can say things that you can’t say. Warn our friends,” she said. “Tell them to be ready to support me.”
“Most of them are not here, Manon.”
She gaped at him. “Where then?”
He shrugged. “Our friends have spirit. But I’m afraid they have no stamina.”
She left, took a cab to Louvet’s house. He wasn’t there. Another cab—home. The streets were crowded, the carriage moved at a walking pace. She called out to the driver to stop. She climbed down, paid him. She began to walk rapidly, then breathlessly, the dark cloth pulled about her face, like a guilty woman in a novel running to meet her lover.
At the gate of her house, the concierge took her by the arm; Monsieur has locked up and gone, he went to the landlord’s apartment, there at the back. She beat on the door. Roland had already left, they said. Where? A house down the street. “Madame, rest just a little, he is safe, take a glass of wine.”
She sat down before the empty grate; it was June after all, and the night was fine, still, warm. They brought her a glass of wine. “Not so strong,” she said. “Cut it with water.” All the same, her head swam.
He was not at the next house; but she found him at the one after that. She found him pacing the floor. She was surprised; she had imagined his long bony frame folded into a chair, coughing, coughing. “Manon,” he said to her, “we must go. Look, I have friends, I have plans. We leave this damn city tonight.”
She sat down. They brought her a cup of chocolate with cream floating on top. She said, “This is a nice thing to have.” The richness soothed her throat, the throat in which words had died.
“You understand?” he said. “There is no question of false heroics, of sitting the situation out. I am compelled to take steps to save myself in case at some future date it is necessary for me to resume office. I must preserve myself if I am to be of any use to the nation. You understand?”
“I understand. I myself, I must go back to the Convention tonight.”
“But Manon—think of your safety, think of our child’s safety—”
She put her cup down. “How strange,” she said. “It’s not late, and yet it feels as if it is.” Their lives were being rolled away around them. They were like the tenants of an empty house; when the removers have finished, you are left with the bare floors, the forgotten bit of cracked china, the dust you have disturbed. They were like the last diners in a cafe, when the clocks are chiming with menace and the waiters are clearing their throats; you must conclude your conversation now, you must split the bill, and go out into the cold street. Rising neatly, she crossed the room to him. He stood still. Reaching up, she kissed his cheek, feeling with her lips the bones of the skull beneath.
“Did you betray me?” he said. “Oh, did you betray me?”
She put her finger softly for a second against his lips, and then her cheek against his, catching for a second the faint mephitic odor of his diseased lungs. “Never,” she said. “Take great care now. Avoid spirits and any meat that is not well cooked. Do not touch milk unless you can get it from somewhere clean. Eat a little poached white fish. Drink an infusion of valerian if you feel agitated. Keep your chest and throat warm, don’t go out in the rain. Take a warm drink to help you sleep. Write to me.”
She closed the door softly behind her. She would never see him again.
CHAPTER 8
“I think we were somewhat—er—infirm of purpose,” Danton said. “House arrest proved not to be very effective. We must remember that for the future. I know we have the little lady secure, but I would rather have had her husband, and Buzot, and some of the others who are now on their way to cozy provincial bolt holes.”
“Exile,” Robespierre said. “Outlawry. I wouldn’t call the condition of a fugitive comfortable. Anyway, they’re gone.”
“To stir up trouble.”
“The troublemakers in the provinces are mostly making royalist trouble.” Robespierre began to cough. “Damn.” He dabbed his lips with his handkerchief. “Most of our Girondist absconders are regicides. Still, I’m sure they’ll try their best.”
Danton was discomfitted. Talking to Robespierre, one tried to make the right noises; but what is right, these days? Address yourself to the militant, and you find a pacifist giving you a reproachful look. Address yourself to the idealist, and you’ll find that you’ve fallen into the company of a cheerful, breezy professional politician. Address yourself to means, and you’ll be told to think of ends: to ends, and you’ll be told to think of means. Make an assumption, and you will find it overturned; offer yesterday’s conviction, and today you’ll find it shredded. What did Mirabeau complain of?
Brissot was on his way to Chartres, his hometown; from there to the south. Petion and Barbaroux were headed for Caen, in Normandy.
“This attic you live in …” Danton said to the priest. He was dismayed. In his experience priests always attended to their comfort.
“It’s not too bad now the winter’s over. Better than prison, anyway.”
“Oh, you’ve been in prison?” The priest didn’t answer. “I wonder, Father, why you dress like a banker’s clerk, or a respectable shopkeeper? Should you not be sansculotte?”
“In the places where I go, I am less conspicuous dressed like this.”
“You minister to the middle classes?”
“Not exclusively.”
“And you find that they cling to the old order? That surprises me.”
“The working people are very much afraid of authority, M. Danton, whoever represents it. And are much
