Danton slapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll see what those buggers look like by the time I’ve finished with them.”
Rue Marat, 3 a. m.: Camille had begun to talk, in little more than a whisper, but fluently, without hesitation, as if a part of his mind had been set free. Lucile had finished crying; she sat and watched him now, in the drugged, hypnotized state that succeeds extreme emotion. In the next room, their child slept. There was no sound from the street outside; no sound in the room, except this low sibilation; no light, except the light of one candle. We might be cut adrift from the universe, she thought.
“You see, in ‘89, I thought, some aristocrat will run me through. I shall be a martyr for liberty, it will be very nice, it will be in all the papers. Then I thought, in ’92, the Austrians will come and shoot me, well, it will be over quickly, and I will be a national hero.” He put his hand to his throat. “Danton says he doesn’t care what they think of him, the people who come after us. I find I want their good opinion. But I don’t think I’m going to get it, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Lindet said.
“But after all this, to die on the wrong side of patriotism—to be accused of counter-revolution—I can’t bear it. Robert, will you help me to escape?”
Lindet hesitated. “There’s no time now.”
“I know there is no time, but will you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Lindet said gently. “We would both be sacrificed. I’m very sorry, Camille.”
At the door Lindet put an arm around her. “Go to your mother and father. By morning this will be no place for you.” Suddenly he turned back. “Camille, did you mean it? Are you really prepared to run for it? Not go to pieces on me and do as I say?”
Camille looked up. “Oh no,” he said. “No, I don’t really want to. I was just testing you.”
“For what?”
“Never mind,” Camille said. “You passed.” He dropped his head again.
Robert Lindet was fifty years old. His age showed in his dry administrator’s face. She wondered how anyone survived to attain it.
“It must be almost dawn,” Lucile said. “No one has come yet.”
And she hopes—hope takes you by the throat like a strangler, it makes your heart leap—is it possible that Robespierre has somehow reversed the decision, that he has found courage, talked them down?
“I wrote to Rabbit,” she said. “I didn’t tell you. I asked him to come back, give us his support.”
“He didn’t reply.”
“No.”
“He thinks, when I am dead, he will marry you.”
“That’s what Louise said.”
“What does Louise know about it?”
“Nothing. Camille? Why did you call him Rabbit?”
“Are people still trying to work out why I called him Rabbit?”
“Yes.”
“No reason.”
She heard, below, boots on cobblestones; she heard the patrol halt. That might be, she thought, just the regular patrol; it is time for them, after all. How the heart deceives.
“There.” Camille stood up. “I’m glad Jeanette is away tonight. That’s the street door now.”
She stood in the middle of the room. She was aware of a puppet-like stiffness in her limbs. She seemed unable to speak.
“Are you looking for me?” Camille said. She watched him. She remembered August 10, after Suleau’s death: how he had cleaned himself up and gone back into the screaming streets. “You’re supposed to ask me who I am,” he told the officer. “Are you Camille Desmoulins, you’re supposed to say, professional journalist, deputy to the National Convention—just as if there might be two of us, very similar.”
“Look, it’s very early,” the man said. “I know damn well who you are and there aren’t two of you. Here’s the warrant, if you’re interested.”
“Can I say good-bye to my little boy?”
“Only if we come with you.”
“I wanted not to wake him. Can’t I have a moment on my own?”
The men moved, took up stations before the doors and windows. “A man last week,” the officer said, “went to kiss his daughter and blew his brains out. Man across the river jumped out of a window, fell four floors, broke his neck.”
“Yes, you can’t understand why he’d bother,” Camille said. “When the state would have broken it for him.”
“Don’t give us any trouble,” the man said.
“No trouble,” Camille promised.
“Take some books.” She was appalled to hear her voice come out, full of bravado. “It will be boring.”
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
“Hurry up then.” The officer put his hand on Camille’s arm.
