Robespierre flung out a hand, palm towards Danton; so theatrical, the gesture, that Fabre might have coached him.
“They ought to make a statue of you,” Danton said, “in that position. Come on, you know what I’m talking about. I know you weren’t around in the Annette days, but I can tell you, he furnished us with some entertainment, your friend—afternoons languishing semi-respectably in Annette’s drawing room, and evenings over at the Ile de la Cite, committing unnatural acts among the affidavits. You never met Maitre Perrin, did you? There were others, of course.” Danton laughed. “Take that look off your face—nobody thinks Camille’s taste would run to you. He likes men who are very large, very ugly and devoted to women. He just wants what he can’t have. Well, that’s the way I see it, anyway.”
Robespierre reached out a hand for his pen. Then he seemed to change his mind. He let it lie. “Have you been drinking, Danton?” he said.
“No. Well, not more than my usual intake for this time of day. Why?”
“I thought you might have been. I was looking for an excuse for you.” Behind the concealing blue-tinted lenses, his eyes flickered to Danton’s face and away again. The sudden absence of emotion seemed to have pared away his face to the bone; his features were so thin that they seemed etched on air. “I think you’ve strayed from the point,” he said. “Fabre, I think, was the issue.” Again his hand crept towards the pen; he did not seem able to help himself.
(Robespierre, private notebooks: “Danton spoke contemptuously of Camille Desmoulins, attributing to him a secret and shameful vice.”)
“Well, have you made a decision?” His voice was empty of inflection, like God speaking within a rock.
“What am I to say? What do you expect me to do? I can’t repudiate him, what a stupid word.”
“It is true that he’s been your close associate. It is not easy to disentangle yourself.”
“He’s been my
“Oh, your friend.” Robespierre smiled faintly. “I know how you value your friends—but then I dare say he has not Camille’s defects. The safety of the country is at issue, Danton. A patriot should be eager to put the safety of the country above his wife or child or friend. There is no place for individual sentiment now.”
Danton gasped, and tears sprang into his eyes. He rubbed at his face and held up his wet fingers. He tried to speak, but found it difficult.
(Maximilien Robespierre, private notebooks: “Danton made himself ridiculous, producing theatrical tears … at Robespierre’s house.”)
“This is unnecessary,” Robespierre said. “And useless.”
“You are a cripple,” Danton said at last. His voice was weary, flat. “It’s not Couthon who’s a cripple, it’s you. Don’t you know, Robespierre, don’t you know there’s something wrong with you? Do you ever ask yourself what God left out, when he made you? I used to make jokes at your expense, I used to say you were impotent, but it’s more than balls you’re missing. I wonder if you’re real, I see you walk and talk, but where’s the life in you?”
“I do live.” Robespierre looked down. He touched his fingertips together, like a nervous witness. “I do live. In my fashion.”
“What happened, Danton?”
“Nothing happened. We don’t see eye-to-eye about Fabre. The interview had,” he put one fist reflectively into the other palm, “no result.”
Five-thirty a.m., the rue Conde; there was a hammering at the doors below, and Annette pulled the covers over her head and didn’t want to know. The next moment she sat up, shocked into wakefulness. She flung herself out of bed: what’s happened, what’s happened now?
Someone was shouting in the street. She reached for her wrap. She heard Claude’s voice, and the voice of her maid, Elise, raised in alarm. Elise was a lard-faced Breton girl, superstitious, familiar and clumsy, with an imperfect grasp of French; she stuck her head round the door now and said, “It’s people from the Section. They want to know if you’ve got your lover there, they say, come on, don’t tell them lies, they weren’t born yesterday.”
“My lover? You mean they’re looking for Camille?”
“Well, you said it, Madame,” Elise smirked.
The girl was in her shift. In one hand she had a smoking stump of tallow candle. Annette struck out at her as she pushed past, so that the light spun out of her hand and expired on the floor. The girl’s complaint pursued her: “That was my candle end, not yours.”
In black darkness, Annette collided with someone. A hand shot out and took her by the wrist. She could smell last night’s wine on the man’s breath. “What have we here?” the man said. She tried to pull away and he tightened his grip. “Here we have milady, with hardly any clothes on.”
“Enough, Jeannot,” another voice said. “Hurry up, we need some lights.”
Someone opened the shutters. Torchlight from the street clawed across the walls. Elise had produced more candles. Jeannot stood back and leered. He wore the coarse, baggy clothes of the practicing sansculotte; a red cap with a knitted tricolor cockade was pulled down to his eyebrows. He looked such an oaf that—in other circumstances—she would have laughed. Now a half-dozen men jostled into the room, staring around them, rubbing their cold hands, cursing. The People, she thought. Max’s beloved People.
The man who had called off Jeannot stepped forward. He was a mousefaced boy in a shabby black coat. He had a wad of papers in his hands.
“Health and Fraternity, Citizeness. We are the representatives of the Section Mutius Scaevola.” He flicked the top sheet of paper at her; “Section Luxembourg” was crossed out, and the new name inked in beside it. “I have here,” he pawed through the documents, “a warrant for the arrest of Claude Duplessis, retired civil servant, resident at this address.”
“This is imbecilic,” Annette said. “There is a mistake. Arrest on what charges?”
“Conspiracy, Citizeness. We have orders to search the premises, and impound any suspicious papers.”
“How dare you come here, at this hour—”
