Paris: The Novel (126 page)

Ahead of him lay the remains of the old Bastille. He’d gone by the place, on that famous day when the mob had stormed it. They’d gone there, he knew, because, having got arms from Les Invalides, they needed the gunpowder that was stored in the old fort. But for some reason, nowadays people claimed the aim had been to liberate the elderly prisoners, mostly forgers, who lived in the place.

If they’d stormed it a few weeks earlier, he thought wryly, as he rode past it, they could have liberated the Marquis de Sade.

From the Bastille, his journey led him westward past the Hôtel de Ville. Beyond that was the Louvre.

How many happy evenings he’d spent in that area, during the delightful final decade of the old regime. Just north of the Louvre, to be precise, in the welcoming gardens of the Palais-Royal.

The king’s liberal cousin the Duc d’Orléans, who resided there, had turned its huge courtyards and colonnades into an open camp for all those who believed in enlightenment and reform. Philippe Égalité, everyone called him, some mockingly, others with admiration.

What had Orléans really been up to? Some had thought he wanted a republic, others that he wanted the throne for himself. You could discuss anything you liked in the cafés and taverns under those colonnades. His princely protection had allowed revolutionary literature to be printed in the presses there. Half university, half pleasure ground, the Palais-Royal had been the happy seedbed of the Revolution.

But it hadn’t done the Duc d’Orléans any good. A few years later, the revolutionaries meeting in their great hall, only yards away, had sent him to the guillotine, just like his royal cousin.

He was lucky to be a doctor himself, Blanchard considered. His own politics were republican. But he was a moderate. He could have lived with a constitutional monarchy if he had to. But where would he have sat in the Assembly and the Convention which succeeded it? Not with the monarchists, certainly, who were still there at the start. With the Girondins
probably, the majority of liberal republicans. Not with the extremist Jacobins. He was sure of that. And if so, as the Revolution became more and more radical, he would have been sent to the guillotine himself, by the Jacobins who had bullied their way into power. And now, these Jacobins were even executing each other.

Politics was a slippery and dangerous business. Even La Fayette himself had not been able to weather the storm. A hero of the Revolution when it began, and given military command, he and the Jacobins had fallen out, and he had been forced to flee from France.

No, Blanchard did not think he would have survived in politics.

But as a doctor, as long as he kept his head down, he was outside the fray. He had treated Danton, and many others. They seemed to like him.

And that fact, he realized—as he turned down toward the river to cross to the Île de la Cité—that fact might give him the one chance of saving his young friends.

Well, not both of them. One of them, perhaps.

But it would take cool nerves.

Was any building in Paris more fearsome than the grim old prison of the Conciergerie? Sophie didn’t think so. It stood beside the lovely Sainte-Chapelle, but there was nothing gracious about it. Its bulky turrets and massive walls housed the waiting rooms and dungeons where prisoners were finally brought before their trial and execution. Upon any day, there might be more than a thousand prisoners housed in the Conciergerie somewhere. And few of them had any hope.

Sophie already knew that she was going to die.

The trial, if trial it could be called, had lasted scarcely minutes. They had been taken from the heavy stone halls of the Conciergerie into the Gothic old Palais de Justice next door. There, two large, bare rooms had been set aside as special courts. And they were special indeed.

She had wondered if they might be summoned together, but they were not. Étienne went in first. The big door closed, and she heard nothing of what passed behind it. After a long, cold silence he came out, looking ashen. He tried to smile and moved across to kiss her. But the guards would not let him, and pushed her through the door into the courtroom, and she heard the heavy door thud.

They took her to a wooden rail, upon which she could rest her hands,
and told her to stand behind it. Opposite her was a table at which several men were sitting. In the middle was a small man with a pointed face and sharp eyes, who reminded her of a rat. On each side of him were others. These were the judges, she supposed. At the end sat a tall, thin man, all in black, who looked bored. Several men were sitting at another table. She supposed they were the jury. At one side of the room there was a row of chairs. One of these was occupied by a large, ugly woman with black hair, whom Sophie had never seen before.

Now the small man at the center of the table spoke. It seemed he was the principal judge.

“Citizen Sophie Constance Madeleine de Cygne, you are charged under the Law of Suspects with treason, as an enemy of the People and of the Revolution. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” Sophie said, as clearly as she could.

Now it was the turn of the tall man. He did not bother to get up, but asked her whether she had been in the company of the priest known as Father Pierre the day before.

“I was,” she replied, wondering what this could possibly be about.

“Call the witness,” he said.

The big, black-haired woman at the side of the room now rose and stood before the judge’s table.

