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

By evening there was no improvement. Gabrielle slept for an hour or two, then came to relieve Catherine. She wedged herself into an upright chair, listening to the baby’s breathing. She could not stop herself touching him every few minutes – just a fingertip on cheek, a little pat to the sore chest.

By four o’clock he seemed better. His temperature had dropped, his fists unclenched, his eyelids drooped into a doze. She leaned back, relieved, her limbs turned to jelly with fatigue.

The next thing she heard was the clock striking five. Wrenched out of a dream, she jerked in her chair, almost fell. She stood up, sick and cold, steadying herself with a hand on the crib. She leaned over it. The baby lay belly-down, quite still. She knew without touching him that he was dead.

AT THE CROSSROADS of the rue Montreuil and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine there was a great house known to the people who lived there as Titonville. On the first floor were the (allegedly sumptuous) apartments occupied by one M. Réveillon. Below ground were vast cellars, where notable vintages appreciated in the dusk. On the ground floor was the source of M. Réveillon’s wealth – a wallpaper factory employing 350 people.

M. Réveillon had acquired Titonville after its original owner went bankrupt; he had built up a flourishing export trade. He was a rich man, and one of the largest employers in Paris, and it was natural that he should stand for the Estates-General. On 24 April he went with high hopes to the election meeting of the Sainte-Marguerite division, where his neighbours listened to him with deference. Good man, Réveillon. Knows his stuff.

M. Réveillon remarked that the price of bread was too high. There was a murmur of agreement and a little sycophantic applause: as if the observation were original. If the price of bread were to come down, M. Réveillon said, employers could cut wages; this would lead to a reduction in the price of manufactured articles. Otherwise, M. Réveillon said, where would it all end? Prices up, wages up, prices up, wages up…

M. Hanriot, who owned the saltpetre works, warmly seconded these observations. People lounged near the door, and handed out scraps of news to the unenfranchised, who stood outside in the gutter.

Only one part of M. Réveillon’s programme caught the public attention – his proposal to cut wages. Saint-Antoine came out on the streets.

De Crosne, the Lieutenant of Police, had already warned that there could be trouble in the district. It was teeming with migrant workers, unemployment was high, it was cramped, talkative, inflammable. News spread slowly across the city; but Saint-Marcel heard, and a group of demonstrators began a march towards the river. A drummer at their head set the pace, and they shouted for death:

Death to the rich

Death to the aristocrats

Death to the hoarders

Death to the priests.

They were carrying a gibbet knocked together in five minutes by a carpenter’s apprentice anxious to oblige: dangling from it were two eyeless straw dolls with their straw limbs pushed into old clothes and their names, Hanriot and Réveillon, chalked on their chests. Shopkeepers put up their shutters when they heard them coming. The dolls were executed with full ceremony in the Place de Grève.

All this is not so unusual. So far, the demonstrators have not even killed a cat. The mock executions are a ritual, they diffuse anger. The colonel of the French Guards sent fifty men to stand about near Titonville, in case anger was not quite diffused. But he neglected Hanriot’s house, and it was a simple matter for a group of the marchers to wheel up the rue Cotte, batter the doors down and start a fire. M. Hanriot got out unharmed. There were no casualties. M. Réveillon was elected a deputy.

But by Monday, the situation looked more serious. There were fresh crowds on the rue Saint-Antoine, and another incursion from Saint-Marcel. As the demonstrators marched along the embankments stevedores fell in with them, and the workers on the woodpiles, and the down-and-outs who slept under the bridges; the workers at the royal glass factory downed tools and came streaming out into the streets. Another two hundred French Guards were dispatched; they fell back in front of Titonville, commandeered carts and barricaded themselves in. It was at this point that their officers felt the stirrings of panic. There could be five thousand people beyond the barricades, or there could be ten thousand; there was no way of telling. There had been some sharp action these last few months; but this was different.

As it happened, that day there was a race-meeting at Vincennes. As the fashionable carriages crossed the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, nervous ladies and gentlemen dressed à l’Anglais were haled out on to the sewage and cobblestones. They were required to shout, ‘Down with the profiteers,’ then roughly assisted back into their seats. Many of the gentlemen parted with sums of money to ensure good will, and some of the ladies had to kiss lousy apprentices and stinking draymen, as a sign of solidarity. When the carriage of the Duke of Orléans appeared, there was cheering. The Duke got out, said a few soothing words, and emptied his purse among the crowd. The carriages behind were forced to halt. ‘The Duke is reviewing his troops,’ said one high, carrying aristocratic voice.

