A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

“Only when it suits us,” Marat said.

Four p.m., the rue des Cordeliers: “But you can’t just say “Good-bye.” Camille was aghast. You can’t turn up in the middle of a sunny afternoon and say, I’ve enjoyed knowing you for twenty years, now I’m off to get killed.”

“Well, you can,” Louis Suleau said, unsteadily. “It seems that you can.”

’He’d had a kind of luck, the chronicler of the Acts of the Apostles. In ‘89, ’90, the mobs might have killed him; they were the mobs the Lanterne Attorney had driven on. “Whenever I pass a lamp post,” he had written, “I see it stretch out towards me, covetously.”

Camille looked at him in silence, stunned—though he must have known, must have expected it. Louis had been over the border, in the emigre camps; why would he be back in Paris now, if he were not bent on some suicidal gesture?

“You have taken risks yourself,” Louis said. “I don’t need to tell you why one does it. I’ve given up trying to make you a royalist. At least we have that in common—we stick to our principles. I am prepared to die in the defense of the palace, but who knows, the King may have the best of it. We may have a victory yet.”

“Your victory would be my death.”

“I don’t want that,” Louis said.

“You’re a hypocrite. You must want it. You can’t pursue a course and then disown the natural consequences of it.”

“I’m not pursuing a course. I’m keeping faith.”

“With that sad fat fool? Nobody who aspires to be taken seriously could be dying for Louis Capet. There’s something ludicrous about it.”

Louis looked away. “I don’t know … perhaps in the end I agree with you. But it can’t be avoided any longer.”

Camille made a gesture of irritation. “Of course it can be avoided. Go back to your apartment and burn anything you think might be incriminating. Be very careful, because you notice that as the Revolution goes on there are new crimes. Pack only what you need, you mustn’t look as if you’re going anywhere. Later you can give me your keys and I’ll see to everything after—I mean, next week. Don’t come back here, we have several of the Marseille men invited for an early supper. Go to Annette Duplessis, stay there till I come. When you get there sit down and prepare for me a very clear statement of how you want your financial affairs to be handled. But dictate it, it shouldn’t be in your own hand, my father-in-law will take it down for you and he will give you his advice. Don’t sign it, and don’t leave it lying around. Meanwhile I’ll get you a passport and some papers. You speak English, don’t you?”

“You’ve really got into the habit of giving orders. One would suppose you were used to banishing people.”

“For God’s sake, Louis.”

“Thank you, but no.”

“Then”—he was pleading—“if you won’t do that, just come back here at nine o’clock this evening, I’ll divert people tomorrow. You won’t be seen. At least you’ll have a chance.”

“But Camille, the risk to you—you could get into trouble, terrible trouble.”

“You won’t come, will you?”

“No.”

“Then why enlarge on the theme?”

“Because I’m afraid of what may happen to you. You have no duty to me. We found ourselves—no, we put ourselves—on opposite sides. I never expected, I never dreamed, that our friendship could last so long with circumstances as they are.”

“You didn’t think that once—you laughed, and said people were above politics.”

“I know. ‘Liberty, Gaiety, Royal Democracy.’ I believed in my slogan, but I don’t anymore. There won’t be any royalty and personally I think precious little liberty and there’ll always be war and civil war, so I don’t give gaiety much of a chance either. You must see that from now on—after tomorrow, I mean—personal loyalty will count for very little in people’s lives.”

“You are asking me to accept that because of the Revolution—because of what you suppose the Revolution to be—I must stand by while someone I love is destroyed by his own stupidity.”

“I don’t want you to think about it, afterwards.”

“I’ll stop you doing this. I’ll have you arrested tonight. I won’t let you kill yourself.”

“You wouldn’t be doing me a favor. I’ve cheated the Lanterne so far, and I don’t want to be dragged out of prison and lynched. That’s not a death fit for a human being. I know that you could have me arrested. But it would be a betrayal.”

“Of?”

“Of principle.”

“Am I a principle to you, and are you a principle to me?”

“Ask Robespierre,” Louis said wearily. “Ask the man with the conscience which is more important, your friend or your country—ask him how he weighs an individual in the scheme of things. Ask him which comes first, his old pals or his new principles. You ask him, Camille.” He stood up. “I wondered whether I should come here at all— whether it might make difficulties for you.”

“No one can make difficulties for me. There is no authority that can do it.”

“No, I suppose it is coming to that. Camille, I’m sorry I never saw your little boy.”

He held his hand out. Camille turned away from it. Louis said, “Father Berardier is in prison, love. Will you see if you can get him out?”