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

‘What is your father?’

‘A magistrate.’ Honesty compelled him to add. ‘I’m afraid I am a great disappointment to him.’

‘Don’t tell me. I shall never understand the middle classes. I wish you would sit down. I must know something of your biography. Tell me, where were you educated?’

‘At Louis-le-Grand. Did you think I was brought up by the local curé?’

Mirabeau put down his coffee cup. ‘De Sade was there.’

‘He’s not entirely typical.’

‘I had the bad luck to be incarcerated with de Sade once. I said to him, “Monsieur, I do not wish to associate with you; you cut up women into little pieces.” Forgive me, I am digressing.’ He sank into a chair, an unmannerly aristocrat who never sought forgiveness for anything. Camille watched him, monstrously vain and conceited, going on like a Great Man. When the Comte moved and spoke, he prowled and roared. When he reposed, he suggested some tatty stuffed lion in a museum of natural history: dead, but not so dead as he might be. ‘Continue,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Why am I bothering with you? Do you think I want to leave your little talents to the Duke’s pack of rascals? I am preparing to give you good advice. Does the Duke give you good advice?’

‘No. He has never spoken to me.’

‘How pathetically you say it. Of course he has not. But myself, I take an interest. I have men of genius in my employ. I call them my slaves. And I like everyone to be happy, down on the plantation. You know what I am of course?’

Camille remembers how Annette spoke of Mirabeau: a bankrupt, an immoralist. The thought of Annette seems out of place in this stuffy little room crowded with furniture, old hangings on the walls, clocks ticking away, the Comte scratching his chin. The room is strewn with evidence of good living: why do we say good living, he wonders, when we mean extravagance, gluttony and sloth? That the bankruptcy is not discharged does not seem to hinder the Comte from acquiring expensive objects – amongst which it seems he is now numbered. As for immorality, the Comte seems only too eager to admit to it. The wild-beast collection of his ambitions crouches in the corner, hungry for its breakfast and stinking at the end of its chain.

‘Well, you have had a nice pause for thought.’ The Comte rose in one easy movement, trailing his drapery. He put an arm around Camille’s shoulders and drew him into the sunlight that streamed in at the window. The sudden warmth seemed an effulgence of his own. There was liquor on his breath. ‘I ought to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I like to have about me men with complicated and sordid pasts. I am then at my ease. And you, Camille, with your impulses and emotions which you have been selling at the Palais-Royal like poisoned bouquets – ’ He touched his hair. ‘And your interesting, faint but perceptible shadow of sexual ambivalence – ’

‘Do you always take people apart in this way?’

‘I like you,’ Mirabeau said drily, ‘because you never deny anything.’ He moved away. ‘There is a handwritten text circulating, called “La France Libre”. Is it yours?’

‘Yes. You did not think that anodyne tract you have there was the whole of my output?’

‘No, Maître Desmoulins, I did not, and I see that you also have your slaves and your copyists. Tell me your politics – in one word.’

‘Republican.’

Mirabeau swore. ‘Monarchy is an article of faith with me,’ he said. ‘I need it, I mean to assert myself through it. Are there many of your underground acquaintances who think as you do?’

‘No, not more than half a dozen. That is, I don’t think you could find more than half a dozen republicans in the whole country.’

‘And why is that, do you suppose?’

‘I suppose it’s because people cannot bear too much reality. They think the King will whistle them from the gutter and make them ministers. But all that world is going to be destroyed.’

Mirabeau yelled for his valet. ‘Teutch, lay out my clothes. Something fairly splendid.’

‘Black,’ Teutch said, trundling in. ‘You’re a deputy, aren’t you.’

‘Dammit, I forgot.’ He nodded towards his anteroom. ‘It sounds as if they’re getting a bit restive out there. Yes, let them all in at once, it will be amusing. Ah, here comes the Genevan government in exile. Good morning, M. Duroveray, M. Dumont, M. Clavière. These are slaves,’ he said to Camille in a carrying whisper. ‘Clavière wants to be a Minister of Finance. Any country will do for him. Peculiar ambition, very.’

Brissot scuttled up. ‘I’ve been suppressed,’ he said. For once, he looked it.

‘How sad,’ Mirabeau said.

They began to fill the room, the Genevans in pale silk and the deputies in black with folios under their arms, and Brissot in his shabby brown coat, his thin, unpowdered hair cut straight across his forehead in a manner meant to recall the ancient world.

‘Pétion, a deputy? Good day to you,’ Mirabeau said. ‘From where? Chartres? Very good. Thank you for calling on me.’

He turned away; he was talking to three people at once. Either you held his interest, or you didn’t. Deputy Pétion didn’t. He was a big man, kind-looking and fleshily handsome, like a growing puppy. He looked around the room with a smile. Then his lazy blue eyes focused. ‘Ah, the infamous Camille.’

Camille jumped violently. He would have preferred it without the prefix. But it was a beginning.

‘I paid a flying visit to Paris,’ Pétion explained, ‘and I heard your name around the cafés. Then Deputy de Robespierre gave me such a description of you that when I saw you just now I knew you at once.’

‘You know de Robespierre?’

‘Rather well.’

I doubt that, Camille thought. ‘Was it a flattering description?’

‘Oh, he thinks the world of you.’ Pétion beamed at him. ‘Everyone does.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t look so sceptical.’

Mirabeau’s voice boomed across the room. ‘Brissot, how are they at the Palais-Royal today?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘Setting filthy intrigues afoot as usual, I suppose; all except Good Duke Philippe, he’s too simple for intrigues. Cunt, cunt, cunt, that’s all he thinks about.’

‘Please,’ Duroveray said. ‘My dear Comte, please.’

‘A thousand apologies,’ the Comte said, ‘I forget that you hale from the city of Calvin. It’s true though. Teutch has more notion of statesmanship. Far more.’

Brissot shifted from foot to foot. ‘Quiet about the Duke,’ he hissed. ‘Laclos is here.’

‘I swear I didn’t see you,’ the Comte said. ‘Shall you carry tales?’ His voice was silky. ‘How’s the dirty-book trade?’

‘What are you doing here?’ Brissot said to Camille, below the buzz of conversation. ‘How did you get on such terms with him?’

‘I hardly know.’

‘Gentlemen, I want your attention.’ Mirabeau pushed Camille in front of him and placed his large be-ringed hands on his shoulders. He was another kind of animal now: boisterously dangerous, a bear got out of the pit. ‘This is my new acquisition, M. Desmoulins.’

Deputy Pétion smiled at him amiably. Laclos caught his eye and turned away.

‘Now, gentlemen, if you would just give me a moment to dress, Teutch, the door for the gentlemen, and I will be with you directly.’ They filed out. ‘You stay,’ he said to Camille.

There was a sudden silence. The Comte passed his hand over his face. ‘What a farce,’ he said.

‘It seems a waste of time. But I don’t know how these things are conducted.’

‘You don’t know much at all, my dear, but that doesn’t stop you having your prim little opinions.’ He bounced across the room, arms outstretched. ‘The Rise and Rise of the Comte de Mirabeau. They have to see me, they have to see the ogre. Laclos comes here with his pointed nose twitching, Brissot ditto. He wears me out, that man Brissot, he never stays still. I don’t mean he runs around the room like you, I mean he fidgets. Incidentally, I presume you are taking money from Orléans? Quite right. One must live, and at other people’s expense if at all possible. Teutch,’ he said, ‘you may shave me, but do not put lather in my mouth, I want to talk.’

‘As if that were anything new,’ the man said. His employer leaned forward and punched him in the ribs. Teutch spilled a little hot water, but was not otherwise incommoded.