these people?” He jerks his thumb at Chabot and his friends.
“Divers criminal elements,” Herault tells him. “You conspired with them.”
“Did I?” Westermann raises his voice. “What do you think, Fouquier, that I’m just some military blockhead, some oaf? I was a lawyer at Strasbourg before the Revolution, I know how things should be done. I have not been allotted counsel. I have not been put through a preliminary investigation. I have not been charged.”
Hermann looks up. “That is a formality.”
“We are all here,” Danton says drily, “by way of a formality.”
There is an outburst of rueful laughter from the accused. The remark is relayed to the back of the court. The public applaud, and a line of sansculotte patriots take off their red caps, wave them, sing the “Ca Ira” and (confusingly) yell
“I must call you to order,” Hermann shouts at Danton.
“Call me to order?” Danton explodes to his feet. “It seems to me that I must recall you to decency. I have a right to speak. We all have a right to a hearing. Damn you, man, I set up this Tribunal. I ought to know how it works.”
“Can you not hear this bell?”
“A man on trial for his life takes no notice of bells.”
From the galleries the singing becomes louder. Fouquier’s mouth is moving, but nothing can be heard. Hermann closes his eyes, and all the signatures of the Committee of Public Safety dance before his lids. It is fifteen minutes before order is restored.
The affair of the East India Company again. The prosecutors know they have a case here, so they are sticking to the subject. Fabre lifts his chin, which had fallen onto his chest. After a few minutes he lets it return there. “He should have a doctor,” Philippeaux whispers.
“His physician is otherwise engaged. On the jury.”
“Fabre, you’re not going to die on us, are you?”
Fabre makes a sick effort at a smile. Danton can feel the fear which holds Camille rigid between himself and Lacroix. Camille spent the whole of last night writing, because he believes that in the end they are bound to let him speak. So far the judges have put him down ferociously whenever he has opened his mouth.
Cambon, the government’s financial expert, takes the stand to give evidence about profits and share certificates, banking procedure and foreign currency regulations. He will be the only witness called in the course of the trial. Danton interrupts him:
“Cambon, listen: do you think I’m a royalist?”
Cambon looks across at him and smiles.
“See, he laughed. Citizen Clerk of the Court, see that it goes down in the record that he laughed.”
HERMANN: Danton, the Convention accuses you of showing undue favor to Dumouriez, of failing to reveal his true nature and intentions and of aiding and abetting his schemes to destroy freedom, such as that of marching on Paris with an armed force to crush republican government and restore the monarchy.
DANTON: May I answer this now?
HERMANN: No. Citizen Paris, read out the report of Citizen Saint-Just—I mean, the report that the citizen delivered to the Convention and the Jacobin Club.
Two hours. The accused have now separated into two camps, the six politicians and the general trying to put a distance between themselves and the thieves: but this is difficult. Philippeaux listens attentively, and takes notes. Herault appears sunk in his own thoughts; one cannot be sure he is listening to the court at all. From time to time the general makes an impatient noise and hisses in Lacroix’s ear for some point to be elucidated; Lacroix is seldom able to help him.
For the first part of the reading the crowds are restless. But as the implications of the report become clear, a profound silence takes possession of the court, stealing through the darkening room like an animal coming home to its lair. The chiming of the clocks marks off the first hour of the report, Hermann clears his throat, and behind his table, back to the accused, Fouquier stretches his legs. Suddenly Desmoulins’s nerve snaps. He puts a hand to his face, wonders what it is doing there, and anxiously flicks back his hair. He looks quickly at the faces to the left and right of him. He holds one fist in the other palm, his mouth pressed against the knuckles; taking his hands from his face, he holds the bench at each side of himself until the nails grow white with pressure. Dictum of Citizen Robespierre, useful in criminal cases: whoever shows fear is guilty. Danton and Lacroix take his hands and hold them surreptitiously by his sides.
Paris has finished, voice cracking over the final phrases. He drops the document on the table and its leaves fan out. He is exhausted, and if there had been any more he would have broken down and wept.
“Danton,” Hermann says, “you may speak now.”
As he rises to his feet, he wonders what Philippeaux has recorded in his notes. Because there is not one allegation he can drag screaming into disrepute; not one charge that he can hold up and knock down again and trample on. If only there were a specific accusation … that you, Georges-Jacques Danton, did on the 10th day of August 1792 traitorously conspire … But it is a whole career he has to justify: a whole life, a life in the Revolution, to oppose to this tissue of lies and innuendo, this abortion of the truth. Saint-Just must have made a close study of Camille’s writings against Brissot; that was where the technique was perfected. And he thinks fleetingly of the neat, malicious job Camille would have done on his career.
After fifteen minutes he finds the pleasure and the power of rolling out his voice into the hall. The long silence is over. The crowd begins to applaud again. Sometimes he has to stop and let the noise defeat him; then he draws breath, comes back stronger. Fabre taught him, he taught him well. He begins to imagine his voice as a physical instrument of attack, a power like battalions; as lava from the mouth of some inexhaustible volcano, burning them, boiling them, burying them alive.
A juryman interrupts: “Can you enlighten us as to why, at Valmy, our troops did not follow up the Prussian retreat?”
“I regret that I cannot enlighten you. I am a lawyer. Military matters are a closed book to me.”
