Lucile has her baby back; infant cries echo through the grand suites, under the painted ceilings, among the documents and the leather-bound law books, where no baby has ever cried before.
Verdun falls on September 1. The enemy, if they choose now to advance on Paris, are two days’ march away.
Robespierre: he kept thinking of Mirabeau now, of how that man had always said, with a great sweep of his arm, “Mirabeau will do this,” or, “the Comte de Mirabeau will answer …”: speaking of himself like a character in a play he was directing. He is conscious now of eyes upon him: Robespierre acts. Or, Robespierre does not act. Robespierre sits still and watches them watching him.
He had refused to sit as a judge on Danton’s special tribunal. He caught the flash of annoyance on Danton’s face: “You are still against the death penalty then, my friend?” And yet, Danton himself had been merciful. There had been very little work for Citizen Sanson. An officer of the National Guard had been executed—by the new beheading machine—and so had the Secretary of the Civil List, but there was an aristo journalist whose death sentence had not been carried out. Camille had slid his hands onto Danton’s tired shoulders and said coaxingly that it was a bad precedent to execute journalists. Danton had laughed: “As you wish. You can’t rescind the verdict, so keep postponing the execution. We’ll lose the man in the system somewhere. Do what you think best, you have my signature stamp.”
It was, in other words, arbitrary: the man’s life depending, Fabre said, on Camille remembering a victory in some exchange of insults with him in ’89, and so feeling magnanimous, and then putting on his cheap-tart act to amuse Danton and cajole him back into a good humor at the end of a hard day. (A secret, Fabre said, that Camille could profitably sell to Danton’s wife.) Fabre was sour about the incident: not, Robespierre thought, because he had a passion for justice, but because he had no similar means of getting his own way. Was he, Robespierre, alone in feeling that the law should not be used and abused like this? It caused a minute revulsion in him, an intellectual flinching. But this feeling came from the old days, before the Revolution. Justice was the servant of policy now; no other position was compatible with survival. Yet it would have sickened him to hear Danton bellowing for heads, like that devil Marat. If anything, Danton lacked energy: was susceptible to individual blandishments, and not just from Camille.
Brissot. Vergniaud. Buzot. Condorcet. Roland. Roland, and Brissot again. In his dreams they wait, laughing, to catch him in a net. And Danton will not act …
These are the conspirators: why, he asked (since he is a reasonable man), does he fear conspiracy where no one else does?
And answered, well, I fear what I have past cause to fear. And these are the conspirators within: the heart that flutters, the head that aches, the gut that won’t digest, and eyes that, increasingly, cannot bear bright sunlight. Behind them is the master conspirator, the occult part of the mind; nightmares wake him at half-past four, and then there is nothing to do but lie in a hopeless parody of sleep until the day begins.
To what end is this inner man conspiring? To take a night off and read a novel? To have more friends, to be liked a bit more? But people said, have you seen how Robespierre has taken to those tinted spectacles? It certainly gives him a sinister air.
Danton wore a scarlet coat. He stood before the Assembly. People cheered; some wept. The noise from the galleries could be heard across the river.
Huge resonant voice in easy command: breathing as Fabre taught him. Two trains of thought running quietly in his head: plans laid, armies deployed, diplomatic maneuvers set afoot; my generals can hold them for a fortnight, and after that (he said in his head), after that I do something else, after that I sell them the Queen if they would buy, or my mother, or I surrender, or I slit my throat.
The second train of thought: actions are being manufactured out of speech. How can words save a country? Words make myths, it seems, and for their myths people fight to win. Louise Gely: “You have to direct them what to do. Once they know what attitude to take, how to face the situation, it is easy for them.” She is so right, the child … the situation is simple. Even a fourteen-year-old can grasp it. Simple words are needed. Few, and short. He draws himself up, puts out a hand to his audience. “Dare,” he says. “Always dare. And again, dare. In this way you will save France.”
At that moment, someone wrote, that hideous man was beautiful.
He felt then like a Roman emperor, present at his own deification. Living gods walk in the streets now: avatars load the cannon, icons load the dice.
Legendre: “The enemy was at the gates of Paris. Danton came, and he saved the country.”
It is very late. Marat’s face, in candlelight, looks livid, drowned. Fabre has found things to laugh at. He has a bottle of brandy at his elbow. At this stage there are perhaps a dozen people in the room. They had not greeted each other by name, and tried to avoid each other’s eyes. Perhaps a year from now they won’t be able to swear to who was there and who wasn’t. An affectedly plebeian Section leader sits by an open window, because the meeting doesn’t like the smell of his pipe.
“It won’t be arbitrary,” a man from the Commune says. “We’ll have trusted patriots, men from the Sections, and we’ll equip them with the full lists. They’ll be able to interview each prisoner, release any innocent persons whom we’ve not already let go and pass sentence on the others. What do you think?”
“I think it’s fine,” Marat says. “As long as there is only one possible sentence.”
“Do you think it will do any good, this travesty?” Camille asks the man from the Commune. “Don’t you think you may as well just wade in and slaughter people indiscriminately?”
Marat says, “No doubt that is what will happen in the end, anyway. We must have the semblance of form. But quickly, citizens, we have to move quickly. The people are hungry and thirsty for justice.”
“Oh, Marat,” Camille says. “Let us have an end to your slogans.”
The sansculotte with the pipe takes it out of his mouth. “You’re not really very good at this, Camille, are you? Why don’t you just go home?”
Camille’s finger stabs at the papers on the table. “This is my business, it’s the minister’s business.”
“Look, if it helps you,” the sansculotte says, “just think of it as an extension of what we did on August 10. On that day we started something; now we’re finishing it. What’s the point of founding a republic if you can’t take the action needed to maintain it?”
“I tell him this and tell him this,” Marat says quietly. “I tell him and tell him. Stupid boy.”
At the center of the table, like a prize, is the Minister of Justice’s signature stamp. This is all that is needed to release a man or a woman from prison. It’s true that Citizen Roland, as Minister of the Interior, should have some say in what happens in the
