“When Pere Duchesne has one of his great cholers,” one of the men said, “you don’t wait for the sun to come up.”
“Pere Duchesne? I see. You mean that Hebert dare not strike at Camille, so he sends you and your rabble to terrorize his family. Give me those papers, let me see your warrant.”
She snatched at them. The clerk stepped back defensively. One of the sansculottes caught her outstretched hand, and with his other hand pulled her wrap aside, half-exposing her breasts. With all her strength she dragged herself away from him. She gathered up her wrap to her throat. She was shaking, but—and she hoped they knew this—much more with fury than with fear. “Are you Duplessis?” the clerk said, looking over her shoulder.
Claude had managed to get dressed. He seemed dazed, but a faint smell of burning crept out from the room behind him. “You are inquiring for me?” His voice shook a little.
The clerk waved the warrant. “Hurry up. We can’t keep standing about. These citizens want to get the search over and home for their breakfasts.”
“They deserve their breakfast, expeditiously,” Claude said. “Why, they have had the trouble of waking up a peaceful household, and terrifying my wife and my servants. Where were you thinking of taking me?”
“Pack a bag,” the clerk said. “Quick about it.”
Claude gave him a measured nod. He turned.
“Claude!” Annette called after him. “Claude, remember I love you.”
He glanced over his shoulder and gave her a grim nod. A chorus of ribaldry followed him to his room; but the diversion had been effective, because while they were jeering he slammed his door, and she heard the key turn in the lock, and the grunts of effort as they put their shoulders to the door.
She turned to the clerk. “What’s your name?”
“It is of no importance.”
“I’m sure it’s not, but I’ll find out. You’ll suffer. Begin your search. You’ll find nothing to interest you.”
“What sort of people are they?” she heard one of the men ask Elise.
“Godless, Monsieur, and very stuck-up.”
“Is she really, you know, with Camille?”
“Everybody knows it,” Elise said. “They spend hours locked away. Reading the newspapers, she says.”
“What does the old man do about it?”
“Fuck-all,” Elise said.
The men laughed. “We might have to get you down to the Section,” one of them said. “Ask you a few questions. I bet you’ve got some very pretty answers.” He put out his hand, fingered the cloth of her shift, pinched one of her nipples. She gave a little shriek: mock-horror, mock-pain.
As if, Annette thought, there were not enough of the real thing. She took the clerk by the arm. “Get these people under control. Do they also have a warrant to molest my domestic staff?”
“She talks like the Capet woman’s sister,” Jeannot remarked.
“This is an outrage, and you may be sure that within hours it will be discussed in the Convention.”
Jeannot spat at the fireplace, with a pitiful lack of accuracy. “Pack of lawyers,” he said. “Revolution? This? Not till the buggers are all dead.”
“At the present rate,” the clerk said, “it won’t be long.”
Claude was back, with two of the sansculottes on his heels. He had put on his greatcoat and was drawing on his new gloves, very carefully, very smoothly. “Imagine,” he said, “they accused me of burning papers. Stranger still, they insisted on interposing themselves between my person and the window. There is a citizen beneath it with a pike. As if a person of my years would leap through a first-floor casement, and deprive myself of the pleasure of their company.” One of the men took his arm. Claude shook him off. “I’ll walk by myself,” he said. “Now, please allow me to say good-bye to my wife.”
He took her hand in his gloved hand and raised her fingertips to his lips. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Don’t cry, my Annette. Get a message to Camille.”
Across the street a shiny new carriage was drawn up. A pair of eyes peered out; the blind was cautiously lowered.
“How thoroughly displeasing,” said Pere Duchesne the furnace maker. “We picked the wrong night, or did we pick the wrong rumor? There are many other rumors, as good or better. It would have been worth rising early to drag Camille from his comfortable, incestuous bed and see if he could be provoked to violence. I was hoping that we could arrest him for a breach of the peace. Still, this will give him a fright. I wonder who he’ll run to hide behind this time?”
Annette was at the rue Marat an hour later, distraught. “And they have torn the place apart,” she finished. “And Elise. Elise may be thoroughly unsatisfactory, but I will not stand by and see my menials pawed by ruffians off the streets. Lucile, give me a glass of brandy, will you? I need it.” As her daughter left the room, she whispered, “Oh Camille, Camille. Claude ran around burning papers. All your letters to me have gone up in smoke. I think. Either that, or the Section committee has got them.”
“I see,” Camille said. “Well, I expect they’re quite chaste.”
“But I want them.” Tears in her eyes. “I can’t bear not having them.”
He ran a fingertip down her cheek. “I’ll write you some more.”
“I want those, those! How can I ask Claude if he burned them? If he burned them, he must have known where I kept them and what they were. Do you think he’d read them?”
“No. Claude’s honorable. He’s not like you and me.” He smiled. “I’ll ask him, Annette. As soon as we get him home.”
