not true and he must be made to realize it. He must be made to think. Listen,” the agitation crept back into his voice, “how does he look?”
Tears had sprung into her eyes. “He looks as usual.”
“Does he seem upset? He’s not ill?”
“No, he looks as usual.”
“Dear God,” he said. Wearily, softly, he took his perspiring hand from the doorknob, and wiped it, stiff-fingered, down the sleeve of his other arm. “I need to wash my hands,” he said.
The door closed softly. Eleonore went downstairs, scrubbing at her face with her fist. “There,” she said. “I told you. He doesn’t want to see you.”
“I suppose he thinks it’s for my own good?” Camille laughed nervously.
“I think you can understand his feelings. You have tried to use his affection for you to trap him into supporting you when you put forward policies he disagrees with.”
“He disagrees with them? Since when?”
“Perhaps since his defeat yesterday. Well, that is for you to work out. He doesn’t confide in me, and I know nothing of politics.”
A blank misery had dropped into his eyes. “Very well,” he said. “I can exist without his approbation.” He walked ahead of her to the door. “Good-bye, Cornelia, I don’t think I’ll be seeing much of you from now on.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
In the open doorway he turned suddenly: pulled her towards him, slipped a hand under her breast and kissed her on the lips. Two of the workmen stood and watched them. “Poor you,” Camille said. He pushed her gently back against the wall. Watching him go, she put the back of her hand against her lips. For the next few hours she could feel the phantom pressure of his cupped hand beneath her breast, and she kept it in her guilty thoughts that she had never really had a lover.
A letter to Camille Desmoulins, 11 Nivose, Year II:
I am not a fanatic, or an enthusiast, or a man to pay compliments; but if I should survive you I mean to have your statue, and to carve on it: “Wicked men would have had us accept liberty kneaded together of mud and blood. Camille made us love it, carved in marble and covered in flowers.”
“It isn’t true, of course,” he said to Lucile, “but I shall put it away carefully among my papers.”
“I see you make a very splendid effort to come and speak to me,” Herault said. “You could have turned and gone the other way. I shall begin to think I am a case for your charity, like Barnave. By the way, did you know Saint-Just is back?”
“Oh.”
“Perhaps there is a case for not going so far to antagonize Hebert?”
“My fifth pamphlet is in preparation,” Camille said. “I shall rid the public of that posturing, mindless obscenity, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“It may well be that.” Herault smiled, but not pleasantly. “I know you enjoy a privileged position, but Robespierre doesn’t like defeat.”
“He favors clemency. Very well, there’s been a reverse. We’ll find another way.”
“How? I think it will seem more than a reverse to him. He has no power base, you know—except in patriotic opinion. He has very few friends. He has placed some old retainers of his on the Tribunal, but he has no ministers in his pocket, no generals—he’s neglected all that. His power is entirely in our minds—and I’m sure he knows it. If he can be defeated once, why not twice, why not continuously?”
“Why are you trying to frighten me?”
“For my amusement,” Herault said coolly. “I’ve never been able to understand you, quite. You play on his feelings for you—yet he always says we should leave our personal feelings aside.”
“Oh, we all say that. It is the only thing to be said. But we never do it.”
“Camille, why did you do what you did?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I have really no idea. I suppose you wanted to be running out in front of public opinion again.”
“Do you? Do you think that? People say it is a work of art, that I have never written anything better. Do you think I am proud of my sales?”
“I would be, if they were mine.”
“Yes, the pamphlets are a great success. But what does success matter to me now? I am sick of the sight of all this accumulated injustice and ingratitude and wrong.”
A nice epitaph, Herault thought, should you need one. “Tell Danton—for what it’s worth—and I realize that it may be a liability—the campaign for clemency has my sympathy and support.”
“Oh, Danton and I are not on good terms.”
Herault frowned. “How not on good terms? Camille, what are you trying to do to yourself?”
“Oh …” Camille said. He pushed his hair back.
“Have you been rude about his wife again?”
“No, not at all. Good heavens—we always leave our personal feelings aside.”
“So what’s your quarrel? Something trivial?”
“Everything I do is trivial,” Camille said, with a sudden savage hostility. “Don’t you see that I am a weak and trivial person? Now Herault—is there any other message?”
