Eleonore is not so moral. He said, she knows just what we republicans want. I think, then, that I fainted.”
“Is there any need to go on?” Lebas said. He moved: transferred his hands to the back of Robespierre’s chair, so that he stood looking down at the nape of his neck.
“Don’t stand over me like that,” Robespierre said sharply. But Lebas didn’t move. Robespierre looked around the room, wanting a corner, an angle, a place to turn his face and compose it. But from everywhere in the room, the eyes of the Duplay family stared back. “So, when you came to yourself?” he said. “Where were you then?”
“I was in the room.” Her mouth quivered. “My clothes were disordered, my skirt—”
“Yes,” Robespierre said. “We don’t need details.”
“There was no one else in the room. I composed myself and I stood up and looked around. I saw no one so I—I ran out of the front door.”
“Are you—let’s be quite clear—are you telling me Danton raped you?”
“I struggled for as long as I could.” She began to cry.
“And what happened then?”
“Then?”
“Presumably you got home. What did Panis’s wife say?”
She raised her face. A perfect tear rolled down her cheek. “She said I must never tell anyone anything about it. Because it would make the most dreadful trouble.”
“So you didn’t.”
“Until now. I thought I must—” She dissolved into tears again. Unexpectedly, Saint-Just straightened up from the wall, leaned over her, patted her shoulder.
“Babette,” Robespierre said. “Now, dry your tears, listen to me. When this happened, where were Danton’s servants? He is not a man to do without them, there must have been somebody in the house?”
“I don’t know. I cried out, I screamed—nobody came.”
Mme. Duplay spoke. She had been, of course, extraordinarily forbearing, to keep silent for so long, and now she was hesitant. “You see, Maximilien—the fact of what happened is bad enough, but there is a further problem —”
“I’m sure he can count on his fingers,” Saint-Just said.
It was a moment before he understood. “So then, Babette-at that date, you didn’t know—”
“No.” She dropped her face again. “How can I know? Perhaps I had already conceived—I can’t be sure. Of course, I hope I had. I hope I’m not carrying his child.”
She had said it out loud: they had all arrived at the idea, but now it was spoken out loud it made them gasp with shock.
Only he, Robespierre, exercised self-control. To resist temptation is important now: temptation to look in like a beggar at the lighted window of emotion. “Listen, Babette,” he said. “This is very important. Did anyone suggest to you that you should tell this story to me today?”
“No. How could anyone? Until today, nobody knew.”
“You see, Elisabeth, if this were a courtroom—well, I would ask you a lot of questions.”
“It is not a courtroom,” Duplay said. “It is your family. I saved your life, three years ago in the street, and since then we have cared for you as if you were a child of our own. And your sister, and your brother Augustin—you were orphans, and you had nobody except each other, and we have done our best to be everything to you.”
“Yes.” Defeated, he sat at the head of the table, facing Elisabeth. Mme. Duplay moved, brushing lightly against him, to take her daughter in her arms. Elisabeth began to sob, with a sound that pierced him like steel.
Saint-Just cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to take you away now, but the Police Committee will be meeting our Committee in an hour. I have drawn up a preliminary report regarding Danton—but it needs supplementation.”
“Duplay,” Robespierre said, “you understand that this matter cannot come to court. There is no need, really—in the context of other charges, I’m afraid it’s trivial. You will not sit as a juror at Danton’s trial. I shall tell Fouquier to exempt you. It would not be just.” He shook his head. “No, it would not be equitable.”
“Before we leave,” Saint-Just asked, “would you go upstairs and get those notebooks of yours?”
The Tuileries, 8 p.m.: “I am going to be very plain with you, Citizen,” the Inquisitor said. Robespierre transferred his attention from Vadier’s long sallow face to his hands, to his peculiar fingers obsessively re-sorting papers on the green-draped oval table. “I shall be plain with you, on behalf of your own colleagues, and my colleagues on the Police Committee.”
“Then please do proceed.” His mouth was tight. His chest hurt. There was blood in his mouth. He knew what they wanted.
“You will agree with me,” Vadier said, “that Danton is a powerful and resourceful man.”
“Yes.”
“And a traitor.”
“Why are you asking me? The Tribunal will determine what he is.”
“But the trial, in itself, is a dangerous business.”
“Yes.”
“So every precaution must be taken.”
“Yes.”
