet Horace. I said, “What if it’s a girl?”
Lucile said gently that it was a most suitable name, and I could see her calculating already, we won’t use it, that’s not what he’ll actually be called. Perhaps, she said, for a second name we could call him Camille? Robespierre smiled, saying, “And there is much honor in that too.”
Then we sat and looked at each other; by this time I had made him uncomfortably suspicious that the honorable original was out whoring.
He slipped in about two o’clock, inquired which of us had arrived first; being told, looked knowing but not put out. Lucile did not ask where he had been. Ah, I thought, for such a wife. I said good night, Robespierre began to talk of some business of the Commune’s, as if it were two in the afternoon and harsh words had never been invented.
Robespierre: There were such people as Lucile. Rousseau said so. Robespierre laid the book aside, but marked the passage.
One proof of the amiable woman’s character is that all who loved her loved each other, jealousy and rivalry submitting to the more powerful sentiment with which she inspired them; and I never saw those who surrounded her entertain the least ill will among themselves. Let the reader pause a moment, and if he can recollect any other woman who deserves this praise, let him attach himself to her if he would obtain happiness.
It must be applicable. Life was strangely calm in the Desmoulins household. Of course, they might be keeping things from him. People did tend to keep things from him.
They had asked him to be godfather to the child—or whatever was the equivalent, because he did not suppose it would be baptized within the Roman rite. It was Lucile who had asked him one evening when he called (late, almost midnight) and found her alone with Danton. He hoped those rumors were not true. He hoped to be able to believe that they were not.
The servant removed herself as soon as he appeared: at which Danton, unaccountably, laughed.
There were things he needed to talk over with Danton, and he could have spoken freely in front of her; she understood situations, and her opinions were worth having. But Danton seemed to be in some singular mood— half—aggressive, half-joking. He had not been able to find the key to this mood, and they had fallen back on desultory conversation. Then at one point he felt an almost physical force pushing against him. That was Danton’s will. He wanted him to go. Ridiculous as it seemed, in retrospect, he had to put out a hand to grip the arm of his chair and steady himself. It was just then that Lucile raised the topic of the baby.
He was pleased. Of course, it was right, because he was Camille’s oldest friend. And he thought it unlikely now that he would have children of his own.
They had spent some time discussing a name. Perhaps it was sentimental of him, but he remembered all the poetry that Camille used to write. Did he write any now? Oh no, Lucile said. She laughed edgily. In fact, whenever he found some of the old stuff, he’d exclaim, “worse than Saint-Just, worse than Saint-Just,” and burn it. For a moment Robespierre felt deeply affronted, wounded: as if his judgement had been called into question.
Lucile excused herself, to go and speak with Jeanette.
“Horace-Camille,” Danton said speculatively. “Do you think it will bring him luck in life?”
Robespierre smiled his thin smile. He was conscious of the thinness of it. If he were remembered into the next generation, people would speak of his thin, cold smile, as they would speak of Danton’s girth, vitality, scarred face. He wanted, always, to be different—and especially with Danton. Perhaps the smile looked sarcastic, or patronizing or disapproving. But it was the only one available to his face.
“I think Horace …” he said. “A great poet, and a good republican. If one discounts the later verse, where I think he was probably forced to flatter Augustus.”
“Yes …” Danton said. “Camille’s writings flatter you—though probably I shouldn’t say
He had to grit his teeth; that is, he thought of gritting them, and the thought usually suffices.
“As I said, it is an honorable name.”
Danton sat back in his chair. He stretched out his long legs. He drawled. (It is a commonplace, but there is no other word for it, he drawled.) “I wonder what the honorable original is doing now.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“Why, what do you imagine he is doing?”
“Probably something unthinkable in a whorehouse.”
“I don’t know what right you have to think that. I don’t know what you mean.”
“My dear Robespierre, I don’t expect you to know what I mean. I should be very shocked if you did know. Disillusioned.”
“Then why must you pursue the subject?”