The guardsmen loaded their guns and waited. The crowd milled about, sometimes approaching the carts to talk to the soldiers, but showing no inclination to attack the barricades. Out at Vincennes the Anglophiles urged their favourites past the post. The afternoon went by.

Some attempt was made to divert the returning race-goers, but when the carriage of the Duchess of Orléans appeared the situation became difficult. Up there was where she wanted to go, the Duchess’s coachman said: past those barricades. The problem was explained. The reticent Duchess did not alter her orders. Etiquette confronted expediency. Etiquette prevailed. Soldiers and bystanders began to take down the barricades. The mood altered, swung about; the idleness of the afternoon dissipated, slogans were shouted, weapons reappeared. The crowd surged through, after the Duchess’s carriage. After a few minutes there was nothing left of Titonville worth burning, smashing or carrying away.

When the cavalry arrived the crowds were already looting the shops on the rue Montreuil. They pulled the cavalrymen off their horses. Infantry appeared, faces set; orders crackled through the air, there was the sudden, shocking explosion of gunfire. Blank cartridges: but before anyone had grasped that, an infantryman was grazed by a roof tile dropped from above, and as he turned his face up to see where the tile had come from the rioter who had picked him out as a target skimmed down another tile, which took out his eye.

Within a minute the mob had splintered doors and smashed locks, and they were up on the roofs of the rue Montreuil, tearing up the slates at their feet. The soldiers fell back under the barrage, hands to their faces and scalps, blood dripping between their fingers, tripping on the bodies of men who had been felled. They opened fire. It was 6.30 p.m.

By eight o’clock fresh troops had arrived. The rioters were pushed back. The walking wounded were helped away. Women appeared on the streets, shawls over their heads, hauling buckets of water to bathe wounds and give drinks to those who had lost blood. The shopfronts gaped, doors creaked off their hinges, houses were stripped to the brick; there were smashed tiles and broken glass to walk on, spilt blood tacky on the tiles, small fires running along charred wood. At Titonville the cellars had been ransacked, and the men and women who had breached the casks and smashed the necks of the bottles were lying half-conscious, choking on their vomit. The French Guards, out for revenge, bludgeoned their unresisting bodies where they lay. A little stream of claret ran across the cobbles. At nine o’clock the cavalry arrived at full strength. The Swiss Guard brought up eight cannon. The day was over. There were three hundred corpses to shovel up off the streets.

UNTIL THE DAY of the funeral, Gabrielle did not go out. Shut in her bedroom, she prayed for the little soul already burdened with sin, since it had shown itself intemperate, demanding, greedy for milk during its year’s stay in a body. Later she would go to church to light candles to the Holy Innocents. For now, huge slow tears rolled down her cheeks.

Louise Gély came from upstairs. She did what the maids had not sense to do; parcelled up the baby’s clothes and his blankets, scooped up his ball and his rag doll, carried them upstairs in an armful. Her small face was set, as if she were used to attending on the bereaved and knew she must not give way to their emotions. She sat beside Gabrielle, the woman’s plump hand in her bony child’s grasp.

‘That’s how it is,’ Maître d’Anton said. ‘You’re just getting your life set to rights, then the wisdom of the bloody Almighty – ’ The woman and the girl raised their shocked faces. He frowned. ‘This religion has no consolation for me any more.’

After the baby was buried, Gabrielle’s parents came back to sit with her. ‘Look to the future,’ Angélique prompted. ‘You might have another ten children.’ Her son-in-law gazed miserably into space. M. Charpentier walked about sighing. He felt useless. He went to the window to look out into the street. Gabrielle was coaxed to eat.

Mid-afternoon, another mood got into the room: life must go on. ‘This is a poor situation for a man who used to know all the news,’ M. Charpentier said. He tried to signal to his son-in-law that the women would like to be left alone.

