A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

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. [Mirabeau speaks; he also reads.] May I suggest that the question might be better propounded by some person well known to our fellow deputies, some orator of experience? The Clergy may be less inclined to listen to someone who has yet—what shall we say?—who has yet to reveal his remarkable talents.

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—

[Mirabeau stops abruptly. He can see on the young man’s delicate triangular face the pale traces of contempt. Yet his voice is still deferential.]

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? [He sees with pleasure that the deputy flinches when he raises his voice.] It is I who carry weight at our meetings. You are unknown. They will not even suspend their private conversacions to listen to you. Look at this speech, it is prolix, it is overblown, you will be howled down.

DE ROBESPIERRE: There’s no point trying to frighten me. [Not a boast.

Mirabeau scrutinizes him. Experience has taught him he can frighten most people.] Look, I’m not trying to stop you making your speech. If you must, you make yours, then I’ll make mine.

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.

[The Comte’s face purples, and he runs a hand through his hair, making it stand up like a bush.]

MIRABEAU: You will make yourself a laughingstock.

DE ROBESPIERRE: Let me worry about that.

MIRABEAU: You’re used to it, I suppose.

[He turns his back. Through the mirror, Duroveray wavers into life.]

DUROVERAY: May one suggest a compromise?

DE ROBESPIERRE: No. I offered him a compromise, and he rejected it.

[There is a silence. Into it, the Comte sighs heavily. Take hold of yourself, Mirabeau, he advises. Now. Conciliate.]

MIRABEAU: M. De Robinspere, this has all been a misunderstanding. We mustn’t quarrel.

[De Robespierre takes off his spectacles and puts a finger and thumb into the corners of his itching eyes. Mirabeau sees that his left eyelid flickers in a nervous spasm. Victory, he thinks.]

DE ROBESPIERRE: I must leave you. I’m sure you’d like to get to bed for an hour or two.

[Mirabeau smiles. De RobesPierre looks down at the carpet, where the pages of his speech lie crumpled and torn.]

MIRABEAU: I’m sorry about that. A symptom of childish rage. [De Robespierre bends down and picks up the papers in an easy movement that does not seem tired at all.]

MIRABEAU: Shall I put them on the fire? [De Robespierre hands them over, docile. The Comte’s muscles visibly relax.] You must come to dinner sometime, de Robertpere.

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.

[Out of the corner of his eye Mirabeau sees Duroveray rise, scraping his chair, and inconspicuously put his hand to his heart.]

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,