“I don’t think I like his politics. And he frightens me.”
“But his politics are Robespierre’s—which means they are your husband’s, and Danton’s.”
“We shall have to see about that. Saint-Just’s main aim seems to be to improve people, along the lines of some plan that he has in his head, and which—I must say—he has difficulty articulating to the rest of us. Now, you cannot accuse Camille and Georges-Jacques of trying to improve people. In fact quite the opposite, most of the time.”
Herault looked thoughtful. “You’re not stupid, are you, Lucile?”
“Well, I used to be. But intelligence rubs off.”
“The trouble is, with Saint-Just, Camille sets out to antagonize him.”
“Of course he does—and on every level. We may be tainted with pragmatism, but it only needs a clash of personalities to remind us of our principles.”
“Oh dear,” Herault said. “I was planning a seduction, tonight. We seem to have got sidetracked.”
“You might as well have gone to the Jacobins.” She gave him a nice smile. Herault looked depressed.
Whenever he was in Paris, General Dillon called. It was a pleasure to see him, with his splendid height and his chestnut head and his knack of looking younger and younger. Valmy did him good, no doubt; there’s nothing like Victory to perk a man up. Dillon never talked about the war. He’d call in the afternoons, when the Convention was in session. His approach was so interesting that it had to be elevated to a strategy; she was moved to discuss it with Camille, and he agreed that it was marvelously oblique. For whereas Rabbit dropped mournful hints about Camille’s infidelities, and Herault raged at her that she must be unhappy and he could change that, the general simply sat and told her stories, about life in Martinique, or about the splendid silliness of Court life before the Revolution; he told her how his little daughter, Lucile’s age exactly, had been advised never to stand in a strong light, in case her glowing complexion made the fading Queen spiteful. He told her the history of his mad, distinguished Franco-Irish family. He retailed the idiosyncracies of his second wife, Laure, and of various pretty, vacuous mistresses from the past. He described the fauna of the West Indies, the heat, the blue of the sea, the green tangled hillsides that tumbled into the sea, the flowers that blew and rotted in the bud; he described the imbecile ceremonial that attended the Governor of Tobago, alias himself. In sum, he told her how pleasant life had been for a member of an old and distinguished family who had never worried about money or anything else and who was extremely good-looking and polished and in addition highly adaptable.
From there he would go on to tell her what a truly special young man she had married. He could quote at admiring length from Camille’s writings: with some accuracy. He explained to her—to her—that sensitive people like Camille should be allowed to do exactly as they liked, provided it was not criminal, or not too criminal at any rate.
Then, every so often, he would put an arm round her and try to kiss her, and say to her, dear little Lucile, let me make love to you properly. When she said no, he would look incredulous, and ask her why she didn’t enjoy life more. Surely she didn’t think Camille would mind?
What they did not know, these gentlemen, what they did not understand, was—well, anything about her, really. They did not know about the exquisite torture she had devised for herself, the rack upon which her days and weeks were stretched. Quite coldly, she puts herself to the question, and the question is this: what if anything happened to Camille? What if—not to put too fine a point on it—someone assassinated him? (God knows, if she were an assassin, she’d be tempted.) Of course, she has asked herself this before, since ’89 it has been her preoccupation; but now she is more obsessed with him, not less. Nothing had prepared her for this; the received wisdom about a love match is that, after a year’s delirium, the emotions settle down. Nobody had even hinted to her that you could go on falling in love and falling in love, till you felt quite ill with it, spiritually sick and depleted, as if you were losing your essence day by day. If Camille were not here—if he were permanently not here—what would lie before her would be a sort of semi-demi-half-life, dragged out for duty, sick and cold and stumbling towards death; the important part of her would be dead already. If anything happened to him I’d kill myself, she thought; I’d make it official, so at least they could bury me. My mother would look after the baby.
Of course, she didn’t speak about this torture program. People would think she was foolish. Camille, these days, was almost knitting his weaknesses into strengths. Legendre reproached him for not speaking more in the Convention. “My dear Legendre,” he said, “everyone has not your lungs.” You are, his smile suggested, blundering, crass, self-important. His colleagues on the Mountain relied on him for interpreting the ravings of Marat, with whom only he and Freron were on terms. (Marat has a new opponent, a loud-mouthed sansculotte ex-priest who calls himself Jacques Roux.)
“You are two centuries ahead of your time,” Camille told him. Marat, more livid and reptilian by the day, blinked at him. It might have been appreciation.
What Camille wanted now was a Convention without the Brissotins, and the King and Queen on trial. He went avid and bright-eyed into the winter of ’92. When he was at home, she was happy; she could work on her imitations, which (her mother and sister agree) now approach perfection. When he was not at home, she sat by the window and watched for him. She talked to everybody about him, in a very bored tone.
No one was frightened of the allies, for this year at least: or only the quartermasters, supervising the issue of moldy bread and paper-soled boots, watching the peasants spit on the government’s bank notes and hold out their paws for gold. The Republic was younger than her child. This child, his view still largely supine, watched the world with round, obsidian eyes, and smiled indiscriminately. Robespierre called to see how his godson did, and her mother’s old friends came in the afternoons, and gave him their fingers to hold, and told pointless stories about their own children as babies. Camille carried him around and whispered to him, assuring him that his path in life should be made smooth, that his every whim should be attended to, that because of his evident natural wisdom he would never need to go away to any unspeakable school. Her mother fussed over the little thing, showed him the cat and the sky and the trees. But she felt, though she was ashamed of the feeling, that she didn’t want to furnish the baby’s mind; she was a tenant with a short lease.
To reach the house where Marat lives, you walk through a narrow passage between two shops and across a small courtyard with a well in the corner. On the right is a stone staircase with an iron handrail. Go up to the first floor.
After you have knocked, you must withstand the inspection of one, perhaps both of the Marat women. This will take time. Albertine, the sister from some unimaginable childhood, is a fierce, starved scrap of a woman. Simone Evrard has a serene oval face, brown hair, a grave and generous mouth. Today they are not suspicious of their visitor. The way is clear; the People’s Friend sits in his parlor. “I like the way you come running to me,” he says, meaning that he doesn’t like it at all.
“I am not running,” Camille said. “I came here at a furtive slouch.”
Marat at home. Simone, the common-law wife, put in front of them a pot of coffee, bitter and black. “If it is a
