Three-Book Edition. Hilary Mantel
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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.
‘You and Camille write for the educated,’ Hébert said. ‘So does Marat. I’m not going to do that.’
‘You are going to start a newspaper for the illiterate?’ Camille asked him sweetly. ‘I wish you every success.’
‘I’m going to write for the people in the street. In the language they speak.’
‘Then every other word will be an obscenity,’ Brissot said, sniffing.
‘Precisely,’ Hébert said, tripping out.
Brissot is the editor of the French Patriot (daily, four pages in quarto, boring). He is also a most generous, painstaking, endlessly inventive contributor to other people’s papers. He quivers into the office most mornings, his narrow, bony face shining with his latest good idea. I’ve spent all my life grovelling to publishers, he would say; and tell how he had been cheated, how his ideas had been stolen and his manuscripts pirated. He didn’t seem to see that there was any connection between this sad record of his, and what he was doing now – 11.30 in the morning, in another editor’s office, turning his dusty, Quaker-style hat in his hands and talking his substance away. ‘My family – you understand, Camille? – was very poor and ignorant. They wanted me to be a monk, that was the best life they could envisage. I lost my faith – well, in the end, I had to break it to them, didn’t I? Of course, they didn’t understand. How could they? It was as if we spoke different languages. Say, they were Swedes, and I was Italian – that’s how close I was to my family. So then they said, you could be a lawyer, we suppose. Now, I was walking along the street one day, and one of the neighbours said, “Oh, look, there’s M. Janvier on his way back from court.” And he pointed to this lawyer, stupid-looking man with a paunch, trotting along with his evening’s work under his arm. And he said, “You work hard, you’ll be like that someday.” And my heart sank. Oh, I know, that’s a figure of speech – but, do you know, I swear it did, it bunched itself up and thudded into my belly. I thought no, any hardship – they can put me in gaol – but I don’t want to be like that. Now, of course, he wasn’t that stupid-looking, he had money, he was looked up to, didn’t oppress the poor or anything, and he’d just got married for the second time, to this very nice young woman…so why wasn’t I tempted? I might have thought – well, it’s a living, it’s not too bad. But – there you are – steady money, easy life – it’s never quite been enough, has it?’
One of Camille’s volatile assistants put his