A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

Fouche at all, in point of fact, but Charlotte had her own life to lead.

Then there was Lazare Carnot, a captain of engineers at the garrison; a man older than himself, reserved, rather bitter about the lack of opportunities open to him, as a commoner in His Majesty’s forces. Carnot went for company to the Academy’s meetings, formulae revolving in his head while they discussed the sonnet form. Sometimes he treated them to a tirade about the deplorable state of the army. Members would exchange amused glances.

Only Maximilien listened earnestly—quite ignorant of military matters, and a little overawed.

When Mlle. de Keralio was voted in by the Academy—its first lady member—he made a speech in her honor about the genius of women, their role in literature and the arts. After this she’d said, “Why don’t you call me Louise?” She wrote novels—thousands of words a week. He envied her facility. “Listen to this,” she’d say, “and tell me what you think.”

He made sure not to—authors are touchy. Louise was pretty, and she never quite got the ink scrubbed off her little fingers. “I’m off to Paris,” she said, “one can’t go on stagnating in this backwater, saving your presences.” Her hand tapped a rolled sheaf of manuscript against a chair back. “O solemn and wondrous Maximilien de Robespierre, why don’t you come to Paris too? No? Well, at least let’s take off for the afternoon with a picnic. Let’s start a rumor, shall we?”

Louise belonged to the real nobility. “Nothing to be thought of there,” said the Aunts: “Poor Maximilien.”

“Noble or not,” Charlotte said, “the girl’s a trollop. She wanted my brother to up and go to Paris with her, imagine.” Yes, just imagine. Louise packed her bags and hurtled off into the future. He was dimly aware of a turning missed; one of those forks in the road, that you remember later when you are good and lost.

Still, there was Aunt Eulalie’s stepdaughter, Anais. Both the Aunts favored her above all the other candidates. They said she had nice manners.

One day before long the mother of a poor rope maker turned up at his door with a story about her son who was in prison because the Benedictines at Anchin had accused him of theft. She said the accusation was false and malicious; the Abbey treasurer, Dom Brognard, was notoriously light-fingered, and had in addition tried to get the rope maker’s sister into bed, and she wouldn’t by any means be the first girl … .

Yes, he said. Calm down. Have a seat. Let’s start at the beginning.

This was the kind of client he was beginning to get. An ordinary man—or frequently a woman—who’d fallen foul of vested interests. Naturally, there was no hope of a fee.

The rope maker’s tale sounded too bad to be true. Nevertheless, he said, we’ll let it see the light. Within a month, Dom Brognard was under investigation, and the rope maker was suing the abbey for damages. When the Benedictines wanted to retain a lawyer, who did they get? M. Liborel, his one-time sponsor. He said, gratitude does not bind me here, the truth is at stake.

Little hollow words, echoing through the town. Everyone takes sides, and most of the legal establishment takes Liborel’s. It turns into a dirty fight; and of course in the end they do what he imagined they would do—they offer the rope maker more money than he earns in years to settle out of court and go away and keep quiet.

Obviously, things are not going to be the same after this. He’ll not forget how they got together, conspired against him, condemned him in the local press as an anti-clerical troublemaker. Him? The abbot’s protege? The Bishop’s golden boy? Very well. If that’s how they want to see him, he will not trouble from now on to make things easy for his colleagues, to be so very helpful and polite. It is a fault, that persistent itch to have people think well of him.

The Academy of Arras elected him prsident, but he bored them with his harangues about the rights of illegitimate childen. You’d think there was no other issue in the universe, one of the members complained.

“If your mother and your father had conducted themselves properly,” Grandfather Carraut had said, “you would never have been born.”

Charlotte would take out her account books and observe that the cost of his conscience grew higher by the month. “Of course it does,” he said. “What did you expect?”

Every few weeks she would round on him and deliver these wounding blows, proving to him that he was not understood even in his own house.

“This house,” she said. “I can’t call it a home. We have never had a home. Some days you are so preoccupied that you hardly speak. I may as well not be here. I am a good housekeeper, what interest do you display in my arrangements? I am a fine cook, but you have no interest in food. I invite company, and when we take out the cards or prepare to make conversation you withdraw to the other side of the room and mark passages in books.”

He waited for her anger to subside. It was understandable; anger these days was her usual condition. Fouche had offered her marriage—or something—and then left her high and dry, looking a bit of a fool. He wondered vaguely if something ought to be done about it, but he was convinced she’d be better off without the man in the long run.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll try to be more sociable. It’s just that I’ve a lot of work on.”

“Yes, but is it work you’ll be paid for?” Charlotte said that in Arras he had got himself the reputation of being uninterested in money and soft-hearted, which surprised him, because he thought of himself as a man of principle and nobody’s fool. She would accuse him of alienating people who could have promoted his career, and he would begin again to explain why it was necessary to reject their help, where his duties lay, what he felt bound to do. She made too much of it, he thought. They could pay the bills, after all. There was food on the table.

Charlotte would go round and round the point, though. Sooner or later, she would work herself into a crying fit. Then out it would come, the thing that was really bothering her. “You’re going to marry Anais. You’re going to marry Anais, and leave me on my own.”

In court he was now making what people called “political speeches.” How not? Everything’s politics. The system is corrupt. Justice is for sale.

30 June 1787:

It is ordered that the language attacking the authority of justice and the law, and injurious to judges, published in the printed memoir signed “De Robespierre, barrister-at-law,” shall be suppressed; and this decree shall be posted in the town of ARRAS.

BY ORDER OF THE MAGISTRATES OF BETHUNE

Every so often, a pinpoint of light in the general gloom: one day as he was coming out of court a young advocate called Hermann sidled up to him and said, “You know, de Robespierre, I’m beginning to think you’re right.”

“About what?”