rest, that’s the thing, to be well out of everything. I’d say a month. If he leaves that room sooner, I’ll not be responsible.”
Members of the Committee came. It took him a moment to work out their individual faces, but he knew at once it was the Committee. “Where is Saint-Just?” he whispered. By now he had got into the habit of whispering. Don’t struggle for breath, the doctor had said. The committeemen exchanged glances.
“He has forgotten,” they said. “You have forgotten,” they told him. “He went to the frontier. He will be back in ten days.”
“Couthon? Could he not be carried up the stairs?”
“He’s ill,” they said. “Couthon is also ill.”
“Is he dying?”
“No. But his paralysis has become worse.”
“Will he be back tomorrow?”
“No, not tomorrow.”
Then who will rule the country? he asked himself. Saint-Just. “Danton—” he said. Don’t struggle for breath. If you don’t struggle for it, it will come, the doctor said. He put his hand to his chest in panic. He could not take that advice. It was not his experience of life.
“Will you let Danton have my place?”
They exchanged glances again. Robert Lindet leaned over him. “Do you wish it?”
He shook his head vehemently. He hears Danton’s drawling voice: “unnatural acts among the affidavits … Do you ever ask yourself what God left out?” His eyes searched for the eyes of this solid Norman lawyer, a man without theories, without pretensions, a man unknown to the mob. “Not to have it,” he said at last. “Not to rule. No
Lindet’s face was expressionless.
“For a little while I shall not be with you,” Robespierre said. “Then, again, I will be with you.”
“Those are familiar words,” Collot said. “He can’t remember where he has heard them before. Don’t worry, we didn’t think it was time for your apotheosis yet.”
Lindet said gently, “Yes, yes, yes.”
Robespierre looked up at Collot. He is taking advantage of my weakness, he thought. “Please give me some paper,” he whispered. He wanted to make a note: that as soon as he was well, Collot must be reduced.
The members of the Committee spoke very politely to Eleonore. They did not necessarily believe Dr. Souberbielle, who said he would be better in a month; she understood that if by any chance he should die, she would be treated as the Widow Robespierre, as Simone Evrard was the Widow Marat.
The days passed. Souberbielle gave him permission to have more visitors, to read, to write—but only his personal letters. He might receive the news of the day, if it were not agitating; but all the news was agitating.
Saint-Just came back. We go on very well, in the Committee, he said. We are going to crush the factions. Does Danton still talk of negotiating a peace? he asked. Yes, Saint-Just said. But no one else does. Good republicans talk of victory.
Saint-Just was now twenty-six years old. He was very handsome, very forceful. He spoke in short sentences. Speak of the future, Robespierre said. He talked then of his Spartan republic. In order to breed a new race of men, he said, children would be taken from their parents when they reached five years old, to be trained as farmers, soldiers or lawmakers. Little girls too? Robespierre asked. Oh no, they do not matter, they will stay at home with their mothers.
Nervously, Robespierre’s hands moved across the bedcovers. He thought of his godson, one day old, his fluttering skull steadied by his father’s long fingers; his godson, a few weeks old, gripping his coat collar and making a speech. But he was too weak to argue. People said now that Saint-Just was attached to Henriette Lebas, the sister of Babette’s husband Philippe. But he didn’t believe this; he didn’t believe he was attached to anyone, anyone at all.
He waited till Eleonore was out of the room. He was stronger now, could make his voice heard. He beckoned to Maurice Duplay. “I want to see Camille.”
“Do you think that’s a good thing?”
Duplay sent the message. Oddly enough, Eleonore seemed neither pleased nor displeased.
When Camille came they did not talk about politics, or about recent years at all. Once, Camille mentioned Danton; he turned his head away, with his old gesture of rigid obstinacy. They talked of the past, their common past, with the forced cheerfulness that people assume when there is a dead body in the house.
Left alone, he lay dreaming of the Republic of Virtue. Five days before he became ill, he had defined his terms. He meant a republic of justice, of community, of self-sacrifice. He saw a free people, gentle, bucolic and learned. The darkness of superstition had drained away from the people’s lives: brackish water, vanishing into soil. In its place flourished the rational, jocund, worship of the Supreme Being. These people were happy; their hearts were not wracked or their flesh tormented by questions without answers or desires without resolution. Men came with gravity and wit to matters of government; they instructed their children, and harvested plain and plentiful food from their own land. Dogs and cats, the animals in the field: all were respected, for their own natures. Garlanded girls, in soft robes of pale linen, moved sedately among colonnades of white marble. He saw the deep dark glint of olive groves, and the blue enamel sky.
“Look at this,” Robert Lindet said. He unrolled the newspaper and shook out of it a piece of bread. “Feel,” he said, “go on, taste it.”
It crumbled easily in his fingers. It had a sour musty smell. “I thought you might not know,” Lindet said, “if you were living on your usual diet of oranges. There’s plenty of the stuff at the moment, but you can see for yourself the quality. People can’t live on this. There is no milk either, and the poorer people use a lot of milk. As for meat, people are lucky to get a scrag-end for soup. The women start queueing outside the butchers’ at three in the morning. This week the National Guard has had to break up fights.”
