A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

“A knitted God.” Robespierre shook his head, amazed. “Camille, you are a fount of original notions.” He put his hands on Camille’s shoulders. In a cautious way, they hugged each other. “Under Providence, we shall go on being silly,” Robespierre said. “I will be back in two hours, and then I will sit with you and we will discuss theology and whatever else will while away the time. If anything happens, get a message to me.”

Camille was left alone. Conversations do take the most amazing turn, he thought. He looked around Robespierre’s room. It was plain, quite small, with an insomniac’s hard bed and a plain whitewood table that served as Robespierre’s very tidy desk. There was only one book on it—a small copy of Rousseau’s Social Contract—and he recognized it as the one that Robespierre always carried with him, in the inside pocket of his coat. Today he had forgotten it. His routine was broken; he had been overset.

He picked up the book and looked at it closely. It had some special magic, which had communicated itself to Robespierre; this volume and no other will do. An idea struck him. He flourished the book before an imaginary audience. He said, In Robespierre’s Artesian accent: “Victim of an assassin’s musket ball, this copy of the Social Contract saved my life. Remark, fellow patriots, how the fatal bullet was deflected by the immortal cheap cloth binding of the immortal words of the immortal Jean-Jacques. Under Providence—” He was going to go on to speak about the plots that menaced the nation, plots, plots, plots, plots, plots, but he felt suddenly weak and jittery and knew that he ought to sit down. He pulled up to the table a straw-bottomed chair. It was exactly like the chair he had stood on when he spoke to the mob at the Palais-Royal. I don’t think I could live with such a chair, he thought. It frightens me too much.

He had a speech to write. What stupendous self-control, he thought, if I could write any of it, but I don’t suppose I will. He got up and looked out of the window for a while. Maurice Duplay’s workmen were fetching and carrying in the yard below. Seeing him watching them, they raised hands in greeting. He could go down and talk to them, but he might meet Eleonore. Or he might meet Mme. Duplay, and she would trap him in that drawing room of hers, and expect him to make conversation, and eat things. He had a dread of that room, with its vast articles—you could only call them that—of mahogany furniture, and its dark red draperies of Utrecht velvet, with its old-fashioned hangings and its enameled stove that gave off a fume-laden heat. It was a room for hopes to die in; he imagined picking up a crimson cushion, and placing it decisively over Eleonore’s face.

He wrote. He tried a paragraph. He deleted it. He began again. Time passed, he supposed. Then a little scratch at the door: “Camille, can I come in?”

“You may.”

Oh, why be like that? On edge.

Elisabeth Duplay. “Are you busy?”

He put the pen down. “I’m supposed to be writing a speech, but I’m not concentrating. My wife—”

“I know.” She closed the door softly. Babette. The goose-girl. “So would you like it if I stayed and talked to you?”

“That,” Camille said, “would be very nice.”

She laughed. “Oh, Camille, you are sour. You don’t really think it would be very nice, you think it would be a bore.”

“If I thought it would be a bore, I would say so.”

“You have such a reputation for charm, but we don’t see much of it in this house. You’re never charming to my sister Eleonore, Although—I must admit—I’d often like to be rude to Eleonore myself, but I’m the youngest, and in our family we’ve been brought up to be polite to our elders.”

“Quite right,” Camille said. He was perfectly serious. He couldn’t understand why she kept laughing. Then suddenly he could. When she laughed she was quite pretty. She was quite pretty anyway. An improvement on her sisters.

She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Max talks about you a lot,” she said. “It would be lovely to know you better. I think you’re the person in the world he cares about most. And yet you’re very different—so why do you think that is?”

“It must be my charm,” Camille said. “Obvious, isn’t it?”

“He’s very nice to us, you know. He’s like a brother. He stands up to our father for us. Our father’s a tyrant.”

“All children think that.” He was struck by what he had said. How would he treat this child of his, when it grew a will of its own? The child in its teens, he in middle age: there seemed something unlikely about it. He thought, I wonder what my father did while my mother was having me? I bet he worked on the Encyclopedia of Law. I bet he did a bit of indexing while my mother screamed in agony.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

He couldn’t suppress a smile. How well was she suggesting she might get to know him? Women had a special time for that question, usually after the sexual act; but he supposed they had to rehearse it, even as schoolgirls. “Oh, nothing,” he said. (She may as well get used to the usual reply.) He felt uneasy. “Elisabeth, does your mother know you’re up here?”

“You should call me Babette. That’s my pet name.”

“Does she, though?”

“I don’t know whether she knows or not. I think she’s gone out for the bread.” She ran a hand over her skirt, sat further back on the bed. “Does it matter?”

“People might wonder where you are.”

“They could call out, if they wanted me.”

A pause. She watched him steadily. “Your wife is very beautiful,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Did she like being pregnant?”

“She liked it at first, but then she found it was tedious.”