Old men coughed and spat, women hitched up skirts trailing yellow mud, children ran naked in it as if they were country children. It was like Troyes, and very unlike it. In his pocket he had a letter of introduction to an Ile Saint- Louis attorney, Vinot by name. He would find somewhere to spend the night. Tomorrow, he would present himself.
A hawker, selling cures for toothache, collected a crowd that talked back to him. “Liar!” a woman screamed. “Get them pulled out, that’s the only way.” Before he walked away, he saw her wild, mad, urban eyes.
Maitre Vinot was a rotund man, plump-pawed and pugnacious. He affected to be boisterous, like an elderly schoolboy.
“Well,” he said, “we can but give you a try. We … can … but … give … you … a try.”
I can give it a try, Georges-Jacques thought.
“One thing’s for sure, your handwriting is atrocious. What do they teach you nowadays? I hope your Latin’s up to scratch.”
“Maitre Vinot,” Danton said, “I’ve clerked for two years, do you think I’ve come here to copy letters?”
Maitre Vinot stared at him.
“My Latin’s fine,” he said. “My Greek’s fine too. I also speak English fluently, and enough Italian to get by. If that interests you.”
“Where did you learn?”
“I taught myself.”
“How extremely enterprising. Mind you, if we have any trouble with foreigners we get an interpreter in.” He looked Danton over. “Like to travel, would you?”
“Yes, I would, if I got the chance. I’d like to go to England.”
“Admire the English, do you? Admire their institutions?”
“A parliament’s what we need, don’t you think? I mean a properly representative one, not ruined by corruption like theirs. Oh, and a separation of the legislative and executive arms. They fall down there.”
“Now listen to me,” Maitre Vinot said. “I shall say to you one word about all this, and I hope I shall not need to repeat it. I won’t interfere with your opinions—though I suppose you think they’re unique? Why,” he said, spluttering slightly, “they’re the commonest thing, my coachman has those opinions. I don’t run around after my clerks inquiring after their morals and shepherding them off to Mass; but this city is no safe place. There are all kinds of books circulating without the censor’s stamp, and in some of the coffeehouses—the smart ones too—the gossip is near to treasonable. I don’t ask you to do the impossible, I don’t ask you to keep your mind off all that—but I do ask you to take care who you mix with. I won’t have sedition—not on my premises. Don’t ever consider that you speak in private, or in confidence, because for all you know somebody may be drawing you on, ready to report you to the authorities. Oh yes,” he said, nodding to show that he had the measure of a doughty opponent, “oh yes, you learn a thing or two in our trade. Young men will have to learn to watch their tongues.”
“Very well, Maitre Vinot,” Georges-Jacques said meekly.
A man put his head around the door. “Maitre Perrin was asking,” he says, “are you taking on Jean-Nicolas’s son, or what?”
“Oh God,” Maitre Vinot groaned, “have you seen Jean-Nicolas’s son? I mean, have you had the pleasure of conversation with him?”
“No,” the man said, “I just thought, old friend’s boy, you know. They say he’s very bright too.”
“Do they? That’s not all they say. No, I’m taking on this cool customer here, this young fellow from Troyes. He reveals himself to be a loudmouthed seditionary already, but what is that compared to the perils of a working day with the young Desmoulins?”
“Not to worry. Perrin wants him anyway.”
“That I can readily imagine. Didn’t Jean-Nicolas ever hear the gossip? No, he was always obtuse. That’s not my problem, let Perrin get on with it. Live and let live, I always say,” Maitre Vinot told Danton. “Maitre Perrin’s an old colleague of mine, very sound on revenue law—they say he’s a sodomite, but is that my business?”
“A private vice,” Danton said.
“Just so.” He looked up at Danton. “Made my points, have I?”
“Yes, Maitre Vinot, I should say you’ve driven them well into my skull.”
“Good. Now look, there’s no point in having you in the office if no one can read your handwriting, so you’d better start from the other end of the business—‘cover the courts,’ as we say. You’ll do a daily check on each case in which the office has an interest—you’ll get around that way, King’s Bench, Chancery division, Chatelet. Interested in ecclesiastical work? We don’t handle it, but we’ll farm you out to someone who does. My advice to you,” he paused, “don’t be in too much of a hurry. Build slowly; anybody who works steadily can have a modest success, steadiness is all it takes. You need the right contacts, of course, and that’s what my office will give you. Try to work out for yourself a Life Plan. There’s plenty of work in your part of the country. Five years from now, you’ll be nicely on your way.”
“I’d like to make a career in Paris.”
Maitre Vinot smiled. “That’s what all the young men say. Oh well, get yourself out tomorrow, and have a look at it.”
They shook hands, rather formally, like Englishmen after all. Georges-Jacques clattered downstairs and out into the street. He kept thinking about Francoise-]ulie. Every few minutes she flitted into his head. He had her address, the rue de la Tixanderie, wherever that was. Third floor, she’d said, it’s not grand but it’s mine. He wondered if she’d go to bed with him. It seemed quite likely. Presumably things that were impossible in Troyes were perfectly possible here.
All day, and far into the night, traffic rumbled through narrow and insufficient streets. Carriages flattened him against walls. The escutcheons and achievements of their owners glowed in coarse heraldic tints; velvet-nosed horses set their feet daintily into the city filth. Inside, their owners leaned back with distant eyes. On the bridges and at the intersections coaches and drays and vegetable carts jostled and locked their wheels. Footmen in livery hung from the backs of carriages to exchange insults with coalmen and out-of-town bakers. The problems raised by accidents were solved rapidly, in
