ROBESPIERRE: Why do you condone the death of a thousand, and balk at two politicians?
DANTON: Because I know them, I suppose, Roland and Brissot. I don’t know the thousand. Call it a failure of imagination.
ROBESPIERRE: If you couldn’t prove things in court, I suppose you could detain your suspects without trial.
DANTON: Could you indeed? It’s you idealists who make the best tyrants.
ROBESPIERRE: It seems a bit late to be having this conversation. I’ve had to take up violence now, and so much else. We should have discussed it last year.
A few days later Robespierre was back at the Duplays’: his head throbbing from three sleepless nights in a row, a giant hand wringing his intestines. Chalk-white and shaky, he sat with Mme. Duplay in the small room filled with his portraits. He didn’t much resemble any of them; he didn’t think he’d ever look healthy again.
“Everything is as you left it,” she said. “Dr. Souberbielle has been sent for. You are under a great strain, and you can’t tolerate any disturbance in your life.” She covered his hand with her own. “We have been like people bereaved. Eleonore has hardly eaten, and I’ve not been able to get two words out of her. You must never go away again.”
Charlotte came, but they told her that he had taken a sleeping draught, and that she should please lower her voice. They would let her know, they said, when he was well enough for visitors.
Sevres, the last day of November: Gabrielle had lit the lamps. They were alone; the children at her mother’s house, the circus left behind in the rue des Cordeliers. “You’re going to Belgium?” she said. This is why he has turned up tonight; to give her this news, and then go.
“You remember Westermann, don’t you? General Westermann?”
“Yes. The man who Fabre says is a crook. You brought him home with you on August 10.”
“I don’t know why he says that. Anyway, whatever Westermann has been, he’s an important man now, and he’s come back from the front himself as a messenger from Dumouriez. That will tell you how urgent it is.”
“Wouldn’t a government courier have been as fast? Has he wings on his heels as a result of his promotion?”
“He has come himself to impress on us the gravity of the situation. I think that Dumouriez would have come in person, if he could have been spared.”
“That tells us something. Westermann can be spared.”
“It’s like talking to Camille,” he grumbled.
“Is it? Do you know you have collected some of his mannerisms yourself? When I knew you at first you never used to wave your hands around so much. They say that if you keep a pet dog, after a while you grow to look like it. It must be something the same.”
She got up and moved to the window, looking out over the lawns crisp with frost; a small November moon showed to her a lost drifting face. “August, September, October, November,” she said. “It seems a lifetime.”
“You like the new house? You are comfortable here?”
“Oh, yes. But I didn’t think I’d be alone here so much.”
“You’d prefer to go back to Paris? It’s warmer at the apartment. I’ll take you tonight.”
She shook her head. “I’m fine here. I’ve got my parents.” She looked up at him. “I will miss you, though, Georges.”
“I’m sorry. It’s unavoidable.”
Darkness was gathering in the corners of the room. The fire blazed up; shadows leapt and plunged across his dark scarred face. Carefully he kept his hands still, left fist in right palm, his body hunched forward to the warmth, his elbows on his knees. “We’ve known for a long time that Dumouriez had problems. He can’t get supplies, and the English have flooded the country with counterfeit money. Dumouriez is quarreling with the War Office—he doesn’t like people safe in Paris querying what he does in the field. And the Convention doesn’t expect to see him propping up the existing order as he does—they expect the Revolution to be propagated. It is a complicated situation, Gabrielle.” He reached forward to put another log on the fire. “Beechwood,” he said. “It burns well.” An owl hooted from the copse. The watchdog grumbled under the window. “Not like Brount,” he said. “Brount just watches, he doesn’t make a noise.”
“So there is an emergency? Dumouriez wants someone to come and see his problems on the spot?”
“Two of the commission have set out already. Deputy Lacroix and I are to go tomorrow.”
“Who is Lacroix?”
“He’s … well … a lawyer.”
“What’s his first name?”
“Jean-Francois.”
“How old is he?”
“I don’t know—forty?”
“Is he married?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“What does he look like?”
Danton thought. “Nothing much. Look, he’ll probably tell me his life story on the journey. If he does, I’ll tell it to you when I get back.”
She sat down, hitched her chair around, to protect her cheek from the heat of the blaze. Face half in shadow, she said, “How long will you be away?”
