that was nothing new. He put out a hand, ruffled his cousin’s hair. Camille flicked his head away as if a wasp had touched him. Fouquier took it quietly. He was in a good humor—looking forward to the bottle of wine he had promised himself when it was all over; he tried not to drink during the big cases. He felt, however, that sleep might elude him: or bring his nightmares back. Perhaps his cousin, with whom he really spent too little time, would like to sit up and talk. For two boys from the provinces, he thought, we are doing extremely well these days.
Soon after eleven the next morning Henri Sanson entered her cell for the preparations. He was the son of the man who had executed her husband. She wore a white dress, a light shawl, black stockings and a pair of high-heeled plum-colored shoes, which during her imprisonment she had carefully preserved. The executioner tied her hands behind her back and cut off the hair which, according to her maid, she had thought it proper to “dress high” to meet her judge and jury. She did not move, and Sanson did not allow the steel to touch her neck. Within a few seconds the long tresses, once the color of honey and now streaked coarsely with gray, lay on the floor of the cell. He scooped them up to be burned.
The tumbrel waited in the courtyard. It was an ordinary cart, once used for carrying wood, now with planks across it for seats. At the sight of it, she lost her composure; she gaped in fear, but she did not cry out. She asked the executioner to untie her hands for a moment, and when he did so she squatted in a corner, by a wall, and urinated. Her hands were tied again, and she was put into the cart. Under the shorn hair and the plain white cap, her tired eyes searched for pity in the faces around her. The journey to the place of execution lasted for an hour. She did not speak. As she mounted the steps, paid, indifferent hands kept her balanced. Her body began to shake, her limbs to give way. In her blindness and terror, she stepped on the executioner’s foot. “I beg your pardon, Monsieur,” she whispered. “I did not mean to do it.” A few minutes after noon her head was off: “the greatest joy of all the joys experienced by Pere Duchesne.”
CHAPTER 10
Both the monarchs are dead, the he-tyrant and the she-tyrant. You’d think there’d be a feeling of freedom, a feeling inside; Lucile finds she doesn’t have it. She had pressed Camille for details of the Queen’s last hours, anxious to know whether she had been worthy of a place in history; but he seemed reluctant to talk about it. In the end he said that, as she very well knew, nothing would induce him to attend the execution. Hypocrite, she said. You ought to go and see the results of your actions. He stared at her. I know how people die, he said. He made her an old regime bow, very fulsome and ironic, picked up his hat and went out. He seldom quarreled with her, but revenged himself by mysterious absences, of between ten minutes and several days in duration.
He was back within the hour: could they give a supper party? The notice was very generous, Jeanette said tartly. But good food in sufficient quantity can always be procured if you have money and know where to go. Camille disappeared again, and it was Jeanette, out shopping, who found out what there was to celebrate; the Convention had heard that afternoon that the Austrians had been defeated in a long and bloody battle at Wattignies.
So that night they drank to the latest victory, to the newest commanders. They talked of the progress against the Vendee insurgents, of success against the rebels of Lyon and Bordeaux. “It seems to me the Republic is prospering immensely,” she said to Herault.
“The news is good, yes.” But he frowned. He was preoccupied; he had asked the Committee to send him to Alsace in the wake of Saint-Just, and he was to leave soon, perhaps tomorrow.
“Why did you do that?” she asked him. “We’ll be dull without you. I’m pleased you could come tonight, I thought you might be at the Committee.”
“I’m not a lot of use to them these days. They tell me as little as possible. I learn more from the newspapers.”
“They don’t trust you anymore?” She was alarmed. “What’s happened?”
“Ask your husband. He has the ear of the Incorruptible.” A few minutes later he rose, thanked her, explained that there were last-minute preparations. Camille stood up, and kissed Herault’s cheek. “Come back soon. I shall so much miss our regular exchange of veiled abuse.”
“I doubt it will be soon.” Herault’s voice was strained. “At least, at the frontier I can do useful work, and I can see the enemy, and know who they are. Paris is becoming a place for scavengers.”
“I apologize,” Camille said. “I can see I’m a waste of your time. Can I have my kiss back?”
“I swear,” someone said lazily, “that if you two were to mount the scaffold together you’d quarrel over precedence.”
“Oh, I fancy I’d have the advantage,” Camille said. “Though I cannot imagine which way it lies. My cousin decides the order of execution.”
There was a choking sound, and somebody put his glass down hard. Fabre stared at them, red-faced. “It’s not funny,” he said. “It’s in the worst taste imaginable, and it’s not even funny.”
There was a silence, into which Herault dropped his good-byes. After he had gone the conversation resumed with a forced hilarity, which Fabre led. The party broke up early. Later, lying in bed, Lucile asked, “What happened? Our parties never fail, never.”
“Oh,” Camille said, “no doubt it is the end of civilization as we know it.” Then he added, tiredly, “It’s probably because Georges is away.” He turned away from her, but she knew that he was lying awake, listening to the sounds of the city by night: black eyes staring into black darkness.
Something’s amiss, she thought. At least, since Saint-Just left Paris, Camille was more with Robespierre. Robespierre understood him; he would find out what was wrong and tell her.
Next day she called on Eleonore. If it was true that Eleonore was Robespierre’s mistress, it didn’t make her any happier, certainly no more gracious. She was not slow to bring the conversation round to Camille.
“He,” she said with disgust, “can make Max do anything he wants, and nobody else can make him do anything they want at all. He’s just always very polite and busy.” She leaned forward, trying to communicate her distress. “He gets up early and deals with his letters. He goes to the Convention. He goes to the Tuileries and transacts the Committee’s business. Then he goes to the Jacobins. At ten o’clock at night the Committee goes into session. He comes home in the small hours.”
“He drives himself very hard. But what do you expect? That’s the kind of man he is.”
