“Malice?” D’Anton was surprised. “It isn’t malice. I get on very well with Perrin. Though not so well as you.”
“I just can’t understand how you remain wrapped up in these petty concerns.”
“The fact is,” d‘Anton said slowly, “That I have a living to make. I’d like to take a trip to Versailles and see what’s going on, but there you are, I’ve got Maitre Perrin and a snapping pack of litigants waiting for me at two o’clock sharp.”
“Georges-Jacques, what do you want?”
D’Anton grinned. “What do I ever want?”
“Money. All right. I’ll see you get some.”
Cafe du Foy. The Patriotic Society of the Palais-Royal in session. News from Versailles comes in every half hour. The clergy are going over
It is established to the satisfaction of the Society that there is a Famine Plot. Hoarders in high places are starving the people to make them submissive. It must be so: the price of bread is going up every day.
The King is bringing troops from the frontier; they are on the march now, thousands upon thousands of German mercenaries. The immediate peril though is the brigands; that is what everyone calls them. They camp outside the city walls, and no matter what precautions are taken, some slip through each night. These are the refugees from the blighted provinces, from the fields stripped by the hailstorm and the winters before; hungry and violent, they stalk through the streets like prophets, knotty sticks in their hands and their ribs showing through the rags of their clothing. Unescorted women now keep off the streets. Masters arm their apprentices with pick-axe handles. Shopkeepers get new locks fitted. Housemaids going out to queue for bread slip kitchen knives into their aprons. That the Brigands have their uses is a fact noted only by the percipient: the Patriotic Society of the Palais- Royal.
“So they have heard of your exploits in Guise?” Freron said to Camille.
“Yes, my father sends me this fat package of admonition. This letter came too.” He proffered it to Freron. It was from his maybe-relative, Antoine Saint-Just, the well-known juvenile delinquent from Noyon. “Read it,” he said. “You might read it out to everyone.”
Freron took the letter. A minute, difficult hand. “Why don’t you do it?”
Camille shook his head. He’s not up to this: speaking in small rooms. (“
“Very well,” Freron said. It didn’t suit him personally, for Camille to get too competent about ordinary things.
The letter contained interesting sorts of news: trouble all over Picardy, mobs in the streets, buildings burning, millers and landlords under threat of death. Its tone was that of suppressed glee.
“Well,” Fabre said, “how I look forward to meeting your cousin! He sounds a most pleasant, pacific type of youth.”
“My father didn’t mention all this.” Camille took the letter back. “Do you think Antoine exaggerates?” He frowned at the letter. “Oh dear, his spelling doesn’t improve … . He so badly wants something to happen, you see, he’s not having much of a life … . Odd way he punctuates, too, and scatters capital letters around … . I think I shall go down to Les Halles and talk to the market men.”
“Another of your bad habits, Camille?” Fabre inquired.
“Oh, they are all Picards down there.” Freron fingered the small pistol in the pocket of his coat. “Tell them Paris needs them. Tell them to come out on the streets.”
“But Antoine amazes me,” Camille said. “While you sit here, deploring undue violence in the conventional way, the blood of these tradesmen to him is like—”
“Like what it is to you,” Fabre said. “Milk and honey, Camille. July is your promised land.”
CHAPTER 7
July 3, 1789: De Launay, Governor of the Bastille, to Monsieur de Villedeuil, Minister of State:
I have the honor to inform you that being obliged by current circumstances to suspend taking exercise on the towers, which privilege you were kind enough to grant the Marquis de Sade, yesterday at noon he went to his window and at the top of his voice, so that he could be heard by passersby and the whole neighborhood, he yelled that he was being slaughtered, that the Bastille prisoners were being murdered, and would people come to their aid … . It is out of the question to allow him exercise on the towers, the cannon are loaded and it would be most dangerous. The whole staff would be obliged if you would accede to their wish to have the Marquis de Sade transferred elsewhere without delay.
(
P.S. He threatens to shout again.
In the first week of July, Laclos went out on a foray. There were just a few names to be added to the payroll at this last minute.
On the very day he had heard Camille Desmoulins speak at the Palais-Royal, a copy of his unpublished pamphlet, circulating in manuscript, had come into the Duke’s hands. The Duke declared it made his eyes ache, but said, “This man, the one who wrote this, he might be useful to us, eh?”
“I know him,” Laclos said.
“Oh, good man. Look him up, will you?”
Laclos could not imagine why the Duke thought Desmoulins must be some old acquaintance of his.
At the Cafe du Foy, Fabre d’Eglantine was reading aloud from his latest work. It didn’t sound promising. Laclos
