“You do that. As for Brissot—looked at in a certain way, it becomes obvious that he was conspiring against the Revolution all along. Yet he and his cronies, they have entrenched themselves—and it will need vigor to expel them from public life.”
His habituation, now, to the current of Marat’s speech made him look up. “You do mean that, I suppose—expel them from public life? You don’t mean anything worse, do you?”
“Just when one imagined you were beginning to face reality,” Marat said. “Or is this some hope of your two queasy masters? Robespierre knew in September what had to be done, in the crisis; but since then, oh, he has grown very nice.”
Camille sat with his head resting on his hand. He twisted a curl of hair around his finger. “I’ve known Brissot a long time.”
“We have known evil since the moment of our births,” Marat said, “but we do not tolerate it on that account.”
“That is just phrase making.”
“Yes. Cheapskate profundity.”
“It is a pity. Kings have always killed their opponents, but we were supposed to reason with ours.”
“At the front, people die for their mistakes. Why should politicians be more gently treated? They made the war. They deserve a dozen deaths, each of them. What can we try them for, except for treason, and how can you punish treason, except by death?”
“Yes, I see.” Camille began drawing patterns with his fingernail on the dusty table before them, but stopped when he realized what he was doing.
Marat smiled. “There was a time, Camille, when aristocrats flocked to my house, wanting my cure for the consumption. Their carriages sometimes blocked the streets. I kept a handsome equipage myself. My dress was immaculate, and I was known for the calm graciousness of my manner.”
“Of course,” Camille said.
“You were a schoolchild, you know nothing about it.”
“Did you cure consumption?”
“Sometimes. When there was enough faith. Tell me, do you people who began the Cordeliers ever go there now?”
“Sometimes. Other people run it. That’s not a problem.”
“The sansculottes have taken over.”
“In effect.”
“While you move in higher spheres.”
“I know what you are saying. But we are still quite able to handle a street meeting. We aren’t drawing-room revolutionaries. One doesn’t have to live in squalor—”
“Enough,” Marat said. “It is just that I am exercised about our sans-culottes.”
“Jacques Roux, this priest—but that’s not really his name?”
“Oh no—but then perhaps you think Marat is not mine?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No. But idiots like Roux divert the minds of the people. When they should be thinking of purifying the Revolution, they encourage them to loot grocers’ shops.”
“There is always someone ready to pose as the champion of the oppressed poor,” Camille said. “I don’t know what is the use of it. The situation of the poor does not change. It is just that the people who think it can change are admired by posterity.”
“Just so. What they will not realize, what they will not accept, is that the poor are going to be driven like pack animals through this Revolution and every other. Where would we have been in ’89 if we had waited for the sansculottes? We made the Revolution in the cafes and took it out onto the streets. Now Roux wants to kick it into the gutter. And every one of them—Roux and all that mob—are agents of the allies.”
“Knowingly, you mean?”
“What does it matter if they serve the enemy interests because they’re wicked, or because they’re stupid? They do it. They sabotage the Revolution from within.”
“Even Hebert is beginning to speak out against them.
Marat spat on the floor. Camille jumped violently. “They are not ultra-revolutionaries. They are not revolutionaries at all. They are atavists. Their idea of social betterment is a god in the sky who throws down bread every day. But a fool like Hebert wouldn’t see that. No, I have no more affection for Pere Duchesne than you have.”
“Perhaps Hebert is a secret Brissotin?”
Marat laughed sourly. “Camille, you progress, you progress. Hebert has defamed you, I think—and yes, you’ll have his head, when the time comes. But a few others will fall, before that one. Let’s, as the women say, let’s get Christmas over, and then we’ll see what we can do to put this Revolution on the right lines. I wonder if our masters realize what assets we are? You with your sweet smile, and me with my sharp knife.”
Hebert, Le Pere Duchesne, on the Rolands:
Some days ago a half-dozen of the sansculottes went in deputation to the house of the old humbug Roland. Unfortunately they arrived just as dinner was being served … . Our sansculottes pass along the corridor and arrive in the antechamber of the virtuous Roland. They are unable to make their way through the crowd of lackeys that fill it. Twenty cooks bearing the finest fricassees cry, “Take care, clear the way, these are the virtuous Roland’s entrees.” Others carry the virtuous Roland’s hors d’oeuvres, others
