Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien

‘Done to a turn.’

‘So much for Necker,’ d’Anton said.

‘But you know, it wasn’t such a crime,’ Camille suggested. ‘Not if he thought public confidence was the main thing.’

‘Jesuit,’ d’Anton said.

Claude turned to him. ‘I’m hearing things, d’Anton – straws in the wind. Your patron Barentin will be moving from the Board of Excise – he’s going to get the Ministry of Justice in the new government.’ He smiled. He looked very tired. ‘This is a sad day for me. I would have given anything to stop it coming to this. And it must give impetus to the wilder elements…’ His eye fell on Camille. He had been very civil this morning, very well-behaved, but that he was a wilder element Claude had no doubt. ‘Maître Desmoulins,’ he said, ‘I hope you aren’t still entertaining notions about marrying my daughter.’

‘I am, rather.’

‘If you could just see it from my point of view.’

‘No, I’m afraid I can see it only from my own.’

M. Duplessis turned away. D’Anton put a hand on his arm. ‘About Barentin – can you tell me something more?’

Claude held up a forefinger. ‘Least said, soonest mended. I hope I’ve not spoken out of turn. I expect I’ll be seeing you before long.’ He indicated Camille, hopelessly. ‘Him too.’

Camille looked after him. ‘“Straws in the wind”,’ he said savagely. ‘Have you ever heard such drivel? We ought to arrange him a cliché contest with Maître Vinot. Oh,’ he said suddenly, ‘I do see what he means. He means they’re going to offer you a job.’

UPON TAKING OFFICE, Necker began to negotiate a loan from abroad. The Parlements were reinstated. The price of bread rose two sous. On 29 August, a mob burned down the guard posts on the Pont-Neuf. The King found the money to move troops into the capital. Soldiers opened fire into a crowd of six hundred; seven or eight people were killed and an unknown number injured.

M. Barentin was appointed Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals. The mob made a straw doll in the likeness of his predecessor, and set fire to it on the Place de Grève, to the tune of hoots and jeers, the crack and whizz of fireworks and the drunken acquiescent singing of the French Guards, who were stationed permanently in the capital and who liked that sort of thing.

D’ANTON had given his reasons precisely, without heat but without equivocation; he had worked out beforehand what he would say, so that he would be perfectly clear. Barentin’s offer of a secretary’s post would quickly become common knowledge around City Hall and the ministries and beyond. Fabre suggested that he take Gabrielle some flowers and break it to her gently.

When he got home, Mme Charpentier was there, and Camille. They stopped talking when they saw him. The atmosphere was ill-humoured; but Angélique came over, beaming, and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Dear son Georges,’ she said, ‘our warmest congratulations.’

‘On what?’ he said. ‘My case didn’t come up. Really, the process of justice is moving like treacle nowadays.’

‘We understand,’ Gabrielle said, ‘that you have been offered a post in the government.’

‘Yes, but it’s of no consequence. I turned it down.’

‘I told you,’ Camille said.

Angélique stood up. ‘I’ll be off then.’

‘I’ll see you out,’ Gabrielle said, with extreme formality. Her face glowed. She got up; they went, and whispered outside the door.

‘Angélique will make her behave,’ d’Anton said. Camille sat and smiled at him. ‘You’re easily pleased. Come back in, calm yourself, shut the door,’ he said to his wife. ‘Please try to understand that I am acting for the best.’

‘When he said,’ she pointed to Camille, ‘that you’d turned it down, I said what kind of a fool did he suppose I was?’

‘This government won’t last a year. It doesn’t suit me, Gabrielle.’

She gaped at him. ‘So what are you going to do? Give up your practice because the state of the law doesn’t suit you? You were ambitious before, you used to say – ’

‘Yes, and now he’s more ambitious,’ Camille cut in. ‘He’s far too good for a minor post under Barentin. Probably – oh, probably the Seal will be within his own gift one day.’

D’Anton laughed. ‘If it ever is,’ he said, ‘I’ll give it you. I promise.’

‘That’s probably treason,’ Gabrielle said. Her hair was slipping down, as it tended to do at points of crisis.

‘Don’t confuse the issue,’ Camille said. ‘Georges-Jacques is going to be a great man, however he is impeded.’

‘You’re mad,’ Gabrielle said. As she shook her head a shower of hairpins leapt out and slithered to the floor. ‘What I hate, Georges, is to see you trotting along in the wake of other people’s opinions.’

‘Me? You think I do that?’

‘No,’ Camille said hurriedly, ‘he doesn’t do that.’

‘He takes notice of you, and no notice of me whatsoever.’

‘That’s because – ’ Camille stopped. He could not think of a tactful reason why it was. He turned to d’Anton. ‘Can I produce you to the Café du Foy tonight? You may be expected to make a short speech, you don’t mind, of course not.’

Gabrielle looked up from the floor, hairpin in hand. ‘Do I understand that this business has glorified you, somehow?’

‘I wouldn’t say “glory”.’ Camille looked modest. ‘But it’s a start.’

‘Would you mind?’ d’Anton said to her. ‘I’ll not be late. When I come home I’ll explain it better. Gabrielle, leave those, Catherine will pick them up.’

Gabrielle shook her head again. She would not be explained to, and if Catherine were asked to crawl around the floor after her hairpins, she would probably give notice; why did he not know this?

The men went downstairs. Camille said, ‘I’m afraid it’s just my existence that irks Gabrielle. Even when my desperate fiancée turns up at her door she still believes I’m trying to inveigle you into bed with me.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Time to think of higher things,’ Camille said. ‘Oh, I am so happy. Everybody says changes are coming, everyone says the country will be overturned. They say it, but you believe it. You act on it. You are seen to act on it.’

‘There was a pope – I forget which one – who told everyone that the world was going to end. They all put their estates on the market, and the pope bought them and became rich.’

‘That’s a nice story,’ Camille said. ‘You are not a pope, but never mind, I think you will do quite well for yourself.’

AS SOON AS THEY HEARD in Arras that there were going to be elections, Maximilien began to put his affairs in order. ‘How do you know you’ll be elected?’ his brother Augustin said. ‘They might form a cabal against you. It’s very likely.’

‘Then I’ll have to sing small between now and the election,’ he said grimly. ‘Here in the provinces almost everyone has a vote, not just the moneyed men.’ For that reason, ‘They won’t be able to keep me out,’ he said.

His sister Charlotte said, ‘They’ll be ungrateful beasts if they don’t elect you. After all you’ve done for the poor. You deserve it.’

‘It isn’t a prize.’

‘You’ve worked so hard, all for nothing, no money, no credit. There’s no need to pretend you don’t resent it. You’re not obliged to be saintly.’

He sighed. Charlotte has this way of cutting him to the bone. Hacking away, with the family knife.

‘I know what you think, Max,’ she said. ‘You don’t believe you’ll come back from Versailles in six months, or even a year. You think this will alter your life. Do you want them to have a revolution just to please you?’