The widow Le Sourd was soon established by the tall prosecutor as a citizen of good character, and she told her tale. With horror, Sophie heard her harmless expression of shock at the death of the Carmelites turned into an attack on the Revolution. But then, to her astonishment, she heard that she and her husband had told their laborers and tenants to join the rising in the Vendée.

“Your daughter was in the chapel with them when she heard these words?” the prosecutor asked.

“She was. She has a perfect memory, and she told me at once.”

“But this is absurd,” cried Sophie. “Let me call Father Pierre and he will tell you I said no such thing.”

“The prisoner will be silent,” said the judge.

“I may not be defended?”

“By the law of 22 Prairial, enacted by the Convention this year,” the judge intoned, “those brought before this court are not allowed any counsel for their defense.”

He turned to the jury.

“How do you find?” he asked.

“Guilty,” they said all together.

He nodded and turned back to Sophie.

“Citizen Sophie de Cygne,” he announced, “you are sentenced to death at the guillotine. The sentence may be carried out at once.”

And that was the end of the matter.

She had been sitting in a cell with Étienne and four other unfortunates for two hours when Dr. Blanchard appeared. The guard let Blanchard in and he embraced the de Cygnes warmly, but his face was grave. He knew already what the sentence of the court had been, and he told them that there was a priest visiting the prison, and that he would arrange for the priest to come to their cell, if they would like to see him.

Then Blanchard took Étienne to one side and whispered to him earnestly for a minute or two. Sophie could not hear what they were saying, but she saw Étienne nod. After this, Blanchard told her that there was another, empty cell nearby, in which he wished to see her alone, and calling the guard to open the door, he motioned her to follow him. Étienne told her she should go. So, still rather puzzled, she accompanied him.

Then he told her that he wished to examine her.

It was a long shot. He would have to be convincing. And it was not certain that the Tribunal would take any notice. But there had been a number of examples recently when they had canceled or deferred the execution of women who were pregnant. Even a stay of execution would be something. A delay might bring another chance of life, at least.

After returning Sophie to her cell, Blanchard went quickly out of the Conciergerie and across to the Palais de Justice. He had to wait an hour before the Tribunal would see him.

He knew how to speak to them. His tone was respectful, but professionally firm.

“I must inform you at once,” he told the presiding judge, “that the de Cygne woman is pregnant.”

“How do you know?”

“I have just examined her.”

“It seems suspicious.”

“I don’t think so. She is a young married woman.”

“In these cases, Doctor, we normally send the women to our old people’s home, where they are examined by the nurses.”

“As you wish. But forgive me if I say that my diagnosis is more likely to be correct than that of some old midwives. I have made this a particular field of study.”

“Hmm.”

The judge was considering his decision when Blanchard heard the door opening behind him and saw the judge’s eyes look up alertly, and then saw him bow his head. Then a high-pitched voice cut through the quiet.

“I sent two aristocrats to you. Named de Cygne.”

“They are already dealt with, citizen,” said the judge.

And Blanchard turned, to find himself staring into the face of Maximilien Robespierre.

What a strange, enigmatic figure he was, Blanchard thought. Most men feared him, and with good reason; but as a doctor, he found the incorruptible Jacobin an interesting study.

Most of the Jacobins were atheists. If they worshipped anything, it was Reason; if they were impelled by any emotion, it was probably as much a hatred of the old regime as a love of Liberty. But not Robespierre. He believed in God. Not the old God of the Church, to be sure, but a new, enlightened God, that he had invented: a Supreme Being whose vehicle was the Revolution, and whose expression would be the new world of free and reasonable men.

He was quite open about it. Just recently, on the great open space of the Champ de Mars south of the river, he had organized a huge Festival to the Supreme Being which thousands had attended. Some found it pretentious, even laughable, but as Robespierre had given his long and grandiloquent speech, it was clear that this extraordinary Jacobin was not just a soldier of the Revolution, but a visionary, a high priest.

Perhaps this was his strength. Perhaps this was what made him so ruthless, so unbending. The servant of a Supreme Being has little fear of hurting mortal men.

Yet he was still a mortal himself. He could be jealous, even petty.

“There is a problem, however, citizen,” the judge continued.

“What problem?”

“This doctor says the woman is pregnant.”

Maximilien Robespierre looked at Émile Blanchard calmly. His face gave nothing away.

“Do I know you?” he asked at last.

“I attended you once,” said Émile, “at the request of your own doctor, Souberbielle, when he was indisposed.”

“I remember you. Souberbielle thought highly of you.”

Blanchard bowed.

“You say she is pregnant?”

“I do.”

Robespierre continued to stare at him.

“Was Danton one of your patients?”

“Yes. For a while.”

The question was obviously dangerous, but it would be unwise to be caught out in a lie. Robespierre seemed to be satisfied.