you.
GELY: We have only one child.
MME. LY: He wants to kill her like he killed his first wife.
GELY: Be quiet.
DANTON: Oh, let her say it. Let her get it out of her system.
GELY: We don’t understand why you want her.
DANTON: I have a certain feeling for her.
MME. GELY: You might at least have the grace to say you love her.
DANTON: It seems to me that’s something you find out about a few years on.
GELY: There are more suitable people.
DANTON: That’s for me to decide, isn’t it?
GELY: She’s fifteen.
DANTON: I’m thirty-three. Marriages like that are made every day.
GELY: We thought you were older than that.
DANTON: She’s not marrying me for my looks.
GELY: Why not a widow, someone experienced?
DANTON: Experienced in what? You know, if you think I have this gigantic sexual appetite, it’s just a myth I put about, I’m quite normal really.
MME. GELY: Please.
DANTON: Perhaps after all you should send this female out of the room.
GELY: I meant experienced in bringing up a family.
DANTON: The children are attached to her. As she is, to them. Ask her. Also, I don’t want a middle-aged woman, I want more children. She knows how to run a household. My wife taught her.
GELY: But you entertain, you receive important visitors. She wouldn’t know about all that.
DANTON: Anything I decide on is good enough for them.
MME. GELY: You are the most arrogant person alive. It’s beyond belief.
DANTON: Well, if you do feel so sorry for my friends, you can always come down and advise her. If you feel qualified. Look, she can have an army of servants if she wants. We can move to a bigger place, that might be a good thing all round, I don’t know why I stay here, habit I suppose. I’m a rich man. All she has to do is to say what she wants and she can have it. Her children will inherit from me equally with the children of my first marriage.
GELY: She isn’t for sale.
DANTON: She can have a bloody private chapel and a priest of her own, if she wants. As long as he’s a priest loyal to the constitution.
LOUISE: Monsieur, I’m not marrying you in a civil ceremony. I may as well tell you that now.
DANTON: I beg your pardon, my love?
LOUISE: What I mean is, all right, I’ll go through that silly business at City Hall. But there must be a real marriage, too, with a real priest who hasn’t taken the oath.
DANTON: Why?
LOUISE: It wouldn’t be a proper marriage otherwise. We’d be living in a state of sin, and our children would be illegitimate.
DANTON: Little fool—don’t you know God’s a revolutionary?
LOUISE: A proper priest.
DANTON: Do you know what you’re asking?
LOUISE: Or not at all.
DANTON: You’d better think again.
LOUISE: I’m trying to make you do the right thing.
DANTON: I appreciate that, but when you’re my wife you’ll do as you’re told, and you can begin now.
LOUISE: That’s the only condition I’m making.
DANTON: Louise, I’m not used to having conditions made to me.
LOUISE: This is a good start.
Having failed in their offensive against Marat, the Girondist deputies set up a new committee, to investigate those persons who—they say—are prejudicing the authority of the National Convention. This committee arrests Hebert. Pressure from the Sections and the Commune forces his release. May 29, the Central Committee of the Sections goes into “permanent session”—what a fine, crisis-ridden sound it has, that term! May 31, the tocsin rings at three in the morning. The city gates are closed.
Robespierre: “I invite the people to demonstrate in the Convention itself and drive out the corrupt deputies … .
