The Queen extended her hand and Mandat kissed it. “I shall never come back,” he said. It was the sort of thing to say. “Order to the commander of the Place de Greve duty battalion. Attack from the rear and disperse the mob marching on the palace.” He scrawled a signature. His horse was waiting. The duty commander had the order within minutes. At City Hall, Mandat went straight to his own office. He was ordered to make his report, but so far as he could discern there was no proper authority to report to. He toyed with the notion of locking his door. But it seemed an unsoldierly thing to do.
“Rossignol,” said Danton, “thank you.” He glanced over Mandat’s order, which the district police commissioner had put into his hand. “Let us step along the corridor, and ask Mandat to explain to the new commune why he has deployed armed force against the people.”
“I refuse.” Mandat said.
“You refuse.”
“Those people are not the municipal government. They are not the Commune. They are rebels. They are criminals.”
“I shall compound their crimes,” Danton said. He reached forward and took Mandat by the front of his coat, hauling him by physical force from the room. Rossignol leaned forward and deftly confiscated the Marquis’s rapier; he turned its hilt in his fingers and grimaced.
Outside the room Mandat looked up into a ring of hostile faces. He became limp with terror. “Not now,” Danton said. “Not yet, my friends. You can leave this to me, I don’t need help.” He tightened his grip. “Keep refusing, Mandat,” he said, and began to drag him towards the Throne Room, where the new Commune had assembled. He laughed. It was like being a child again—the licensed brutality, when the issues are simple.
Five a.m. Antoinette: “There is no hope.”
Five a.m. Gabrielle began to tremble and shiver. “I’m going to be sick,” she said. Louise Robert sprinted off for a basin, and held it while Lucile lifted Gabrielle’s hair from her shoulders and smoothed it back from her brow. When she had finished her unproductive retching they eased her back onto a sofa, placed the basin inconspicuously at hand, tucked cushions under the small of her back and dabbed her temples with handkerchiefs soaked in lavender water. “Well, you probably guessed,” Gabrielle said. “I’m pregnant again.”
“Oh, Gabrielle!”
“People usually say congratulations,” she said mildly.
“Oh, but so soon,” Lucile moaned.
“Well, what do you do?” Louise Robert shrugged. “It’s either you get pregnant, or you use English overcoats, don’t you, take your choice.”
“What are English overcoats?” Gabrielle said, looking glassily from one to the other.
“Oh really!” Louise was scornful. “What does
“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle said. “I can’t keep up with your conversation.”
“No point trying,” Lucile said. “Remy knows all about English overcoats, but they are not things that married men will entertain. Especially Georges-Jacques, I imagine.”
“I don’t think we really want to know what you imagine, Mme. Desmoulins,” Louise said. “Not in this context.”
A tear quivered on the end of Gabrielle’s lashes. “I don’t mind being pregnant, really. He’s always very pleased. And you get used to it.”
“The way things are going,” Louise said, “You’ll have eight, nine, ten. When’s it due?”
“February, I think. It seems such a long way off.”
“Go home. Sleep. Two hours.”
The hideous flare of the torches at three o’clock: the oaths of the fighting men above the creak and rumble of the cannon on the move.
“Sleep?” Camille said. “It would be a novelty. Shall I find you at the palace?”
Danton breathed spirits into his face. “No, why at the palace? Santerre is in control of the National Guard, we have Westermann, he’s a professional, leave it to him. Can I never impress upon you that there is no need to take these personal risks?”
Camille slumped against the wall and covered his face with his hands. “Fat lawyers sitting in rooms,” he said. “It is very exciting.”
“It’s quite exciting enough for any normal person,” Danton said. He wanted to beg, will it be all right, will we make it, will we see sunrise? “Oh Christ, Camille, go home,” he said. “What I violently object to is your hair tied up with that piece of string.”
The Marquis de Mandat had been interrogated by the new Commune, and locked up in a room at City Hall. At first light, Danton suggested that he should be taken to the Abbaye prison. He stood by a window to watch him led down the steps, flanked by a strong guard.
He nodded to Rossignol. Rossignol leaned out of the window and shot Mandat dead.
“Come on,” Lucile said. “Change of scene.” The three women picked up their effects, locked the doors, went downstairs and out into the Cour du Commerce. They would walk around to Lucile’s apartment, to the prison of waiting in another place. No one around; and the air was fresh, even chilly. An hour from now, there would be the promise of heat. Lucile thought, I have never been so alive as I am now: this poor betrayed cow, leaning on my right shoulder, this bird-boned virago leaning on my left. The deadweight, the flyer; she had to coordinate their steps up the stairs.
The servant Jeanette did her best to look shocked when she saw them. “Make up a bed for Mme. Danton,” Lucile said. Jeanette tucked her under a quilt, on one of the drawing-room sofas; Gabrielle, willing to be babied for once, let her head fall back onto the cushions while Louise Robert took out her hairpins and let the warm dark cloak of hair spread over the sofa’s arm and tumble to the carpet. Lucile brought her hairbrush, and knelt like a penitent, smoothing long easy strokes through the electric mane; Gabrielle lay with her eyes closed, hors de combat. Louise Robert edged onto the blue
