matter of discussing the crimes of the Brissotins,” she said, “you will be here for some time. Let me know if you need a candle.”
“Are you here on your own behalf,” Marat said, “or have you been sent?”
“Anyone would think you didn’t like having visitors.”
“I want to know whether Danton or Robespierre has sent you, or who.”
“I think they’d both welcome your help with Brissot.”
“Brissot makes me sick.” Marat always said this: such a person makes me sick. And they did, they had. “He’s always acted as if he ran the Revolution, as if it were something of his making—setting himself up as an expert on foreign affairs, just because he’s had to skip the country so many times to avoid the police. If it were a matter of that, I would be the expert.”
“We have to attack Brissot on every front,” Camille said. “His life before the Revolution, his philosophy, his associates, his conduct in every patriotic crisis from May ’89 to last September—”
“He cheated me, you know, over the English edition of my
Camille looked up. “Good God, you don’t want us to allege that against him?”
“And ever since he made this trip to the United States—”
“Yes, I know, personally he’s insufferable, but that’s not the point.”
“For me it is. I suffer enough.”
“He was a police spy, before the Revolution.”
“Yes,” Marat said. “He was.”
“Put your name on a pamphlet with me.”
“No.”
“Cooperate, for once.”
“Geese go in flocks,” Marat said, precisely.
“All right, I’ll do it by myself. I only want to know if he has anything on you, anything really destructive.”
“My life has been conducted on the highest principles.”
“You mean nobody knows anything about you.”
“Try not to offend me,” Marat said. It was a plain, useful piece of advice.
“Let’s get on,” Camille said. “We can hold up his actions before the Revolution, which were deliberate betrayals of old future comrades, his monarchist pronouncements, which I have newspaper cuttings to verify: his vacillation in July ’89—”
“Which was?”
“Well, he has that jumpy look about him all the time, someone will be sure to remember that he vacillated. Then his involvement with Lafayette, his part in the attempted escape of the Capet family and his secret communication afterwards with the Capet woman and the Emperor.”
“Good, good,” Marat said. “Very good so far.”
“His efforts to sabotage the Revolution of August 10 and his false accusation that certain patriots were involved in the killings in the prisons. His advocacy of destructive federalist policies. Remembering, of course, that in the early days he was closely involved with certain aristocrats—Mirabeau, for instance, and Orleans.”
“You have a touching faith in the shortness of people’s memories. I dare say it is justified. However, though Mirabeau is dead, Orleans is still sitting beside us in the Convention.”
“But I was thinking ahead, to next spring, say. Robespierre feels Philippe’s position is untenable. He recognizes that he has been of some service to the people, but he would rather that all the Bourbons were out of France. He would like Philippe to take his whole family to England. We could give them a pension, he says.”
“What, we could give Philippe money? How novel!” Marat said. “But yes—next spring—you are right. Let the Brissotins run out their rope for another six months. Then—snap.” Marat looked satisfied.
“I hope we will be able to accuse them all—Brissot, Roland, Vergniaud—of creating obstacles and delays to the King’s trial. Even perhaps of voting to keep him alive. Again, I’m thinking ahead.”
“Of course, there might be other people who will wish delays, obstacles, what have you. In this matter of Louis Capet.”
“I think we can get Robespierre over his horror of the death sentence.”
“Yes, but I don’t mean Robespierre. I think you will find Danton absenting himself at that time. I think it entirely possible that the activities of General Dumouriez in Belgium will call him away.”
“What activities, particularly?”
“There is sure to be a crisis in Belgium soon. Are our troops liberating the country, or are they annexing it, or are they somehow doing both? Who is General Dumouriez making his conquests for? The Republic? Or the defunct monarchy? Or perhaps for himself? Someone will have to go and sort the situation out, and it will have to be someone with the ultimate personal authority. I can’t see Robespierre leaving his paperwork to go wallowing about in the mud with the armies. Much more Danton’s sort of thing—high-level skulduggery, loot, military bands, and all the women of an occupied territory.”
The slow, wheezy drawl in which Marat articulated all this had a chilling effect of his own. “I’ll tell him,” Camille said.