“Whilst we are on the subject of Saint Paul,” the priest said, “may I remind you that the powers that be are ordained of God? And whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God, and that they that resist shall receive unto them damnation?”
“Yes, well, I’ll have to take my chances on that,” Camille said. “As you know very well—see verse fourteen—the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife. If you’re going to be obstructive, I’ll have to take it to an ecclesiastical commission. You are just putting a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in your brother’s way. You’re not supposed to go to law, you’re supposed to rather suffer yourself to be defrauded. See chapter six.”
“That’s about going to law with unbelievers. The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens is not an unbeliever.”
“You know you’re wrong,” Camille said. “Where do you think I was educated? Do you think you can get away with talking this sort of rubbish to me? No,” he said to his lawyer, “you needn’t write that down.”
They emerged. “Strike that out,” Camille said. “I was being hasty.” The notary looked cowed. “Write at the top of the page ‘In the matter of the solemnization of the marriage of L. C. Desmoulins, barrister-at law.’ That’s right, put some lines under it.” He took Annette’s arm. “Were you praying?” he said. “Get it to the commission right away,” he said over his shoulder.
“No church,” Lucile said. “No priest. Marvelous.”
“The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens says I am responsible for the loss of half of his annual revenue,” Camille said. “He says it was because of me that his chateau was burned to the ground. Adele, stop giggling.”
They sat around Annette’s drawing room. “Well, Maximilien,” Camille said, “you’re good at solving people’s problems. Solve this.”
Adele tried to compose herself. “Haven’t you a tame priest? Someone you were at school with?”
Robespierre looked up. “Surely Father Berardier could be persuaded? He was our last principal,” he explained, “at Louis-le-Grand, and he sits in the Assembly now. Surely, Camille … he was always so fond of you.”
“When he sees me now, he smiles, as if to say, ‘I predicted how you would turn out.’ They say he will refuse the oath to the constitution, you know.”
“Never mind that,” Lucile said. “If there’s any chance …”
“On these conditions,” Berardier said. “That you make a public profession of faith, in your newspaper. That you cease to make anti-clerical gibes in that publication, and that you erase from it its habitually blasphemous tone.”
“Then what am I to do for a living?” Camille asked.
“It was foolish of you not to foresee this when you decided to take on the church. But then, you never did plan your life more than ten minutes ahead.”
“On the conditions stipulated,” Father Pancemont said, “I will let Father Berardier marry you at Saint-Sulpice. But I’m damned if I’ll do it myself, and I think Father is making a mistake.”
“He is a creature of impulse,” Father Berardier said. “One day his impulses will lead him in the right direction; isn’t that so, Camille?”
“The difficulty is that I wasn’t thinking of bringing an issue out before the New Year.”
The priests exchanged glances. “Then we will expect to see the statement in the first issue of 1791.”
Camille nodded.
“Promise?” Berardier said.
“Promise.”
“You always lied with amazing facility.”
“He won’t do it,” Father Pancemont said. “We should have said, statement first, marriage after.”
Berardier sighed. “What is the use? Consciences cannot be forced.”
“I believe Deputy Robespierre was your pupil too?”
“For a little while.”
Father Pancemont looked at him as one who said, I was in Lisbon during the earthquake year. “You have given up teaching now?” he asked.
“Oh, look—there are worse people.”
“I can’t think of any,” the priest said.
The witnesses to the marriage: Robespierre, Petion, the writer Louis-Sebastien Mercier and the Duke’s friend, the Marquis de Sillery. A diplomatically chosen selection, representing the left wing of the Assembly, the literary establishment and the Orleanist connection.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Camille said to Danton. “Really I wanted Lafayette, Louis Suleau, Marat and the public executioner.”
“Of course I don’t mind.” After all, he thought, I shall be a witness to everything else. “Are you going to be rich now?”
“The dowry is a hundred thousand livres. And there’s some quite valuable silver. Don’t look at me like that. I’ve had to work for it.”
“And are you going to be faithful to her?”
“Of course.” He looked shocked. “What a question. I love her.”
“I only wondered. I thought it might be nice to have a statement of intent.”
They took a first-floor apartment on the rue des Cordeliers, next door to the Dantons; and on December 30 they held their wedding breakfast for a hundred guests, the dark, icy day nuzzling in hostile curiosity at the lighted windows. At one o’clock in the morning they found themselves alone. Lucile was still in her
