A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

“What does he say Legendre has done?”

“He’s your friend, isn’t he? I went to Robespierre and said, we must stop the Terror.”

“You said that?”

“He said, I entirely agree. He does, of course, he hates the killing, it’s only me who took so long to see … . So I said, Hebert is too powerful. He’s entrenched at the War Ministry and the Commune, he’s got his newspaper circulating to the troops—and Hebert will not agree to stop the Terror. It touched his pride. He said, if I want to stop it, I will, even if I have to cut off Hebert’s head first. All right, I told him, think about it for twenty-four hours and then we’ll decide how to move in on him. I came home and drafted a pamphlet against Hebert.”

“You never learn, do you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You were bewailing the Gironde. Your part in their downfall.”

“But this is Hebert,” Camille said uncomprehendingly. “Look, don’t confuse me. Hebert’s the obstacle to stopping the Terror. If we kill him, we won’t need to kill anyone else. Anyway, Robespierre—in that twenty-four hours he started to temporize. He came over all twitchy and indecisive. When I went back he said, ‘Hebert is very powerful, but he is right about some things, and he could be very useful if he were under our control.’” Two-faced little bastard, Danton thought; what’s he up to? “‘It might be better,’ he said, ‘if we could find a compromise. We don’t want anymore unnecessary bloodshed.’ For once I wished for Saint-Just. I really thought he was going to do it, you know, and then—” He made an exasperated gesture. “Saint-Just might have been able to push him into some action.”

“Action?” Danton said. “He won’t take action. He’s got no idea when it comes to action. Unnecessary bloodshed, oh my. Violence, how deplorable. He wears me out with his rectitude. That bugger couldn’t boil an egg.”

“Oh no,” Camille said. “Don’t, don’t.”

“So what does he want to do?”

“He won’t be pinned down to an opinion. Go and see him. Just take in what he says. Don’t argue.”

Danton thought, but that is how they used to talk about me. He pulled Camille into his arms. His body seemed strange and precarious, made of shadows and angles. Camille buried his head in his shoulder; and said, “You really are a shocking and cynical man.”

For a moment or two they didn’t speak. Then Camille pulled away and looked up at him. His hands rested lightly on Danton’s shoulders. “Has it ever occurred to you that Max feels the same basic contempt for you as you do for him?”

“He feels contempt for me?”

“It is something he feels very readily.”

“No, I hadn’t thought that.”

“Well, the whole world isn’t driven by your appetites, and people who are not feel themselves your superior, naturally. He struggles very hard to make allowances for you. He is not tolerant, but he is charitable. Or perhaps it is the other way around.”

“One becomes tired of analyzing his character,” Danton said. “As if one’s life depended on it.”

He had intended to go back to Louise for an hour. He stood at the corner of the Cour du Commerce. He had become used to talking to her, recounting everything that happened and what had been said, waiting for her comments. He told her things he would never have told Gabrielle; her very lack of involvement, lack of knowledge made her valuable to him. But just now, there was nothing to say. He felt a great inarticulate weight inside him. He looked at his watch. It was possible, though not likely, that the Incorruptible would be at home at this hour, and while he stretched his legs in crossing the river he could think what to say. He glanced up at his own lighted window, then strode off vengefully into the evening.

The lanterns were being lit, swinging giddily from ropes in the narrow alleys between the houses, or hanging from iron brackets. There were more of them now than there had been before the Revolution: lights against the conspirators, against the counterfeiters, against the dark night of the Duke of Brunswick. In ’89 they had been hanging up an aristo, and he had asked, “Do you think the light will shine brighter afterwards?” And Louis Suleau, expressing his surprise at being still alive: “Whenever I pass a lamppost, I see it stretch out towards me, covetously.”

Two young boys passed him, with cheerful country faces and running noses; they were selling rabbits to the townsfolk, and they carried the animals slung upside down on poles, bloodstained bundles caught in the field in traps. Someone will rob them, he thought, and then they will have neither money nor rabbits on a pole; as they passed him the furry corpses looked meager, little flesh on the swinging bones. Two women quarreled in the door of a cookshop, fists on hips; the river was a smudged channel of yellow and dirty gray, creeping up at the winter like the onset of a wasting disease. People hurried off the streets, to be shut away from the city and the night.

The carriage was new, and remarkable because it was smart; even in the gloom you could see fresh polish on new paint. He caught a glimpse of a round, pale face, and the coachman drew up beside him with a ponderous creak of harness; above it, the squeak of the owner’s voice. “My dear Danton, is it you?”

He halted unwillingly. The horses breathed wetly into the raw, wet twilight. “Hebert, is it you?”

Hebert stuck his head out. “So it is. One recognizes your bulk. My dear Danton, it grows dark, what are you doing, walking the streets in this democratic fashion? It is not safe.”

“Don’t I look as if I can take care of myself?”

“Of course, but don’t you realize, there are gangs of armed robbers—can’t I take you somewhere?”

“Not unless you’re prepared to go back the way you came.”

“Of course. No trouble.”

“All right.” He spoke to the coachman. “You know Robespierre’s house?”