Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien. Hilary Mantel
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Bailly is solemn amid the sardonic laughter, summer rain running down his hat. Dr Guillotin, his fellow academician, is at his elbow. ‘What about that tennis court down the road?’
Those within earshot stared at him. ‘It’s not locked – I know it wouldn’t give us a lot of room but…Well, anybody got a better suggestion?’
At the tennis court they stand President Bailly on a table. They swear an oath, not to separate until they have given France a constitution. Overcome by emotion, the scientist assumes an antique pose. It is, altogether, a Roman moment. ‘We’ll see how they stick together when the troops move in,’ the Comte de Mirabeau says.
Three days later, when they are back in their own premises, the King turns up at their meeting. In an unsteady and hesitant voice he annuls their actions. He will give them a programme of reform, he alone. In silence before him, black coats, bleached cravats, faces of stone: men sitting for their own monuments. He orders them to disperse, and, gathering his sorry majesty, exits in procession.
Mirabeau is at once on his feet. Scrupulously attentive to his own legend, he looks around for the shorthand writers and the press. The Master of Ceremonies interrupts: will they kindly break up the meeting, as the King has ordered?
MIRABEAU: If you have been told to clear us from this hall, you must ask for orders to use force. We shall leave our seats only at bayonet point. The King can cause us to be killed; tell him we all await death; but he need not hope that we shall separate until we have made the constitution.
Audible only to his neighbour, he adds, ‘If they come, we bugger off, quick.’
For a moment all are silent – the cynics, the detractors the rakers-up of the past. The deputies applaud him to the echo. Later they will drop back to let him pass, staring at the invisible wreath of laurels that crowns his unruly hair.
‘THE ANSWER’S THE SAME, Camille,’ said Momoro the printer. ‘I publish this, and we both land in the Bastille. There’s no point in revising it, is there, if every version gets worse?’
Camille sighed and picked up his manuscript. ‘I’ll see you again. That is, I might.’
On the Pont-Neuf that morning a woman had called out to tell his fortune. She had said the usual: wealth, power, success in matters of the heart. But when he had asked her if he would have a long life she had looked at his palm again and given him his money back.
D’Anton was in his office, a great pile of papers before him. ‘Come and watch me in court this afternoon,’ he invited Camille. ‘I’m going to drive your friend Perrin into the ground.’
‘Can’t you get up any malice, except against the people you meet in court?’
‘Malice?’ D’Anton was surprised. ‘It isn’t malice. I get on very well with Perrin. Though not so well as you.’
‘I just can’t understand how you remain wrapped up in these petty concerns.’
‘The fact is,’ d’Anton said slowly, ‘that I have a living to make. I’d like to take a trip to Versailles and see what’s going on, but there you are, I’ve got Maître Perrin and a snapping pack of litigants waiting for me at two o’clock sharp.’
‘Georges-Jacques, what do you want?’
D’Anton grinned. ‘What do I ever want?’
‘Money. All right. I’ll see you get some.’
CAFÉ DU FOY. The Patriotic Society of the Palais-Royal in session. News from Versailles comes in every half-hour. The clergy are going over en masse. Tomorrow, they say, it will be fifty of the nobles, led by Orléans.
It is established to the satisfaction of the Society that there is a Famine Plot. Hoarders in high places are starving the people to make them submissive. It must be so: the price of bread is going up every day.
The King is bringing troops from the frontier; they are on the march now, thousand upon thousand of German mercenaries. The immediate peril though are the Brigands; that is what everyone calls them. They camp outside the city walls, and no matter what precautions are taken some slip through each night. These are the refugees from the blighted provinces, from the fields stripped by the hail-storm and the winters before; hungry and violent, they stalk through the streets like prophets, knotty sticks in their hands and their ribs showing through the rags of their clothing. Unescorted women now keep off the streets. Masters arm their apprentices with pick-axe handles. Shopkeepers get new locks fitted. Housemaids going out to queue for bread slip kitchen knives into their aprons. That the Brigands have their uses is a fact noted only by the percipient: the Patriotic Society of the Palais-Royal.
‘So they have heard of your exploits in Guise?’ Fréron said to Camille.
‘Yes, my father sends me this fat package of admonition. This letter came, too.’ He proffered it to Fréron. It was from his maybe-relative, Antoine Saint-Just, the well-known juvenile delinquent from Noyon. ‘Read it,’ he said. ‘You might read it out to everyone.’
Fréron took the letter. A minute, difficult hand. ‘Why don’t you do it?’
Camille shook his head. He’s not up to this: speaking in small rooms. (‘Why not?’ He saw Fabre’s face looming up, Fabre in the small hours getting beside himself with wrath. ‘How can it be harder than talking to a crowd? How can it possibly be?’)
‘Very well,’ Fréron said. It didn’t suit him personally, for Camille to get too competent about ordinary things.
The letter contained interesting sorts of news: trouble all over Picardy, mobs in the streets, buildings burning, millers and landlords under threat of death. Its tone was that of suppressed glee.
‘Well,’ Fabre said, ‘how I look forward to meeting your cousin! He sounds a most pleasant, pacific type of youth.’
‘My father didn’t mention all this.’ Camille took the letter back. ‘Do you think Antoine exaggerates?’ He frowned at the letter. ‘Oh dear, his spelling doesn’t improve…He so badly wants something to happen, you see, he’s not having much of a life…Odd way he punctuates, too, and scatters capital letters around…I think I shall go down to Les Halles and talk to the market men.’
‘Another of your bad habits, Camille?’ Fabre inquired.
‘Oh, they are all Picards down there.’ Fréron fingered the small pistol in the pocket of his coat. ‘Tell them Paris needs them. Tell them to come out on the streets.’
‘But Antoine amazes me,’ Camille said. ‘While you sit here, deploring undue violence in the conventional way, the blood of these tradesmen to him is like – ’
‘Like what it is to you,’ Fabre said. ‘Milk and honey, Camille. July is your promised land.’
VII. Killing Time (1789)
JULY 3 1789: de Launay, Governor of the Bastille, to Monsieur de Villedeuil, Minister of State:
I have the honour to inform you that being obliged by current circumstances to suspend taking exercise on the towers, which privilege you were kind enough to grant the Marquis de Sade, yesterday at noon he went to his window and at the top of his voice, so that he could be heard by passers-by and the whole neighbourhood, he yelled that he was being slaughtered, that the Bastille prisoners were being murdered, and would people come to their aid…It is out of the question to allow him exercise on the towers, the cannon are loaded and it would be most dangerous. The whole staff would be obliged if you would accede to their wish to have the Marquis de Sade transferred elsewhere without delay.
(signed) De Launay
P.S. He threatens to shout again.
IN THE FIRST WEEK of July Laclos went out on a foray. There were just a few names to be added to the payroll at this last minute.
On the very day he had heard Camille Desmoulins speak