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

‘Max, he isn’t a schoolchild.’

‘I’ll write it this afternoon,’ Camille said.

‘And be at the Jacobins this evening.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘You are terribly dictatorial,’ she said.

‘Oh, no, Lucile.’ Robespierre looked at her earnestly. His voice suddenly softened. ‘It’s just that one has to use exhortation with Camille, he’s such a dreamer. I’m sure,’ he dropped his eyes, ‘if I had just been married to you, Lucile, I’d be tempted to spend time with you and I wouldn’t give such attention to my work as I ought. And Camille is no use at fighting temptation on his own, he never has been. But I’m not dictatorial, don’t say that.’

‘All right,’ she said, ‘you have the licence of long acquaintance. But your tone. Your manner. You should save that for berating the Right. Go and make them flinch.’

His face tightened: defensive, distressed. She saw why Camille preferred always to apologize. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Camille quite likes being pushed around. It’s something in his character. So Danton says. Goodbye. Write it this afternoon, won’t you?’ he added gently.

‘Well,’ she said. They exchanged glances. ‘That was pointed, wasn’t it? What does he mean?’

‘Nothing. He was just shaken because you criticized him.’

‘Must he not be criticized?’

‘No. He takes things to heart, it undermines him. Besides, he was right. I should have remembered about the pamphlet. You mustn’t be hard on him. It’s shyness that makes him abrupt.’

‘He ought to have got over it. Other people don’t get allowances made for them. Besides, once you said he had no weaknesses.’

‘Day to day he has weaknesses. In the end he has no weaknesses.’

‘You might leave me,’ she said suddenly. ‘For someone else.’

‘What makes you imagine that?’

‘Today I keep thinking. I keep thinking of what could happen. Because I never supposed that one could be so happy, that everything could come right.’

‘Do you think you have had an unhappy life?’

Appearances were against her; but truthfully she answered, ‘Yes.’

‘I also. But not from now on.’

‘You could be killed in an accident in the street. You might die. Your sister Henriette died of a consumption.’ She scrutinized him as if she wanted to see the tissue beneath the skin, and provide against contingencies.

He turned away; he didn’t feel he could bear it. He was terribly afraid that happiness might be a habit, or a quality knitted into the temperament; or it might be something you learn when you’re a child, a kind of language, harder than Latin or Greek, that you should have a good grasp on by the time you’re seven. What if you haven’t got that grasp? What if you’re in some way happiness-stupid, happiness-blind? It occurred to him that there are some people, ashamed of being illiterate, who always pretend to others that they can read. Sooner or later they get found out, of course. But it is always possible that while you are valiantly pretending, the principles of reading strike you for the first time, and you are saved. By analogy, it is possible that while you, the unhappy person, are trying out some basic expressions – the kind of thing you get in phrasebooks for travellers – the grammar and syntax of this neglected language are revealing themselves, somewhere at the back of your mind. That’s all very well, he thought, but the process could take years. He understood Lucile’s problem: how do you know you will live long enough to be fluent?

THE PEOPLE’S FRIEND, No. 497, J.-P. Marat, editor:

…name immediately a military tribunal, a supreme dictator…you are lost beyond hope if you continue to heed your present leaders, who will continue to flatter you and lull you until your enemies are at your walls…Now is the time to have the heads of Mottié, of Bailly…of all the traitors in the National Assembly…within a few days Louis XVI will advance at the head of all the malcontents and the Austrian legions…A hundred fiery mouths will threaten to destroy your town with red shot if you offer the least resistance…all the patriots will be arrested, the popular writers will be dragged away to dungeons…a few more days of indecision, and it will be too late to shake off your lethargy; death will overtake you in your sleep.

DANTON at Mirabeau’s house.

‘So how goes it?’ the Comte said.

Danton nodded.

‘I mean, I really want to know.’ Mirabeau laughed. ‘Are you totally cynical, Danton, or do you harbour some guilty ideals? Where do you stand, really? Come, I’m taken with a passion to know. Which is it to be for King, Louis or Philippe?’

Danton declined to answer.

‘Or perhaps neither. Are you a republican, Danton?’

‘Robespierre says that it is not a government’s descriptive label that matters, but its nature, the way it operates, whether it is government by the people. Cromwell’s republic, for instance, was not a popular government. I agree with him. It seems to me of little importance whether we call it a monarchy or a republic.’

‘You say its nature matters, but you do not say which nature you would prefer.’

‘My reticence is considered.’

‘I’m sure it is. You can hide a great deal behind slogans. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, indeed.’

‘I subscribe to that.’

‘I hear you invented it. But freedom comprehends – what?’

‘Do I have to define it for you? You should simply know.’

‘That is sentimentality,’ Mirabeau said.

‘I know. Sentimentality has its place in politics, as in the bedroom.’

The Comte looked up. ‘We’ll discuss bedrooms later. Let’s, shall we, descend to practicalities? The Commune is to be reshuffled, there will be elections. The office ranking below mayor will be that of administrator. There will be sixteen administrators. You wish to be one of them, you say. Why, Danton?’

‘I wish to serve the city.’

‘No doubt. I myself am assured of a place. Amongst your colleagues you may expect Sieyès and Talleyrand. I take it from the expression on your face that you think it a company of tergiversators in which you will be quite at home. But if I am to support you, I must have an assurance as to your moderate conduct.’

‘You have it.’

‘Your moderation. You understand me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fully?’

‘Yes.’

‘Danton, I know you. You are like myself. Why else have they started calling you the poor man’s Mirabeau, do you suppose? You haven’t an ounce of moderation in your body.’

‘I think our resemblances must be superficial.’

‘Oh, you think you are a moderate?’