“Deadlock. Signal.” Camille slammed the window shut. He crossed the room. Robespierre removed the ink from the path of his ire. “Is a signal something you give by waving your arms?” He fell to his knees. Robespierre took his arms and tried to pull him to his feet. “Good, this is real,” Camille said. “I am kneeling on the floor, you are trying to get me on my feet. Not metaphorically, but actually. Look,” he said, hurling himself out of his friend’s grasp, “now I have fallen straight over on my face. This is action,” Camille said to the carpet. “Now, can you distinguish what has just happened from what happens when somebody says, ‘the country is on its knees’?”
“Of course I can. Please get up.”
Camille stood up and brushed himself down a little.
“You terrify me,” Robespierre said. He turned away and sat down at the table where he had been writing the letter. He took off his spectacles, rested his elbows on the table and covered his closed eyes with his fingertips. “Metaphors are good,” he said. “I like metaphors. Metaphors don’t kill people.”
“They’re killing me. If I hear another mention of rising tides or crumbling edifices I shall throw myself out of the window. I can’t listen to this talk anymore. I saw Laclos the other day. I was so disgusted, finally, I thought I shall have to do something by myself.”
Robespierre picked up his pen and added a phrase to his letter. “I am afraid of civil disorder,” he said.
“Afraid of it? I hope for it. Mirabeau—he has his own interests—but if we had a leader whose name is absolutely clean—”
“I don’t know if there’s such a man in the Assembly.”
“There’s you,” Camille said.
“Oh yes?” He applied himself to the next sentence. “They call Mirabeau ‘The Torch of Provence.’ And do you know what they call me? ‘The Candle of Arras.’”
“But in time, Max—”
“Yes, in time. They think I should hang around viscounts and cultivate rhetorical flourishes. No.
“But are you the man of destiny, inside your own head?”
Robespierre looked down at his letter again. He contemplated a postscript. He reached for his pen. “No more than you are.”
Sunday, July 12: 5 a.m. D’Anton said, “Camille, there are no answers to these questions.”
“No?”
“No. But look. Dawn has broken. It’s another day. You’ve made it.” Camille’s questions: suppose I do get Lucile, how shall I go on without Annette? Why have I never achieved anything, not one damn thing? Why won’t they publish my pamphlet? Why does my father hate me?
“All right,” d’Anton said. “Short answers are best. Why should you go on without Annette? Get into both their beds, you’re quite capable of it, I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time in the history of the world.”
Camille looked at him wonderingly. “Nothing shocks you these days, does it?”
“May I continue? You’ve never achieved anything because you’re always bloody horizontal. I mean, you’re supposed to be at some place, right, and you’re not, and people say, God, he’s so absentminded—but I know the truth—you started the day with very good intentions, you might even have been on the way to where you’re supposed to be going, and then you just run into somebody, and what’s the next thing? You’re in bed with them.”
“And that’s the day gone,” Camille said. “Yes, you’re right, you’re right.”
“So what sort of a foundation for any career—oh, never mind. What was I saying? They won’t publish your pamphlet till the situation gives way a bit. As for your father—he doesn’t hate you, he probably cares too much, as I do and a very large number of other people. And Christ, you wear me out.”
D’Anton had been in court all day Friday, and had spent Saturday working solidly. His face was creased with exhaustion. “Do me a favor.” He got up and walked stiffly to the window. “If you’re going to commit suicide, would you leave it till about Wednesday, when my shipping case is over?”
“I shall go back to Versailles now.” Camille said. “I have to go and talk to Mirabeau.”
“Poor sod.” D’Anton slept momentarily on his feet. “It’s going to be hotter than ever today.” He swung open the shutter. The glare leapt into the room.
Camille’s difficulty was not staying awake; it was catching up with his personal effects. It was some time since he had been of fixed address. He wondered, really, if d’Anton could enter into his difficulties. When you turn up unexpectedly at somewhere you used to live, it’s very difficult to say to people, “Take your hands off me, I only came for a clean shirt.” They don’t believe you. They think it’s a pretext.
And again, he is always in transit. It can easily take three hours to get from Paris to Versailles. Despite his difficulties, he is at Mirabeau’s house for the hour when normal people have their breakfast; he has shaved, changed, brushed his hair, he is every inch (he thinks) the modest young advocate waiting on the great man.
Teutch rolled his eyes and pushed him in at the door. “There’s a new cabinet,” he said. “And it doesn’t include
Mirabeau was pacing about the room, a vein distended in his temple. He checked his stride for a moment. “Oh, there you are. Been with fucking Philippe?”
The room was packed: angry faces, faces drawn with anxiety. Deputy Petion dropped a perspiring hand on his shoulder. “Well, looking so good, Camille,” he said. “Me, I’ve been up all night. You know they sacked Necker? The new cabinet meets this morning, if they can find a Minister of Finance. Three people have already turned it down. Necker’s popular—they’ve really done it this time.”
“Is it Antoinette’s fault?”
“They say so. There are deputies here who expected to be arrested, last night.”
