A Place of Greater Safety (107 page)
Read A Place of Greater Safety Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
Nervously, Robespierre’s hands moved across the bedcovers. He thought of his godson, one day old, his fluttering skull steadied by his father’s long fingers; his godson, a few weeks old, gripping his coat collar and making a speech. But he was too weak to argue. People said now that Saint-Just was attached to Henriette Lebas, the sister of Babette’s husband Philippe. But he didn’t believe this; he didn’t believe he was attached to anyone, anyone at all.
He waited till Eléonore was out of the room. He was stronger now, could make his voice heard. He beckoned to Maurice Duplay. “I want to see Camille.”
“Do you think that’s a good thing?”
Duplay sent the message. Oddly enough, Eléonore seemed neither pleased nor displeased.
When Camille came they did not talk about politics, or about recent years at all. Once, Camille mentioned Danton; he turned his head away, with his old gesture of rigid obstinacy. They talked of the past, their common past, with the forced cheerfulness that people assume when there is a dead body in the house.
Left alone, he lay dreaming of the Republic of Virtue. Five days before he became ill, he had defined his terms. He meant a republic of justice, of community, of self-sacrifice. He saw a free people, gentle, bucolic and learned. The darkness of superstition had drained away from the people’s lives: brackish water, vanishing into soil. In its place flourished the rational, jocund, worship of the Supreme Being. These people were happy; their hearts were not wracked or their flesh tormented by questions without answers or desires without resolution. Men came with gravity and wit to matters of government; they instructed their children, and harvested plain and plentiful food from their own land. Dogs and cats, the animals in the field: all were respected, for their own natures. Garlanded girls, in soft robes of pale linen, moved sedately among colonnades of white marble. He saw the deep dark glint of olive groves, and the blue enamel sky.
“Look at this,” Robert Lindet said. He unrolled the newspaper and shook out of it a piece of bread. “Feel,” he said, “go on, taste it.”
It crumbled easily in his fingers. It had a sour musty smell. “I thought you might not know,” Lindet said, “if you were living on your usual diet of oranges. There’s plenty of the stuff at the moment, but you can see for yourself the quality. People can’t live on this. There is no milk either, and the poorer people use a lot of milk. As for meat, people are lucky to get a scrag-end for soup. The women start queueing outside the butchers’ at three in the morning. This week the National Guard has had to break up fights.”
“If this goes on—I don’t know.” He passed a hand over his face. “People starved every year under the old regime. Lindet, where is it, where is all the food? The land still produces.”
“Danton says we have frozen trade up with our regulations. He says—it’s true enough—that the peasants are afraid to bring their produce into the cities in case they get on the wrong side of some regulation and end up being lynched for profiteering. We requisition where we can, but they hide the stuff, they prefer to let it rot. Danton’s people say that if we took the controls off, supply would begin to move again.”
“And what do you say?”
“The agitators in the Sections support controls. They tell the people it is the only way to do things. It is an impossible situation.”
“So …”
“I await your guidance.”
“What does Hébert say?”
“Excuse me. Give me the newspaper.” He shook it out, and crumbs showered onto the floor. “There.”
“‘The butchers who treat the sansculottes like dogs and give them nothing to gnaw upon but bones should be guillotined like all the enemies of the ordinary people.’”
Robespierre’s lip curled. “Very constructive,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the mass of the people has not gained much in wisdom since ’89. This sort of suggestion seems a solution, to them.”
“Is there much unrest?”
“Of a sort. They are not demanding liberty. They don’t seem to be interested in their rights now. Camille and the release of suspects were very popular, around Christmas. But now they only think about the food supply.”
“Hébert will exploit this,” Robespierre said.
“There’s a good deal of agitation, trouble, in the arms factories. We can’t afford strikes. The army is under-supplied as it is.”
