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

‘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 with being a bit more than that.’

Annette moved amongst her guests, trying to discipline her grin to a social smile. Somehow it no longer seemed possible to see her male guests as they wished to be seen. Deputy Pétion (self-regarding smirk) seemed amiable; so did Brissot (a whole set of little tics and twitches). Danton was watching her across the room. Wonder what he’s thinking? She had a shrewd idea. She imagined Maître Danton’s drawl: ‘Not a bad-looking woman, considering her age.’ Fréron stood alone, conspicuously alone; his eyes followed Lucile.

Camille, as usual these days, had an audience. ‘All we really have to do is decide on a title,’ he said. ‘And organize the provincial subscriptions. It’s going to come out every Saturday, though more often when events require it. It will be in octavo, with a grey paper cover. Brissot is going to write for us, and Fréron, and Marat. We shall invite correspondence from readers. We shall carry particularly scathing theatre reviews. The universe and all its follies shall be comprehended in the pages of this hyper-critical journal.’

‘Will it make money?’ Claude asked.

‘Oh, not at all,’ Camille said happily. ‘I don’t even expect to cover costs. The idea is to keep the cover price as low as possible, so that nearly everybody will be able to afford it.’

‘How are you going to pay your printer, then?’

Camille looked mysterious. ‘There are sources,’ he said. ‘The idea really is to let people pay you to write what you were going to write anyway.’

‘You frighten me,’ Claude said. ‘You appear to have no moral sense whatever.’

‘The end result will be good. I won’t have to spend more than a few columns paying compliments to my backers. The rest of the paper I can use to give some publicity to Deputy Robespierre.’

Claude looked around fearfully. There was Deputy Robespierre, in conversation with his daughter Adèle. Their conversation seemed confidential – intimate almost. But then – he had to admit it – if you could separate Deputy Robespierre’s speeches at the Riding-School from the deputy’s own person, there was nothing at all alarming about him. Quite the reverse really. He is a neat, quiet young man; he seems equable, mild, responsible. Adèle is always bringing his name into the conversation; she must, obviously, have feelings towards him. He has no money, but then, you can’t have everything. You have to be glad simply to have a son-in-law who isn’t physically violent.

Adèle had found her way to Robespierre by easy conversational stages. What were they talking about? Lucile. ‘It’s fearful,’ she was saying. ‘Today – well, today was different, actually we had a good laugh.’ I won’t tell him what about, she decided. ‘But normally the atmosphere’s quite frightening. Lucile’s so strong-willed, she argues all the time. And she’s really made her mind up on him.’

‘I thought that, as he’d been asked here today, your father was softening a little.’

‘So did I. But now look at his face.’ They glanced across the room at Claude, then turned back and nodded to each other gloomily. ‘Still,’ Adèle said, ‘they’ll get their way in the end. They’re the kind of people who do. What worries me is, what will the marriage be like?’

‘The thing is,’ Robespierre said, ‘that everyone seems to regard Camille as a problem. But he isn’t a problem to me. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had.’

‘Aren’t you nice to say so?’ And yes, isn’t he, she thought. Who else would venture so artless a statement, in these complicated days? ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Look over there. Camille and my mother are talking about us.’

So they were; heads together, just like in the old days. ‘Matchmaking is the province of elderly spinsters,’ Annette was saying.

‘Don’t you know one you could call in? I like things done correctly.’

‘But he’ll take her away. To Artois.’

‘So? One may travel there. Do you think there’s a steep cliff around Paris, and at Chaillot you drop off into hell? Besides, I don’t think he’ll ever go back home.’

‘But what about when the constitution’s made, and the Assembly dissolves?’

‘I don’t think it will work like that, you see.’

Lucile watched. Oh, mother, she thought, can’t you get any closer? Why don’t you just grapple him to the carpet, and have done with it? The earlier bonhomie had evaporated, as far as she was concerned. She didn’t want to be in this room, with all these chattering people. She looked around for the quietest possible corner. Fréron followed her.

