are we going to do now?” Camille asked.
“We are going to walk a little, and see if anyone recognizes us. You know, I think your father-in-law is almost fond of you.”
“You think that?”
“He is growing used to you. At his age, one likes to have something to complain about. Nevertheless, I think —”
“Why do you want to know if people will recognize you?”
“It is an idea I have. I have heard people say that I am vain. Do you think I am vain?”
“No, it’s not a word I would have applied.”
“To myself I seem an obscure person.”
“Obscure?” This is the prelude, Camille thought, to a shocking outbreak of diffidence; Robespierre had never reconciled himself to fame, and his modesty, if not placated, took a ferocious turn. “I’m sorry if I upset your concentration, when you were making your speech.”
“It’s nothing. Louvet’s quashed. They’ll think twice now before they make another attack on me. I have the Convention”—he cupped his hand—“beautiful.”
“You look very tired, Max.”
“I shall be, when I think about it. Never mind. Something is achieved. You, you look well. You look as if you have plenty of appetite left for revolution.”
“It must be the life of debauchery Brissot’s friends say I lead. It suits me.”
A man checked his pace to look into their faces. He frowned. “Not sure,” Camille said. “Do you want people to recognize you?”
“No. But I wanted a quiet word. There’s almost nowhere one can go without being overheard.”
The exuberance was draining away; often now he had a pinched look, his mouth drawn into a thin, apprehensive line.
“Do you really think that? That people are always listening to your conversations?”
“I know they are.” (If you lived with my sister Charlotte, he thought, you’d not doubt it.) “Camille, I want you to consider more seriously the Brissotin newspapers. We know that they are motivated by malice, but you don’t give them the trouble of inventing things. It looks so bad, especially with Citizeness Danton unwell, that her husband is so seldom at home, and that you are both seen around the town, with women.”
“Max, I spend most of my evenings with the Jacobin correspondence committee. And Gabrielle is not unwell, she is expecting a baby.”
“Yes, but when I spoke with her, earlier this week, I thought she was unwell. And she and Georges are never seen together, they never accept invitations together.”
“They quarrel.”
“What about?”
“Politics.”
“I didn’t think she was that sort of woman.”
“It isn’t an abstract argument. It’s a matter of the way we live our lives now.”
“I don’t want to lecture you, Camille—”
“Yes you do.”
“Very well, then, I do. Stop gambling. Try to get Danton to stop. Stay at home more. Make your wife behave respectably. If you must have a mistress, pick someone discreet, and make a proper arrangement.”
“But I don’t want a mistress.”
“That’s all to the good then. The way you’ve been living is in some sense a reproach to our ideals.”
“Stop there. I never volunteered for these ideals.”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen, Max. For as long as we’ve known each other you’ve been trying to keep me out of trouble. But you’ve known better than to exercise your pompous side with me. A few months ago, you wouldn’t have been talking about ‘a reproach to our ideals.’ You looked the other way. You have a great capacity for ignoring what doesn’t suit you. But now you want to make an issue of it. Or rather, I know who does. Saint-Just.”
“What is going on in your head about Saint-Just?”
“I have to fight him now, while it can do me some good. He called me a liability. So I deduce he wants to get rid of me.”
“Get rid?”
“Yes, get rid of me, disable me, pack me off to Guise, Oh my God, where fierce indignation can no longer tear his heart at the sound of my silly little stutter.”
They almost halted for a moment, to look into each other’s faces. “There’s very little I can do about your personal disagreements. Is there?”
“Except not take his side.”
“I don’t want to take a side. I don’t need to. I have a high regard for both of you, personally, politically—don’t
