He wrote verses, and had a miniature painted by Citizen Benard.
CHAPTER 11
Another diary finished: not one of the red books, but one of the little insignificant brown ones. The early works are a feast of embarrassment, Lucile thought; she had taken to ripping the pages out, to burning them, and because of this the books were falling apart.
Nowadays, what she put in the official diaries—as she thought of them—was very different from what went into the brown notebooks. The tone of the official diaries became more and more anodyne, with the occasional thoughtful or striking passage to titillate or mislead. The private diaries were for dark, precise thoughts: unpalatable thoughts, recorded in a minute hand. When one book was finished she sealed it up in a packet, breaking the seal only to place another one beside it, perhaps a year later.
On a chilly, misty day, footfalls muffled in the streets, the great buildings distant and shimmering, she went into Saint-Sulpice, to the High Altar where she had been married three years before. On the wall letters in red paint told her THIS IS A NATIONAL BUILDING: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, OR DEATH. The Virgin held in her arms a headless child, and her face was battered beyond recognition.
Perhaps if I had not met Camille, she thought, I could have had an ordinary kind of life. No one would have encouraged my fantasies. No one would have taught me to think. When I was eleven, all the possibilities of being ordinary stretched out in front of me. When I was twelve, Camille came to the house. I was committed to him the first time I saw him.
Her life is rewriting itself for her; she believes this.
At the apartment Camille was working in a bad light. He was living on alcohol and sleeping three hours a night. “You’ll ruin your eyes,” she said automatically.
“They’re ruined already.” He put his pen down. “Look, a newspaper.”
“So you are going to do it.”
“I think I must call it more a series of pamphlets, as I shall be the sole author. Desenne is going to print for me. In the first issue—here—I just talk about the British government. I shall point out that, after Robespierre’s recent speech in praise of Danton, anyone who criticizes Danton gives a public receipt for the guineas of Mr. Pitt.” He stopped to write down the last phrase. “It will not really be controversial, but it will be another setback to Danton’s detractors, and it will prepare the way for an appeal for mercy in the courts and the release of some of the suspects.”
“But Camille, do you dare do that?”
“Of course, if I have Danton and Robespierre to back me. Don’t you think?”
She put her hands together. “If they are in agreement,” she said. She had not told him that Fouquier had called.
“They are,” he said calmly. “Only Robespierre is cautious, he needs pushing on a bit.”
“What did he say to you about the Barnave affair?”
“There wasn’t a ‘Barnave affair.’ I went to say good-bye to him. I didn’t think he should have been executed. I told him so.” That was what Fouquier escaped hearing, she thought. “Not that it did him much good for me to absolve him, but it did me good to be forgiven, for whatever part I had in bringing him there.”
“But what did Max say?”
“I think he understood. It wasn’t really his business, was it? I met Barnave at my cousin de Viefville’s apartment in Versailles. I hardly spoke with him, but he took notice of me, as if he thought he would see me again. That night I decided to go to Mirabeau.” He closed his eyes. “The print order is 50,000.”
In the afternoon Louise came. She was lonely, though she didn’t admit it. She didn’t want her mother’s company, which was forced on her if she stayed at home. Angelique had taken the children for a few days; in her absence, and especially when her husband was not in the house, she would become once again a shy girl darting up and down the stairs. Danton’s answer to her lack of occupation was, “Go and spend some money.” But there was nothing she wanted for herself, and she hesitated to make any changes in the apartment. She did not trust her taste; besides, she thought that her husband might prefer Gabrielle’s arrangements left as they were.
A year, eighteen months before, she would have been taken as Danton’s wife to the afternoon salons with their mordant gossip, to sit stiffly among the wives of ministers and Paris deputies, self-possessed women of thirty and thirty-five who had read all the latest books and discussed their husband’s love affairs with drawling boredom. But that had not been Gabrielle’s way; and there was enough of a battle of wits with the visitors she did receive. Either she was tongue-tied, or far too forthright. The things they talked about seemed so trivial that she was convinced that they must have a double meaning to which she was not privy. She had no choice but to join their game; in consideration of her status they had tossed her a book of rules, but they had left her to read it by flashes of lightning.
So—and she could not have predicted this—the apartment round the corner was the most comforting place to be. These days Citizeness Desmoulins kept to her family and a few close friends; she could not be bothered with the stupidities of society, she said. Louise sat in her drawing room day by day, trying to reconstruct the recent past from hints that came her way. Lucile never asked personal questions; herself, she didn’t know any other kind to ask. Sometimes they talked about Gabrielle: softly, naturally, as if she were still alive.
Today Louise said, “You’re very gloomy.”
“I have to finish writing this,” Lucile said. “Then I’ll be with you and we’ll try to cheer up.”
Louise played for a while with the baby, a doll-like creature who could not possibly have been Danton’s child. He talked a lot now—mostly in a meaningless language, as if he knew he were a politician’s child. When he was taken away to sleep, she picked up her guitar and fingered it softly. She scowled. “I don’t think I have any talent,” she said to Lucile.
“You should concentrate when you are playing, and do the easier pieces. But I cannot preach, as I never
