and who had a pleasant, loyal, steadfast nature. “At last!” Camille said. “What a relief!” Robespierre was surprised. He approved of the match, true; but she’s only seventeen, he said.
The queues outside the bakers’ shops grew restive. Bread was cheap, but there wasn’t much of it, and it was poor stuff. The Montagnard deputy Chabot took issue with Robespierre about the new constitution; he waved documents in his face. “It fails to abolish beggary from the Republic. It fails to assure bread to those who have none.”
Robespierre was stopped in his tracks. This was the dearest wish of his heart: to ensure bread to those who had none. Every aim apart from this could be picked to pieces, hacked apart, assassinated. Surely this aim was simple, achievable? Yet he could not address the larger problem, because of all the petty problems that got in the way. He said, “I wish I could do that. I wish the poor would be no longer with us. But we are working within the bounds of possibility.”
“You mean that the Committee, with all the powers we have given It—
“You have given the Committee some powers and many more problems, you have charged us with questions we can’t possibly answer. You have given us—for instance—a conscript army to provision. You expect everything from the Committee, and yet you’re jealous of its powers. If I could produce a miracle of loaves and fishes, I suppose you’d say we’d exceeded our mandate.” He raised his voice, for those around to hear. “If there’s no bread, blame the English blockade. Blame the conspirators.”
He walked away. He had never liked Chabot. He tried not to be prejudiced by the fact that Chabot looked, as everyone said, like a turkey: red, mottled, swelling. He had once been a Capuchin friar. It was hard to imagine him obedient to his vows: poverty, chastity. He and Deputy Julien were members of a committee formed to stamp out illegal speculation. Put there, Robespierre supposed, on the principle of setting a thief to … Julien was a friend of Danton, unfortunately. He thought of that egg cradled between Camille’s narrow palms. They said that Chabot was thinking of marrying. She was a Jewess, sister of two bankers called Frei; at least, they claimed that was their name, and that they were refugees from the Hapsburgs. After the marriage, Chabot would be a rich man.
“You dislike foreigners on principle,” Camille said to him.
“It doesn’t seem a bad principle to have, when we are at war with the rest of Europe. What do they want in Paris, all these Englishmen and Austrians and Spaniards? They must have loyalties elsewhere. Just businessmen, people say. What sort of business, I ask myself. Why should they stay here, to be paid in worthless paper and to be at the dictates of the sansculottes? In this city the women who do laundry fix the price of soap.”
“Well, why do you think?”
“Because they’re spies, saboteurs.”
“You don’t understand finance, do you?”
“No. I can’t understand everything.”
“There is often a lot of money to be made out of deteriorating situations.”
“Cambon is our government’s financial expert. He should explain things to me. I will remind him.”
“But you’ve already formed your conclusions. And I suppose you will agree to imprisoning these people on suspicion.”
“Enemy aliens.”
“Yes, you say that now—but will it stop there? Every internment law perverts justice.”
“You must see—”
“I know,” Camille said. “National Emergency, extraordinary measures. You can’t say I’ve been soft on our opponents. I’ve never flinched—and incidentally, why are you delaying the trial of Brissot’s people—but what is the point of combating the tyrants of Europe if we behave like tyrants ourselves? What is the point of any of it?”
“Camille, this isn’t tyranny—these powers we are taking, we may never need to use them, or not for more than a few months. It’s for our self-preservation, our survival as a nation. You say you have never flinched, but I’ve flinched—I flinch all the time. Do you think I’m bloodthirsty? I thought you would have trusted me to do the right thing.”
“I do—yes, I think I do. But do you control the Committee, or are you just their public front?”
“How could I control them?” He threw his hands out. “I’m not a dictator.”
“You affect surprise,” Camille observed. “If you are not in control, is Saint-Just leading you by the nose? I ask you this to remind you not to let your grasp on events slip. And if I do think it is tyranny, I shall tell you. I have the right.”
You see what the Revolution has boiled down to, a more biting concentrate: menials now ministers, and old friends who understand one’s mind. Up to September the Tribunal has condemned no more than thirty-six of the 260 accused brought before it; this ratio will begin to alter. While the issues grow greater, the manpower diminishes; at any one point, the survivors feel they have known each other a long time.
Camille knew that this summer he had made a bad move; he should have left Arthur Dillon to the Republic’s judgement. At the same time, he had demonstrated his personal power. But it was isolation he sensed, as mornings grew fresh, as logs were got in for the winter, as the pale gold sun anatomized the paper leaves in the public gardens. With no particular end in view, he made a chance annotation among his papers:
Pytheus said that in the island of Thule, which Virgil called Ultima Thule, six days’ journey from Great Britain, there was neither earth, nor sea, but a mixture of the three elements, in which it was not possible to walk, or go in a vessel; he spoke of it as a thing which he had seen.
September 2, 1793: Address of the Sans-Culottes Section (formerly known as Jardin-des-Plantes) to the Convention: “Do you not know there is no basis to property other than the extent of physical needs? … A maximum should be fixed to personal fortunes … no one should be able to own more land than can be tilled with a stipulated number of ploughs … . A citizen should not be allowed to own more than one shop or workshop … the industrious workman, tradesman or farmer should be able to get for himself not only those things essential for eking out a bare existence, but also those things that may add to his happiness … .”
Antoine Saint-Just: “Happiness is a new idea in Europe.”
On September 2, the news reached Paris that the people of Toulon had handed their town and their navy over to the British. It was an unprecedented act of treason. France lost sixteen frigates and twenty-six out of her sixty-five ships of the line. This time last year, the gutters ran with blood.
“Look,” Danton said. “You use this. You don’t just let it wash over you.” The noise from
