up in her lap. Everything had come to the Place des Piques: baby, cat, piano. “I wanted to find Camille—” he said. “No, no, it doesn’t matter.” He dropped to a knee beside her chair. The cat cleared the opposite arm, in one neat, fearful leap. He thought, I’ve seen that cat approach Robespierre, purring: animals can’t know much.
Lucile put out a delicate hand: she touched his cheek, stroked his forehead, so gently that he hardly felt it.
“Lucile,” he said, “let me take you to bed.” God knows, it was not what he meant to say.
She shook her head. “I’d be frightened of you, Georges. And besides, would it be your bed, or ours? The beds themselves are so intimidating. You have the coronet, but we have such a number of gilt cherubim to cope with. We’re always falling foul of their little gilt fists and feet.”
“Lucile, I beg of you. I need you.”
“No, I don’t think you’d like the break with routine. You ask politely, I say no—isn’t that the way it is? Today is not the day. Afterwards you’d confuse it all in your mind with Robespierre. You’d hate me, which I really couldn’t bear.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t.” His tone changed abruptly. “What do you know about Robespierre?”
“It’s surprising what you find out if you just sit still and listen.”
“Camille knew then—he knew, he must have known what Robespierre was going to do?”
Again she touched his face; that touch, and the softness of her voice, were almost reverential. “Don’t ask, Georges. Better not to ask.”
“Don’t you mind? Don’t you mind what we’ve done?”
“Perhaps I mind—but I know I’m part of it. Gabrielle, you see she can’t bear it—she thinks you’ve damned your soul and hers too. But for myself—I think possibly that when I first saw Camille, I was twelve then, twelve or thirteen—I thought, oh, here comes hell. It doesn’t become me to start squealing now. Gabrielle married a nice young lawyer. I didn’t.”
“You can’t persuade me of that—you can’t say you knew what you were getting.”
“One can know. And not know.”
He took her hand, her wrist, gripped it hard. “Lolotte, this cannot go on for much longer. I am not Freron, I am not Dillon, I am not a man you flirt with, I will not allow you to enjoy yourself at my expense.”
“So, then?”
“And I do mean to have you, you know.”
“Georges, are you threatening me?”
He nodded. “I suppose I am,” he said thoughtfully. “I suppose I must be.” He stood up.
“Well, this is quite a new phase of my existence,” she said. She looked up at him, with a sweet, confident smile. “But you have neglected all the orthodox arts of persuasion, Georges. Is this the best you can do by way of seduction? All you do is glare at me and make the occasional grab. Why don’t you languish? Why don’t you sigh? Why don’t you write me a sonnet?”
“Because I’ve seen where it gets your other beaux,” he said. “Oh, dammit all, girl, this is ridiculous.”
He thought, she wants me really, the bitch. She thought, it takes his mind off things.
He picked up his papers, and went back to his own suite. The cat crept back, and jumped onto her knee and curled up; Lucile stared into the hearth, like an old spinster lady.
Perhaps fourteen hundred people are dead. Compared to the average battlefield, it is a trifle. But think (Lucile does): one life is everything to its possessor, one life is all we have.
The elections for the National Convention were conducted by the usual two-tier system, and, as the nine hundred second-stage Electors walked to their meeting in the hall of the Jacobins, they passed heaps of fresh corpses piled in the street.
There were repeated ballots, until a candidate got an absolute majority. It took a long time. A candidate could offer himself for election in more than one part of the country. It was not necessary to be a French citizen. The variety of candidates was so great that the Electors might have become confused, but Robespierre was always ready to offer guidance. He embraced Danton, tentatively, when Danton was returned with a 91 percent poll in his favor; at least, if you could not say he embraced him, you could say he patted his sleeve. He relished the applause when he himself defeated Petion in a direct contest, and forced him to seek a provincial seat; it was important to him that the Paris deputies form a solid anti-Brissotin bloc. He was both pleased and anxious when the Paris electors returned his younger brother Augustin; he worried a little in case his family name carried undue influence, but after all, Augustin had worked hard for the revolution in Arras, and it was time for him to make the move to the capital. Help and support for me, he thought. He managed a dazzled smile at the way things were going. He looked younger, for a minute or two.
The journalist Hebert did not receive more than six votes in any one ballot; again Robespierre’s face seemed to open, the tense muscles of his jaw relaxed. Hebert has a certain sansculotte following, although he is known to keep a carriage; Hebert
But not everything went smoothly … . The English scientist Priestley seemed to be gathering support, in an elector’s rebellion against Marat. “The need now is not for exceptional talent,” Robespierre advised, “and not for foreign talent. It is for men who have hidden in cellars for the sake of the Revolution. And,” he added, “for butchers even.”
He intended no irony. Legendre was safely elected next day. So was Marat.
His protege Antoine Saint-Just would be in Paris at last, and the Duke of Orleans would be sitting beside the men he had once paid and patronized. Having cast about for a surname, the Duke had adopted the one the people had stuck on him, half in mockery; he was now Philippe Egalite.
A hint of trouble on September 8: “Some jumped-up Brissotin intellectual,” Legendre said, “this Kersaint, has polled enough votes to stop Camille coming through on the first ballot. What are we going to do about it?”
