“Well done, Charles-Alexis,” Laclos said. “Admirably lucid. More claret?”
Camille said, “Why?”
“Because the English are deeply interested in our Revolution,” de Sillery said. “Yes, go on Laclos, push the bottle over. You may think they want us to enjoy the blessings of a Parliament and a constitution like theirs, but it is hardly that; they are interested in anything that undermines Louis’s position. As is Berlin. As is Vienna. It might be an excellent thing for the English if we dispensed with King Louis and replaced him by King Philippe.”
Deputy Petion looked up slowly. His large handsome face was creased with scruple. “Did you bring us here to burden us with this information?”
“No,” Camille said. “He is telling us because he has had too much to drink.”
“’Tisn’t a burden,” Charles-Alexis said. “It’s pretty well generally known. Ask Brissot.”
“I have a great deal of respect for Brissot,” Deputy Petion insisted.
“Have you so?” Laclos murmured.
“He doesn’t seem to me to be the type of man who would engage in this sort of deviousness.”
“Dear Brissot,” Laclos said. “So unworldly is he that he thinks money appears in his pocket by spontaneous generation. Oh, he knows—but he doesn’t admit he knows. He takes care never to make inquiries. If you want to give him a fright, Camille, just walk up to him and say in his ear, ‘William Augustus Miles.’”
“If I may make a point,” Petion interposed, “Brissot has not the air of a man receiving money. I only ever see him in the one coat, and that is almost out at the elbows.”
“Oh, we don’t pay him much,” Laclos said. “He wouldn’t know what to do with it. Unlike present company. Who have a taste for the finer things in life. You still don’t believe it, Petion? Tell him, Camille.”
“It’s probably true,” Camille said. “He used to take money from the police. Have casual chats with his friends and report on their political opinions.”
“Now you shock me.” But no: Petion’s tone was controlled.
“How else was he to make a living?” Laclos asked.
Charles-Alexis laughed. “All these writers and people, they have enough on each other to live by blackmail and get rich. Not so, Camille? They only desist out of fear of being blackmailed back.”
“But you are drawing me into something …” For a moment Petion looked sober. He rested his forehead in the palm of his hand. “If I could only think straight about this.”
“It doesn’t permit straight thinking,” Camille said. “Try some other kind.”
Petion said, “It will be so difficult to keep any kind of … integrity.”
Laclos poured him another drink. Camille said, “I want to start a newspaper.”
“And whom did you envisage as your backer?” Laclos said smoothly. He liked to hear people admit they needed the Duke’s money.
“The Duke’s lucky I’ll take his money,” Camille said, “when there are so many other sources. We may need the Duke, but how much more does the Duke need us?”
“Collectively, he may need you,” Laclos said in the same tone. “Individually he does not need you at all. Individually you may all jump off the Pont-Neuf and drown your sorry selves. Individually, you can be replaced.”
“Oh, you think so?”
“Yes, Camille, I do think so. You have a prodigiously inflated idea of your own place in the scheme of things.”
Charles-Alexis leaned forward, put a hand on Laclos’s arm. “Careful, old thing. Change of subject?” Laclos swallowed mutinously. He sat in silence, brightening only a little as de Sillery told stories of his wife. Felicite, he said, had kept stacks of notebooks under the marital bed. Sometimes she groped for them as you lay on top of her, laboring in pursuit of ecstasy. Did the Duke find this, he wondered, as off-putting as he always had?
“Your wife’s a tiresome woman,” Laclos said. “And Mirabeau says he’s had her.”
“Very likely, very likely,” de Sillery said. “He’s had everybody else. Still, she doesn’t do much these days. She’s happier organizing it for other people. When I think, my God, when I think back on my life …” He fell into a short reverie. “Could I ever have imagined I’d end up married to the best-read procuress in Europe?”
“By the way, Camille,” Laclos said, “Agnes de Buffon was twittering on about your last pamphlet. The prose. She thinks she’s a judge. We must introduce you.”
“And to Grace Elliot,” de Sillery said. He and Laclos laughed.
“They’ll eat him alive,” Laclos said.
At dawn Laclos opened a window and draped his elegant body out over the town, breathing in the King’s air in gasps. “No persons in Versailles,” he announced, “are so inebriated as we. Let me tell you, my pirate crew, every dog has his day, and Philippe’s is at hand, soon, soon, August, September, October.
18th August 1789
At Astley’s Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge
(
An Entire New and Splendid Spectacle
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
From Sunday 12 July to Wednesday 15 July (inclusive)
called
Paris in an Uproar
displaying one of the grandest and most extraordinary
entertainments that ever appeared
grounded on
Authentic Fact
The doors to be opened at half-past five, to begin at
half-past six o’clock precisely.
