at Camille, you strike at the freedom of the press.
CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE,: All right. Then we won’t burn the pamphlets. Perhaps a man who clings to his mistakes with such tenacity is worse than misled. Perhaps soon we shall see behind his arrogant facade the men at whose dictation he has been writing. [
CITIZEN ROBESPIERRE: D’Eglantine! Stay there.
JACOBIN: Robespierre has something to say to you.
CITIZEN FABRE D’EGLANTINE: I can justify myself—
MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY: Guillotine him! Guillotine him!
Lucile Desmoulins to Stanislas Freron:
23 Nivose, Year II
… Come back, come back quickly. There is no time to lose. Bring with you all the old Cordeliers you can find, we need them badly. [Robespierre] has seen that when he doesn’t think and act in accordance with the views of certain people, he is not all-powerful. [Danton] is becoming weak, he is losing his nerve. D’Eglantine is arrested and in the Luxembourg; they are bringing very serious charges … .
I don’t laugh anymore: I don’t play at being a cat; I never touch my piano; I have no dreams; I am nothing but a machine now.
CHAPTER 12
This is our situation now. Danton has asked the Convention to give Fabre a hearing, and they have refused. So? Danton says. He is unwilling to admit that for the moment he is not the Convention’s master, and that He bert disposes of the power in the Sections. “So? I’m not like Robespierre, wringing my hands over a single defeat. I’ve come through this whole thing winning, losing, winning again. There was a time,” he tells Lucile, “when he had nothing but defeats.”
“No doubt that is why he is prejudiced against them.”
“Never mind his prejudices,” he says. “That damned Committee is looking over their shoulder at me now. One mistake and they’re out and I’m in.”
Fighting talk. And yet, this is not the man she knows. Some people say Danton has not fully recovered his health, but he seems fit enough to her. Others say the evident happiness of the second marriage has softened him; but she knows the value of such romantic hogwash. To her mind, it’s the first marriage that is affecting him. Since Gabrielle’s death he lacks something: some final ruthlessness. It’s hard to put into words, and she hopes, of course, that she’s wrong. She believes ruthlessness will be needed.
This, too, is our situation: Robespierre has had Camille reinstated at the Jacobins. At a price: the price of breaking down at the tribune, almost weeping in the face of the bemused Society. Hebert rants in his newspaper about the “one misguided man” who is protecting Camille—for his own personal and unfathomable reasons. Privately, he goes around sniggering.
The Cordeliers Club is seeking an injunction to stop Camille using their name for his pamphlets. Not that it matters, since Desenne refuses to print any further issues, and no other publishers, much as they would like the sale, dare touch it.
“Come and see Robespierre with me,” Danton says to Lucile. “Come on. Pick your baby up and let’s go round there now and have a big emotional scene. A reconciliation. We’ll drag Camille along and make him apologize nicely, and you will strike your Republican Family pose, and Maximilien will be duly edified. I shall be conciliatory in all sorts of practical ways and remember not to slap him on the back in the hearty man-to-man fashion he finds so terrifying.”
She shakes her head. “Camille won’t come. He’s too busy writing.”
“Writing what?”
“The true history of the Revolution, he says. The secret ‘Secret History.’”
“What does he mean to do with it?”
“Burn it, probably. What else would it be fit for?”
“Unfortunately, everything I say seems to make things worse.”
“I don’t know why you should say that, Danton.” Robespierre had been reading—his Rousseau, unfortunately —and now he removed his spectacles. “I don’t see how your saying anything at this point …” The phrase trailed off, in his usual style. For a moment his face seemed naked and desperately harassed; then he replaced his spectacles, and his expression became once more intractable and opaque. “I have really only one thing to say to you. Cut off your contacts with Fabre, repudiate him. If not, I can have nothing more to do with you. But if you will—then we can begin to talk. Accept in all matters the guidance of the Committee, and I will personally guarantee your safety.”
“Christ,” Danton said. “My
Robespierre looked at him speculatively. “Vadier,” he suggested. “Collot. Hebert. Saint-Just.”
“I’d prefer to guarantee my own safety, Robespierre, by my own methods.”
“Your methods are likely to ruin you.” Robespierre closed his book. “Just make sure they don’t ruin Camille.”
Danton was suddenly angry. “Be careful,” he said, “that Camille doesn’t ruin you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hebert is going round talking about Camille, giggling, and saying this is no ordinary friendship, I’m sure.”
“Of course it is no ordinary friendship.”
Is he not understanding, or is he refusing to understand? This is one of his weapons, this professional, cultivated obtuseness. “Hebert is instituting further inquiries into Camille’s private life.”