She sat; managed a strained smile. He stretched a proprietorial arm along the back of her chair; lounging, making small-talk, his eyes on the room and not on her. But from time to time his eyes flickered downwards. Finally, softly, insinuatingly, he said, ‘Still a virgin, Lucile?’

Lucile blushed deeply. She bent her head. Not so far from the proper little miss, then? ‘Most emphatically,’ she said.

‘This is not the Camille I know.’

‘He’s saving me till I’m married.’

‘That’s all very well for him, I suppose. He’s got – outlets, hasn’t he?’

‘I don’t want to know this,’ she said.

‘Probably better not. But you’re a grown-up girl now. Don’t you find the delights of your maiden state begin to pall?’

‘What do you suggest I do about it, Rabbit? What opportunities do you think I have?’

‘Oh, I know you find ways to see him. I know you slip out now and again. I thought, at the Danton’s place perhaps. He and Gabrielle are not excessively moral.’

Lucile gave him a sideways glance, as devoid of expression as she could make it. She would not have taken part in this conversation – except that it was a painful relief to talk about her feelings to anyone, even a persecutor. Why must he slander Gabrielle? Rabbit will say anything, she decided. Even he realized he had gone too far – she could see it in his face. Just imagine, she thought – ‘Gabrielle, can we come round tomorrow and borrow your bed?’ Gabrielle would die sooner.

The thought of the Dantons’ bed gives her, she admits, a very strange feeling. An indescribable feeling, really. The thought crosses her mind that, when that day comes, Camille won’t hurt her but Danton will – and her heart bounds, she blushes again, more furiously, because she doesn’t know where the idea came from, she didn’t ask for it, she didn’t want to think that thought at all.

‘Has something upset you?’ Fréron says.

She snaps: ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ Still, she can’t erase the picture from her mind: that belligerent energy, those huge hard hands, that weight. A woman must thank God, she says to herself, that she has a limited imagination.

THE NEWSPAPER went through various changes of name. It began as the Courier du Brabant – they were having a revolution over the border, too, and Camille thought it worth a mention. It became the Révolutions de France et du Brabant, ended up simply as the Révolutions de France. Of course, Marat was the same, always changing his title, for various shady reasons. He had been the Paris Publicist, was now the People’s Friend. A title, they thought at the Révolutions, of risible naïveté; it sounded like a cure for the clap.

Everyone is starting newspapers, including people who can’t write and who, says Camille, can’t even think. The Révolutions stands out; it makes a splash; it also imposes a routine. If the staff is small, temporary and a bit disorganized, this hardly matters; at a push, Camille can write a whole issue himself. What’s thirty-two pages (in octavo) to a man with so much to say for himself?

Monday and Tuesday they were in the office early, working on the week’s edition. By Wednesday the greater part was ready for the printer. On Wednesday, also, the writs came in from the previous Saturday’s libels, though it had been known for the victims to drag their lawyers back from the country on a Sunday morning and get writs served by Tuesday. Challenges to duels came in sporadically, throughout the week.

Thursday was press day. They made the last-minute corrections, then a menial would sprint around to the printer, M. Laffrey, whose premises were on the Quai des Augustins. Thursday midday brought Laffrey and the distributor, M. Garnery, both tearing their hair. Do you want to see the presses impounded, do you want us in gaol? Sit down, have a drink, Camille would say. He rarely agreed to changes; almost never. And they knew that the bigger the risk, the more copies they’d sell.

René Hébert would come into the office: pink-skinned, unpleasant. He made snide jokes all the time about Camille’s private life; no sentence lacked its double-entendre. Camille explained him to his assistants; he used to work in a theatre box-office, but he was sacked for stealing from the petty cash.

‘Why do you put up with him?’ they said. ‘Next time he comes, shall we throw him out?’

They were like that at the Révolutions; always hoping for a less sedentary occupation.

‘Ah, no, leave him alone,’ Camille said. ‘He’s always been offensive. It’s his nature.’

‘I want my own newspaper,’ Hébert said. ‘It will be different from this.’

Brissot was in that day, perched on a desk, twitching. ‘Shouldn’t be too different,’ he said. ‘This one is a pre-eminent success.’

Brissot and Hébert didn’t like each other.