extricate her? If I’m not pregnant, she said, it’s not for the want of trying. Her mother shuddered. He is a savage, she said.
David of the Police Committee called, with another deputy, and demanded to see Danton on business. Angelique showed them the door. As they departed, with certain ungallant threats, squawking about their authorization, Angelique said something dark in Italian. They don’t, she said, plan that he should have an easy time when he recovers.
At the Desmoulins’s apartment, Fabre sat and worked himself into a panic. “If we are to have fixed prices,” he said, “then we must have fixed wages. What I want to know is, what’s the official daily rate for a spy? How, please, are we going to win any battles when so much of the able-bodied population is employed in spying for the Committee?”
“Are they spying on you?”
“Of course they are.”
“Have you told Robespierre?”
Fabre looked at him wildly. “Tell him how? Tell him what? My affairs are so complicated that I lie awake at night trying to explain them to myself. I am being harassed. I am being forced into difficulties. Do you think that officious chit will let me see Georges?”
“No. Anyway, why should he listen? If you can’t tell Robespierre, why should Georges concern himself?”
“There are reasons.”
“You mean you’ve already dragged his name into it.”
“No. I mean he is under certain obligations to me.”
“I should have thought it was the other way around, and I should have thought that one of your obligations would have been to keep him out of any consequences of your inept fumbling with the stock market.”
“There’s more to it than that, it’s—”
“Fabre, don’t tell me. I’d rather not know.”
“It won’t be any use your saying that to the police.”
Camille put his finger to his lips. Lucile came in. “I heard,” she said.
“Just Fabre’s shock tactics. He loses his head.”
“That is an unfortunate phrase,” Lucile said.
Fabre jumped up. “You’re persecuting me. Your hands aren’t so clean. My God,” he said. He drew his finger across his throat. “When you fall between two stools, Camille, nobody’s going to help you up. They’re just going to stand and laugh.”
“He waxes metaphorical,” Lucile said.
“The whole thing—” Fabre made a shape with his hands, and then exploded it—“the whole thing is splitting apart like rotten fruit.” Suddenly he was beside himself. “For God’s sake, Camille, put in a good word for me with Robespierre.”
“Yes, all right,” Camille said hurriedly. He wanted to placate him, stop him continuing the scene in front of Lucile. “Do keep your voice down, the servants can hear you. What do you want me to say to Robespierre?”
“If my name should come up,” Fabre said, breathing hard, “just drop into the conversation that I’ve—that I’ve always been a patriot.”
“Sit down and calm yourself,” Lucile suggested.
Fabre looked round, distractedly. He seized his hat. “Got to go. Beg your pardon, Lucile. See myself out.”
Camille followed him. “Philippe,” he whispered, “there are a lot of what Robespierre calls small fry who have to be landed before you need worry. Try to ride this out.”
Fabre’s mouth opened a fraction. “Why did you call me that? Why did you call me by my first name?”
Camille smiled. “Take care,” he said.
He returned to Lucile. “What were you whispering?” she asked.
“Consolation.”
“You are not to keep things from me, please. What has he done?”
“In August—you have heard of the East India Company? Good, because we have made quite a lot of money out of it. You remember the share prices fell, then they went up again—it was just a matter of buying and selling at the right time.”
“My father mentioned it. He said he expected you did very well out of it. My father has some respect for your inside information, but he says, in my day, of course, they would simply have been called crooks, but in my day the august and virtuous members of the National Convention didn’t exist to set these things up for each other.”
“Yes, I can imagine your father saying that. Does he know how it was managed?”
“Probably. But don’t try and explain it to me. Just tell me the consequences.”
“The company was to be liquidated. There was a discussion in the Convention about how it was to be done. Perhaps the liquidation was not carried out in quite the way the Convention intended. I don’t know.”
“But you do know, really?”
“Not the details. It does seem that Fabre may have broken the law—which we didn’t do in our earlier dealings—or he may be about to break it.”
