knew the plans, we don’t want a stream of people all getting up and saying the same thing.
MIRABEAU: It may reassure you to know that I have myself been drafting a little speech which touches on the topic. [
DE ROBESPIERRE: Reveal? We’re not conjurers, Monsieur. We’re not here to pull rabbits out of hats.
MIRABEAU: Don’t be too sure.
DE ROBESPIERRE: Always supposing that one had remarkable talents, could there be a better time to reveal them?
MIRABEAU: I understand your viewpoint, but I suggest on this occasion you give way, for the common good. You see, I can be sure of carrying my audience with me. Sometimes when a famous name allies himself with a cause—
DE ROBESPIERRE: My speech is quite a good speech, it makes all the relevant points.
MIRABEAU: Yes, but it is the speaker—I tell you frankly, M. de Robertpere, that I have spent the whole night working on my speech, and I intend to deliver it, and in all possible cordiality and friendship I must ask you to find another occasion for your debut, or else to confine yourself to a few words in my support.
DE ROBESPIERRE: No, I’m not prepared to do that.
MIRABEAU: Oh, you aren’t prepared? [
DE ROBESPIERRE: There’s no point trying to frighten me. [
MIRABEAU: But God damn you, man, they say exactly the same thing.
DE ROBESPIERRE: I know—but I thought that since you have a name as a demagogue, they might not quite trust you.
MIRABEAU: Demagogue?
DE ROBESPIERRE: Politician.
MIRABEAU: And what are you?
DE ROBESPIERRE: Just an ordinary person.
MIRABEAU: You will make yourself a laughingstock.
DE ROBESPIERRE: Let me worry about that.
MIRABEAU: You’re used to it, I suppose.
[
DUROVERAY: May one suggest a compromise?
DE ROBESPIERRE: No. I offered him a compromise, and he rejected it.
MIRABEAU: M. De Robinspere, this has all been a misunderstanding. We mustn’t quarrel.
[
DE ROBESPIERRE: I must leave you. I’m sure you’d like to get to bed for an hour or two.
MIRABEAU: I’m sorry about that. A symptom of childish rage. [
MIRABEAU: Shall I put them on the fire? [
DE ROBESPIERRE: Thank you, I’d like that. It doesn’t matter about the papers—I’ve got a draft copy I can read my speech from later today. I always keep my drafts.
[
MIRABEAU: Teutch.
DE ROBESPIERRE: Don’t trouble your man, I can see myself out. By the way, my name is Robespierre.
MIRABEAU: Oh. I thought it was “de Robespierre.”
ROBESPIERRE: No. Just the plain name.
D’Anton went to hear Camille speak at the Palais-Royal. He hung to the back of the gathering and tried to find something to lean on, so that he could fold his arms and watch the proceedings with a detached smile. Camille said to him sharply, “You can’t spend all your life leering. It’s time you took up an attitude.”
D’Anton asked: “By that do you mean a pose?”
Camille was now constantly with Mirabeau. His cousin de Viefville would scarcely give him the time of day. At Versailles the deputies talked: as if there were some point in talking. When the Comte took the floor, disapproval rustled like autumn leaves. The court has not sent for him yet; in the evenings he needed much company, to keep his spirits up. The Comte had talks with Lafayette: bring over the liberal nobles, he begged. He told the Abbe Sieyes: work on the poor country cures, their hearts lie with the commoners, not with their bishops. The abbe put his fingertips together: he was a frail, still, wan man, who dropped words from his lips as though they were written in stone, who never joked, never argued: politics, he said, is a science I have made perfect.
Next the Comte pounded on the desk of M. Bailly, the Commoners’ chairman, putting his forcible suggestions. M. Bailly viewed him gravely: he was a famous astronomer, and his mind, as someone had said, was more on heavenly revolutions than this terrestrial one. Because “revolution” was the word now: not just at the Palais-Royal,