A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

And the main thing is this—he trusts Danton. I’m Danton’s man. And so perhaps I’ve cleared myself. By telling him what he wants to hear.

Saint-Just smiled when he saw him. I’m in favor, he thought. Then he noticed the expression in his eyes. “Is Robespierre in there?”

“Yes, yes, I’ve just come from him.”

Saint-Just shouldered past. He had to flatten himself against the wall. “Leave the door open as a precaution against eavesdroppers,” he called. Saint-Just slammed it behind him. Fabre began to hum. He was working on a new play called The Maltese Orange, and it suddenly came to him that he might turn it into an operetta.

Inside the room Robespierre looked up. “I thought you were getting ready for your trip to the frontier?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What do you think?”

“Of Fabre’s plot? It fits all your preconceived ideas. I wonder if he knows that?”

Robespierre bridled. “You cast doubt on it?”

“Any pretext,” Saint-Just said, “will do to rid us of foreigners and speculators and Hebertists. As long as you bear in mind that Fabre himself is unlikely to be free from blame.”

“So you don’t trust him.”

Saint-Just laughed; as much as he ever did laugh. “The man’s old in deception. You’re aware that he calls himself ‘d’Eglantine’ in commemoration of a literary prize from the Academy of Toulouse?” Robespierre nodded. “In the year when he claims to have taken the prize, no prize was awarded.”

“I see.” Robespierre looked away: a delicate, sly, sidelong glance. “You could not be mistaken?”

Saint-Just flushed. “Of course not. I’ve inquired. I’ve checked the records.”

“No doubt,” Robespierre said meekly, “he thought he ought to have won the prize. No doubt he thought he had been cheated.”

“The man’s founded his whole life on a lie!”

“Perhaps more a self-delusion.” Robespierre smiled distantly. “After all, despite what I said, he’s not a great poet. Just a mediocre one. This is petty, Saint-Just. How much time have you wasted on it?” The satisfaction wiped itself out of Saint-Just’s face. “You know,” Robespierre went on, “I’d have liked to win one of those literary prizes myself—something distinguished, not local stuff—Toulouse or somewhere.”

“But those prizes were institutions of the old regime.” Saint-Just sounded hurt. “That’s done with, finished. It’s from before the Revolution.”

“There was such a time, you know.”

“You are too much wedded to the manners and appearances of the old regime.”

“That,” Robespierre said, “is a very serious accusation.”

Saint-Just looked as if he would rather back down. Robespierre rose from his chair. He was the shorter by perhaps six inches. “Do you wish to replace me, with someone more thoroughly revolutionary?”

“I have no such thought, I protest.”

“I feel you wish to replace me.”

“This is a mistake.”

“If you attempt to replace me, I will look for your part in this plot and I will demand your head in the Convention.”

Saint-Just raised his eyebrows. “You are deluded,” he said. “I am going to the armies.”

Robespierre’s voice reached out to him as he crashed out of the room: “I’ve known about Fabre’s prize for years. Camille told me. We laughed about it. What does it matter? Am I the only one who knows what matters? Am I the only one with any sense of proportion at all?”

Maximilien Robespierre: “Over the last two years, 100,000 men have been slain as a result of treason and weakness; it is our feeble attitude towards traitors that is our undoing.”

The Palais de Justice: “You seem unhappy, cousin,” Camille said.

Fouquier-Tinville shrugged. His dark face was morose. “We’ve been in court for eighteen hours. Yesterday we started at eight in the morning and finished at eleven at night. It is tiring.”

“Imagine what it’s like for the prisoner.”

“I really can’t imagine that,” the Public Prosecutor said truthfully. “Is it a fine night?” he asked. “I could do with some fresh air.”

He had no feelings, one way or the other, about trying women on capital charges; he was sensitive, however, to the questions it raised in some minds. The guillotine allowed some dignity in death; the ordeal came beforehand. He liked his prisoners in better condition than this one—scruffy, in need of medical attention. He had organized a man to stand by and fetch her glasses of water, but so far water had not been needed, and neither had the smelling salts. It was after midnight now; a jury retiring at this hour was unlikely to agonize over their verdict.

“Hebert, yesterday,” he said abruptly. “Terrible mess. What he has to do with it, why I had to call him, God knows. I take a pride in my work. I’m a family man—I don’t want to hear that sort of thing. The woman showed dignity in her replies. She got sympathy from the crowd.”

Hebert had alleged yesterday that, in addition to her other crimes, the woman prisoner had sexually abused her nine-year-old son; that she had taken him into bed beside her, and taught him to masturbate. His guardians had caught him at it, Hebert said, and—tut-tut, where did you learn such behavior? Mama taught me, said the shifty, frightened little boy. Hebert adduced documentary evidence—the child had freely signed a statement about it. The