Robespierre lifted his head. “The agitators must be rounded up, in the streets, factories, wherever. I understand that the people have grievances,
but we can’t let everything go now. People must sacrifice themselves for the nation. It will work out, in the long term.”
but we can’t let everything go now. People must sacrifice themselves for the nation. It will work out, in the long term.”
“Saint-Just and Vadier on the Police Committee keep a tight hand on things. Unfortunately,” Lindet hesitated, “without a political decision at the highest level, we can’t move against the real troublemakers.”
“Hébert.”
“He will get up an insurrection if he can. The government will fall. Read the newspaper. There is a movement at the Cordeliers—”
“Don’t tell me,” Robespierre said. “I know it all too well. The bombast to get your courage up, and the meetings in back rooms. It is only Hébert that balances out the influence of Danton. Here I am, helpless, and everything is falling apart. Won’t the people be loyal to the Committee, after we have saved them from invasion, and fed them as best we can?”
“I’d hoped to spare you this,” Lindet said. He reached into a pocket and took out a piece of card, which he unfolded. It was an official notice, giving the hours and wage rates for government workshops. There was a ragged tear at each corner, where it had been ripped from the wall.
Robespierre stretched out his hand for it. The notice bore the reproduced signatures of six members of the Committee of Public Safety. Underneath them, crudely scrawled in red, were the words:
CANNIBALS. THIEVES. MURDERERS.
Robespierre let it fall onto the bed. “Were the Capets abused like this?” He dropped his head against the pillows. “It is my duty to hunt out the men who have misled and betrayed these poor people and put these wicked thoughts into their heads. I swear to you, from now on I shall not let the Revolution out of my own hands.”
After Lindet had gone he sat for a long time, propped up by pillows, watching the afternoon light change and flit across the ceiling. Dusk fell. Eléonore crept in with lights. She put a log on the fire, shuffled together the loose papers that lay about the room. She stacked up books and replaced them on the shelves, refilled his jug of water and drew the curtains. She stood over him and gently touched his face. He smiled at her.
“You are feeling better?”
“Much better.”
Suddenly she sat down at the foot of the bed, as if all the strength had left her; her shoulders slumped, she cradled her head in her hands. “Oh,” she said, “we thought at first you’d die. You looked like a corpse, when we found you on the floor. What would happen if you died? None of us could go on.”
“I didn’t die,” he said. His tone was pleasant, decisive. “Also I’m more clear now about what has to be done. I shall be going to the Convention tomorrow.”
The date was 21 Ventôse—March 11, old-style. It was thirty days since his withdrawal from public life. He felt as if all the years past he had been enclosed by a shell, penetrable to just a little light and sound; as if his illness had split it open, and the hand of God had plucked him out, pure and clean.
M
arch 12: “The mandate of the Committee was renewed by the Convention for a further month,” Robert Lindet said. “There was no opposition.” He said it very formally, as if he were a speaking gazette.
arch 12: “The mandate of the Committee was renewed by the Convention for a further month,” Robert Lindet said. “There was no opposition.” He said it very formally, as if he were a speaking gazette.
“Mm,” Danton said.
“There wouldn’t be, would there?” Camille leapt up to pace about the room. “There wouldn’t be any opposition. The members of the Convention stand up and sit down to the applause of the galleries. Which the Committee had packed, I imagine.”
Lindet sighed. “You’re right. Nothing is left to chance.” His eyes followed Camille. “Will you be glad of Hébert’s death? I suppose you will.”
“Is it a foregone conclusion?” Danton asked.
“The Cordeliers Club calls for insurrection, for a day. So does Hébert in his newspaper. No government in five years has stood up to insurrection.”
“But then,” Camille said, “Robespierre was never the government.”
“Exactly. Either he’ll snuff it out before it begins, or smash it by force of arms.”
“Man of action,” Danton said. He laughed.
“You were, once,” Lindet said.
Danton swept an arm out. “I am the Opposition.”
“Robespierre threatened Collot. If Collot had shown the slightest leaning towards Hébert’s tactics, he would be in prison now.”
“What has that to do with me?”
