“I think it would be criminal to try. Look, Danton, you must see where their policies tend. They are for the provinces and against Paris—they are federalists. They want to split the nation into little parts. If that happens, if they get their way, what chance have the French people against the rest of Europe?”
“A greatly reduced chance. None.”
“Just so. Therefore their policies tend to the destruction of the nation. They are treasonable. They conduce to the success of the enemy. Perhaps—who knows—perhaps the enemy has inspired them?”
Danton raised a finger. “Stop there. You’re saying, first they start a war, then they make sure we lose it? If you want me to believe that Petion and Brissot and Vergniaud are agents of the Austrians, you’ll have to bring me proper proofs, legal proofs.” And even then, he thought, I won’t believe you.
“I’ll do my best,” Robespierre said: earnest schoolboy, pitting himself at the task. “Meanwhile, what are we going to do about the Duke?”
“Poor old Philippe,” Danton said. “He deserves something, after all his hard work. I think we should encourage the Parisians to elect him to the new Assembly.”
“National Convention,” Robespierre corrected. “Well, if we must.”
“And then there’s Marat.”
“What does he want?”
“Oh, he doesn’t ask anything, not for himself—I simply mean that he’s someone we must come to terms with. He has an enormous following among the people.”
“I accept that,” Robespierre said.
“You will have him with you at the Commune.”
“And the Convention? People will say Marat’s too extreme, Camille, too—but we must have them.”
“Extreme?” Danton said. “The times are extreme. Armies are extreme. This is a crisis point.”
“I don’t doubt it. God is with us. We have that comfort.”
Danton rolled around in his mind this astonishing statement. “Unfortunately,” he said at last, “God has not yet furnished us with any pikes.”
Robespierre turned his face away. It is like playing with a hedgehog, Danton thought, you just touch its nose and in it goes and all you’ve got to negotiate with is spikes. “I didn’t want this war,” Robespierre said.
“Unfortunately, we’ve got it, and we can’t keep insisting it belongs to somebody else.”
“Do you trust General Dumouriez?”
“He’s given us no reason not to.”
Robespierre’s mouth set in a wry line. “That’s not enough, is it? What has he done to convince us he’s a patriot?”
“He’s a soldier, there’s a presumption of loyalty to the government of the day.”
“That presumption was ill-founded in ’89, when the French Guards came over to the people. They followed their natural interests. Dumouriez and all our other dashing aristocratic officers will soon follow theirs. I wonder about Dillon, Camille’s friend.”
“I didn’t say the loyalty of the officers is assured, I said that the government takes it for granted till they show otherwise. On any other terms, it would be impossible to have an army.”
“May I give you a word of advice?” Robespierre’s eyes were fixed on Danton’s face, and Danton thought, this is not advice I shall like. “You begin to talk too much of ‘the government.’ You are a revolutionary, the Revolution made you, and in revolution the old presumptions do not hold good. In times of stability and peace it may be possible for a state to deal with its enemies by ignoring them, but in times such as these we have to identify them and take them on, tackle them.”
Tackle them how? Danton wondered. Reason with them? Convert them? Kill them? But you won’t have killing, will you, Max? You don’t hold with it. Out loud, he said, “Diplomacy can limit the war. While I’m in office I shall do what I can to keep England out. But when I’m not in office—”
“You know what Marat would say? He’d say, why should you ever be out of office?”
“But I intend to sit in the Convention. That’s my stage, that’s where I’ll be effective—you can’t mean to tie me to a desk. And as you know quite well, a deputy can’t be a minister.”
“Listen.” Robespierre eased out of a pocket his little volume of
“Oh good, story time,” Danton said.
Robespierre opened it at a marked page. “Listen to this. ‘The inflexibility of the laws can in some circumstances make them dangerous and cause the ruin of a state in a crisis … if the danger is such that the machinery of the laws is an obstacle, then a dictator is appointed, who silences the laws.’” He closed the book, raised his eyes questioningly.
“Is that a statement of fact,” Danton inquired, “or is it prescriptive?”
Robespierre said nothing.
“I am afraid I am not impressed by that, just because you have read it out of a book. Even out of Jean- Jacques.”
“I want to prepare you for the arguments that people will throw at you.”
“You had the passage marked, I see. In future, don’t bother to draw the conversation round. Just ask me straight off what you want to know.”
