A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

fickleness; shivers inside. And “Vive la reine,” someone calls. “Vive la reine! ” That cry has not been heard in a decade. Her fists unclench, her mouth opens a little; he feels her lean against him, floppy with relief. A Bodyguard steps out to assist her, a tricolor cockade in his hat. The crowd cheer. The Queen is handed back inside. The King declares he will go to Paris.

This takes all day.

On the way to Paris, Lafayette rides by the King’s carriage, and speaks hardly a word. There will be no bodyguards after this, he thinks, except those I provide. I have the nation to protect from the King, and now the King to protect from the nation. I saved her life, he thinks. He sees again the white face, the bare feet, feels her sag against him as the crowd cheer. She will never forgive him, he knows. The armed forces are now at my disposal, he thinks, my position should be unassailable … but slouching along in the half-dark, the anonymous many, the People. “Here we have them,” they cry, “the baker, the baker’s wife and the baker’s little apprentice.” The National Guardsmen and the Bodyguards exchange hats, and thus make themselves look ridiculous: but more ridiculous still are the bloody defaced heads that bob, league upon league, before the royal carriage.

That was October.

The assembly followed the King to Paris, and took up temporary lodgings in the archbishop’s palace. The Breton Club resumed its meetings in the refectory of an empty convectual building in the rue Saint-Jacques. The former tenants, Dominicans, were always called by the people “Jacobins,” and the name stuck to the deputies and journalists and men of affairs who debated there like a second Assembly. They moved, as their numbers grew, into the library; and finally into the old chapel, which had a gallery for the public.

In November the Assembly moved to the premises of what had formerly been an indoor riding school. The hall was cramped and badly lit, an inconvenient shape, difficult to speak in. Members faced each other across a gangway. One side of the room was broken by the president’s seat and the secretaries’ table, the other by the speaker’s rostrum. The stricter upholders of royal power sat on the right of the gangway; the patriots, as they often called themselves, sat on the left.

Heat was provided by a stove in the middle of the floor, and ventilation was poor. At Dr. Guillotin’s suggestion, vinegar and herbs were sprinkled twice daily. The public galleries were cramped, too, and the three hundred spectators they held could be organized and policed—not necessarily by the authorities.

From now on the Parisians never called the Assembly anything but “the Riding School.”

Rue Conde: towards the end of the year, Claude permitted a thaw in relations. Annette gave a party. His daughters asked their friends, and the friends asked their friends. Annette looked around: “Suppose a fire were to break out?” she said. “So much of the Revolution would go up in smoke.”

There had been, before the guests arrived, the usual row with Lucile; nothing was accomplished nowadays without one. “Let me put your hair up,” Annette wheedled. “Like I used to? With flowers?”

Lucile said vehemently that she would rather die. She didn’t want pins, ribbons, blossoms, devices. She wanted a mane that she could toss about, and if she was willing to torture a few curls into it, Annette thought, that was only for greater verisimilitude. “Oh really,” she said crossly, “if you’re going to impersonate Camille, at least get it right. If you go on like that you’ll get a crick in your neck.” Adele put her hand over her mouth, and snorted with mirth. “You’ve got to do it like this,” Annette said, demonstrating. “You don’t simultaneously toss your head back and shake the hair out of your eyes. The movements are actually quite separate.”

Lucile tried it, smirking. “You could be right. Adele, you have a go. Stand up, you have to stand up to get the effect.”

The three women jostled for the mirror. They began to splutter with laughter, then to shriek and wail. “Then there’s this one,” Lucile said. “Out of my way, minions, while I show you.” She wiped the smile from her face, stared into the mirror in a rapture of wide-eyed narcissism and removed an imaginary tendril of hair with a delicate flick.

“Imbecile,” her mother said. “Your wrist’s at quite the wrong angle. Haven’t you eyes to see?”

Lucile opened her eyes very wide and gave her a Camille-look. “I was only born yesterday,” she said pitifully.

Adele and her mother staggered around the room. Adele fell onto Annette’s bed and sobbed into the pillow. “Oh, stop it, stop it,” Annette said. Her hair had fallen down and tears were running through her rouge. Lucile subsided to the floor and beat the carpet with her fist. “I think I’ll die,” she said.

Oh, the relief of it! When for months now, the three of them had hardly spoken! They got to their feet, tried to compose themselves; but as they reached for powder and scent, great gouts of laughter burst from one or the other. All evening they’re not safe: “Maitre Danton, you know Maximilien Robespierre, don’t you?” Annette said, and turned away because tears were beginning to well up in her eyes and her lips were twitching and another scream of laughter was about to be born. Maitre Danton had this exceedingly aggressive habit of planting a fist on his hip and frowning, while he was talking about the weather or something equally routine. Deputy Maximilien Robespierre had the most curious way of not blinking, and a way of insinuating himself around the furniture; it would be marvelous to see him spring on a mouse. She left them to their self-importance, guffawing inside.

“So where are you living now?” Danton inquired.

“On the rue Saintonge in the Marais.”

“Comfortable?”

Robespierre didn’t reply. He couldn’t think what Danton’s standard of comfort might be, so anything he said wouldn’t mean much. Scruples like this were always tripping him up, in the simplest conversations. Luckily, Danton seemed not to want a reply. “Most of the deputies don’t seem very happy about moving to Paris.”

“Most of them aren’t there half the time. When they are they don’t pay attention. They sit gossiping to each other about clarifying wine and fattening pigs.”

“They’re thinking of home. After all, this is an interruption to their lives.”

Robespierre smiled faintly. He was not supercilious, he just thought that was a peculiar way of looking at things. “But this is their life.”

“But you can understand it—they think about the farm going to seed and the children growing up and the wife hopping into bed with all and sundry—they’re only human.”

Robespierre flicked a glance up at him. “Really, Danton, the times being what they are, I think we could all do