“Saint-Just has been at Robespierre, every day for a week. You have to understand that Robespierre has respect for him—Saint-Just never puts a foot wrong. We think that in the long run they may have some divergence of opinion, but we’re not concerned with theory now. Saint-Just’s attitude is, if Hébert goes, Danton must go. He talks of—balancing out the factions.”
“They wouldn’t dare. I’m not a faction, Lindet, I’m at the Revolution’s core.”
“Look, Danton, Saint-Just believes you are a traitor. He is actively seeking proofs of your involvement with the enemy. How many times must I tell you? However ludicrous it seems, this is what he believes. This is what he is saying to the Committee. Collot and Billaud-Varennes back him up.”
“But Robespierre,” Camille said quickly. “He’s the important one.”
“I suppose you must have quarreled, Danton, last time you met. I’m afraid he has the air of a man who is trying to make his mind up. I don’t know what it would take—some small thing. He doesn’t speak against you, but he doesn’t defend you as he used to. He was very quiet, in today’s session. The others think it is because he’s not over his illness yet, but it’s more than that. He made a note of everything that was said. He watched all the time. If Hébert falls, you must go.”
“Go?”
“You must get out.”
“Is that the best advice you have for me, friend Lindet?”
“I want you to survive. Robespierre’s a prophet, he’s a dreamer—and I ask you, what record have prophets, as heads of government? When he’s gone, who will maintain the republic, if you do not?”
“Dreamer? Prophet? You’re very persuasive,” Danton said. “But if I thought that whey-faced eunuch had any designs on me I’d break his neck.”
Lindet dropped back in his chair. “Well, I don’t know. Camille, can you make him understand.”
“Oh … my position is somewhat … ambivalent.”
“That’s a damn good word for you,” Danton observed.
“Saint-Just spoke against you in the Committee today, Camille. So did Collot, so did Barère. Robespierre let them get through with it, then he said that you were led astray by stronger personalities. Barère said that they were sick of hearing that, and here was some evidence from the Police Committee, from Vadier. Robespierre took the papers and put them under his own on the table, and sat with his elbows on them. Then he changed the subject.”
“Does he often do things like that?”
“Surprisingly often.”
“I shall appeal to the people,” Danton said. “They must have some idea what sort of government they want.”
“Hébert is appealing to the people,” Lindet said. “The Committee calls it projected insurrection.”
“He has not my status in the Revolution. Nothing like it.”
“I don’t think the people care anymore,” Lindet said. “I don’t think they care who sinks or swims, you, Hébert, Robespierre. They’re exhausted. They come to the trials as a diversion. It is better than the theater. The blood is real.”
“One might think you despaired,” Camille said.
“Oh, I don’t have any truck with despair. I just keep an eye on the food supplies, as the Committee has told me to do.”
“You have your loyalties to the Committee.”
“Yes. So I won’t come again.”
“Lindet, if I come out on top of this, I’ll remember your good offices.”
Robert Lindet nodded—made, in fact, a sort of humorous, half-embarrassed bow. He was of another generation; the Revolution had not made him. Dogged and clear-headed, he made it his business to survive from day to day; Monday to Tuesday was all he asked.
S
ome violent rhetoric in the Sections: a minor demonstration at City Hall. 23 Ventôse, Saint-Just read a report to the Convention, alleging a foreign-inspired plot among certain well-known factionalists to destroy representative government and starve Paris. 24 Ventôse, in the early hours, Hébert and his associates were taken away from their houses by the police.
ome violent rhetoric in the Sections: a minor demonstration at City Hall. 23 Ventôse, Saint-Just read a report to the Convention, alleging a foreign-inspired plot among certain well-known factionalists to destroy representative government and starve Paris. 24 Ventôse, in the early hours, Hébert and his associates were taken away from their houses by the police.
ROBESPIERRE: I am at a loss to see what purpose our friends thought this meeting would serve.
DANTON: How is the trial going?
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