“I won’t have this,” Danton said. He put down his glass, leaned foward. He was quite sober, though a few minutes earlier he had seemed not to be. “You know my policies, you know what I am trying to do. Now that the pamphlets have served their purpose, your job is to keep Robespierre in a good humor, and other than that keep your mouth shut. There is no need to take risks. Within two months, all moderate opposition will have crystalized around me. All I have to do is exist.”
“But that is problematical, in my case,” Camille muttered.
“You think I can’t protect my followers?”
“I am sick of being protected,” Camille yelled at him. “I am tired of pleasing you and placating Robespierre and running between the two of you smoothing things over and ministering to your all-devouring egos and your monstrous, arrogant self-conceits. I have had enough of it.”
“In that case,” Danton said, “your use for the future is very limited, very limited indeed.”
The Committee of Justice which Robespierre had proposed fell victim next day to Billaud-Varennes’s revolutionary thoroughness. He told the Jacobins quite bluntly, in Robespierre’s presence, that it had been a stupid idea from the start.
That night Robespierre didn’t sleep. It was not a defeat he brooded upon; it was a humiliation. He could not remember a time when his express wishes had been flouted; or rather, he could remember it, but like some dim intimation from a past incarnation. The Candle of Arras had illuminated another world.
He sat alone at his window, up at the top of the house; watched the black angles of the rooftops, and the stars between. He would have liked to pray; but no words he could formulate seemed likely to move or even reach the blindly purposive deity that had taken his life in hand. Three times he got up to see if the door was barred, the bolt firmly drawn and the key turned in the lock. The darkness shifted, waned; the street below seemed peopled with shades.
Next day Camille went to the Duplay house. He asked after Eleonore’s health, and about her work. “Lucile was saying she would come and see you, but she doesn’t know when it would suit you, because of your classes. Why don’t you ever come and see us?”
“I will,” she said, without conviction. “How’s the baby?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Marvelous.”
“He’s like you, Camille. He has a look of you.”
“Oh, how sweet of you, Cornelia, you’re the first person in eighteen months to say so. May I go up?”
“He’s not at home.”
“Oh, Cornelia. You know that he is at home.”
“He’s busy.”
“Has he been telling you to keep people out, or just to keep me out?”
“Look, he needs time to sort things out in his mind. He didn’t sleep last night. I’m worried about him.”
“Is he very angry with me?”
“No, he’s not angry, I think he’s—shocked. That you should hold him responsible for violence, that you should blame him in public.”
“I told him I reserved the right to tell him when the country became a tyranny. Our consciences are public property, so how else should I tell him?”
“He is alarmed, that you should put yourself in such a bad position.”
“Go and tell him I’m here.”
“He won’t see you.”
“Go and tell him, Eleonore.”
She quailed. “All right.”
She left him standing, with a dragging ache in his throat. She paused when she was halfway up the stairs, to think; then she went on. She knocked. “Camille’s here.”
She heard the scraping of the chair, a creak: no answer.
“Are you there? Camille’s downstairs. He insists.”
He pulled the door open. She knew he’d been standing right behind it. Absurd, she thought. He was sweating.
“You mustn’t let him come up. I told you that. I told you. Why do you take no notice of me?” He was trying to speak very calmly.
She shrugged. “Right.”
Robespierre had rested one hand on the doorknob, sliding it over the smooth surface; he swung the door back and to, in an arc of six inches.
“I’ll tell him,” she said. She turned her head and looked down the stairs, as if she thought Camille might run up and shoulder her aside. “It’s another matter whether he accepts it.”
“Dear God,” he said. “What does he think? What does he expect?”
“Personally I don’t see the sense in keeping him out. You both know he’s put you in a very difficult position. You know you’re going to defend him, and I think he knows it too. It’s not a matter of whether you’ll smooth over your disagreements. Of course you will. You’ll risk your own reputation to vindicate him. Every principle you’ve ever had goes out of the window when you’re faced with Camille.”
“That is not true, Eleonore,” he said softly. “That is not true and you are saying it out of twisted jealousy. It is