Georges-Jacques got up reluctantly. They put on their hats, and walked through the crowded and noisy streets to the Palais-Royal and the Café du Foy. M. Charpentier attempted to draw the boy into conversation, failed. His son-in-law stared straight ahead of him. The slaughter in the city was no concern of his; he looked after his own.

As they pushed their way into the café, Charpentier said, ‘I don’t know these people.’

D’Anton looked around. He was surprised at how many of them he did know. ‘This is where the Patriotic Society of the Palais-Royal holds its meetings.’

‘Who may they be?’

‘The usual bunch of time-wasters.’

Billaud-Varennes was threading his way towards them. It was some weeks since d’Anton had put any work his way; his yellow face had become an irritation, and you can’t keep going, his clerk Paré had told him, all the lazy malcontents in the district.

‘What do you think of all this?’ Billaud’s eyes, perpetually like small, sour fruits, showed signs of ripening into expectation. ‘Desmoulins has declared his interest at last, I see. Been with Orléans’s people. They’ve bought him.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Well, talk of the devil.’

Camille came in alone. He looked around warily. ‘Georges-Jacques, where have you been?’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you for a week. What do you make of Réveillon?’

‘I’ll tell you what I make of it,’ Charpentier said. ‘Lies and distortion. Réveillon is the best master in this city. He paid his men right through the lay-offs last winter.’

‘Oh, so you think he is a philanthropist?’ Camille said. ‘Excuse me, I must speak to Brissot.’

D’Anton had not seen Brissot until now; unless he had seen him and overlooked him, which would have been easy enough. Brissot turned to Camille, nodded, turned again to his group to say, ‘No, no, no, purely legislative.’ He turned back, extended a hand to Camille. He was a thin man, meagre, mousy, with narrow shoulders hunched to the point of deformity. Ill-health and poverty made him look older than his thirty-five years, yet today his wan face and pale eyes were as hopeful as a child’s on its first day at school. ‘Camille,’ he said, ‘I mean to start a newspaper.’

‘You must be careful,’ d’Anton told him. ‘The police haven’t entirely let the situation go. You may find you can’t distribute it.’

Brissot’s eyes travelled across d’Anton’s frame, and upwards, across his scarred face. He did not ask to be introduced.

‘First I thought I’d begin on 1 April and publish twice weekly, then I thought no, wait till 20 April, make it four times weekly, then I thought, no, leave it till next week, when the Estates meet – that’s the time to make a splash. I want to get all the news from Versailles to Paris and out on to the streets – the police may pick me up, but what does it matter? I’ve been in the Bastille once, I can go again. I’ve not had a moment to spare, I’ve been helping with the elections in the Filles-Saint-Thomas district, they were desperate for my advice – ’

‘People always are,’ Camille said. ‘Or so you tell me.’

‘Don’t be snide,’ Brissot said gently. There was impatience in the faint lines around his eyes. ‘I know you think I haven’t a chance of keeping a paper going, but we can’t spare ourselves now. Who would have thought, a month ago, that we’d have advanced this far?’

‘This man calls three hundred dead an advance,’ Charpentier said.

‘I think – ’ Brissot broke off. ‘I’ll tell you in private all that I think. There might be police informers here.’

‘There’s you,’ a voice said behind him.

Brissot winced. He did not turn. He looked at Camille to see if he had caught the words. ‘Marat put that about,’ he muttered. ‘After all I’ve done to further that man’s career and bolster his reputation, all I get is smears and innuendos – the people I’ve called comrades have treated me worse than the police have ever done.’

Camille said, ‘Your trouble is, you’re backtracking. I heard you, saying the Estates would save the country. Two years ago you said nothing was possible unless we got rid of the monarchy first. Which is it, which is it to be? No, don’t answer. And will there be an inquiry into the cause of these riots? No. A few people will be hanged, that’s all. Why? Because nobody dares to ask what happened – not Louis, not Necker, not even the Duke himself. But we all know that Réveillon’s chief crime was to stand for the Estates against the candidate put up by the Duke of Orléans.’

There was a hush. ‘One should have guessed,’ Charpentier said.

‘One never anticipated the scale of it,’ Brissot whispered. ‘It was planned, yes, and people were paid – but not ten thousand people. Not even the Duke could pay ten thousand people. They acted for themselves.’