Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien. Hilary Mantel
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file out, run it up, march past, Lafayette stands about looking like a commander-in-chief. I assume he will expect to be cheered. I should think there’ll be enough oafs to make a respectable din, even in this cynical district.’
‘I’m still not sure I understand.’ Gabrielle sounded aggrieved. ‘Is the militia on the King’s side?’
‘Oh, everybody is on the King’s side,’ her husband said. ‘It’s just his ministers and his servants and his brothers and his wife we can’t stand. Louis is all right, silly old duffer.’
‘But why do people say that Lafayette’s a republican?’
‘In America he’s a republican.’
‘Are there any republicans here?’
‘Very few.’
‘Would they kill the King?’
‘Heavens, no. We leave that sort of thing to the English.’
‘Would they keep him in prison?’
‘I don’t know. Ask Mme Robert when you see her. She’s one of the extremists. Or Camille.’
‘So if the National Guard is on the King’s side -’
‘On the King’s side,’ he interrupted her, ‘as long as he doesn’t try to go back to where we were before July.’
‘Yes, I understand that. It’s on the King’s side, and against republicans. But Camille and Louise and François are republicans, aren’t they? So if Lafayette told you to arrest them, would you do it?’
‘Good God, no. I’m not going to do his dirty work.’
And he thought, we could be a law unto ourselves in this district. I might not be the battalion commander, but he’s under my thumb.
Camille arrived, breathless and ebullient. ‘The news couldn’t be better,’ he said. ‘In Toulouse my new pamphlet has been burned by the public executioner. It’s too kind of them, the publicity will certainly mean a second edition. And in Oléron a bookshop that was selling it has been attacked by monks, and they threw out all the stock and started a fire and carved up the bookseller.’
‘I don’t think that’s very funny,’ Gabrielle said.
‘No. Quite tragic really.’
A pottery outside Paris was turning out his picture on thick glazed crockery in a strident yellow and blue. This is what happens when you become a public figure; people eat their dinners off you.
There was not a breath of wind when they ran up the new flag; it lay around its pole like a lolling tricolour tongue. Gabrielle stood between her father and mother. Her neighbours the Gélys were on her left, little Louise wearing a new hat of which she was insufferably proud. She was conscious of people’s eyes upon her: there, they were saying, that’s d’Anton’s wife. She heard someone say, ‘How handsome she is, have they children?’ She looked up at her husband, who stood on the church steps, his prize-fighter bulk towering over the ramrod figure of Lafayette. She worked up some contempt for the general, because of her husband’s contempt. She could see that they were being polite to each other. The commander of the battalion waved his hat in the air, raised the shout for Lafayette. The crowd cheered; the general acknowledged them with a spare smile. She half closed her eyes against the sun. Behind her she could hear Camille’s voice running on, talking to Louise Robert exactly as if she were a man. The deputies from Brittany, he was saying, and the initiative in the Assembly. I wanted to go to Versailles as soon as the Bastille was taken – she heard Mme Robert’s muffled agreement – but it should be done as soon as possible. He’s talking about another riot, she thought: another Bastille. Then from behind her, there was a shout: ‘Vive d’Anton.’
She turned, amazed and gratified. The cry was taken up. ‘It’s only a few Cordeliers,’ Camille said, apologetically. ‘But soon it will be the whole city.’
A few minutes later, the ceremony was over and the party could begin. Georges was down among the crowd, hugging her. ‘I was thinking,’ Camille said. ‘It’s time you took out that apostrophe from your name. It doesn’t suit the times.’
‘You may be right,’ her husband said. ‘I’ll do it gradually – no point making an announcement.’
‘No, do it suddenly,’ Camille said. ‘So that everyone knows where you stand.’
‘Bully,’ Georges-Jacques said fondly. He was acquiring it too: this appetite for confrontation. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked her.
‘I want you to do whatever you think best,’ she said. ‘I mean, whatever you think right.’
‘Suppose they did not coincide?’ Camille asked her. ‘I mean, what he thought best and what he thought right?’
‘But they would,’ she said, flustered. ‘Because he is a good man.’
‘That is profound. He will suspect you of thinking while he is not in the house.’
Camille had spent the previous day at Versailles, and in the evening had gone with Robespierre to a meeting of the Breton Club. It was the forum now for the liberal deputies, those inclined to the popular cause and suspicious of the Court. Some of the nobles attended; the frenzied Fourth of August had been calculated quite carefully there. Men who were not deputies were welcomed, if their patriotism was well known.
And whose patriotism was better known than his? Robespierre urged him to speak. But he was nervous, had difficulty making himself heard. The stutter was bad. The audience were not patient with him. He was just a mob-orator, an anarchist, as far as they could see. All in all it was a miserable, deflating occasion. Robespierre sat looking at his shoe-buckles. When Camille came down from the rostrum to sit beside him, he didn’t look up; just flicked his green eyes sideways, and smiled his patient, meditative smile. No wonder he had no encouragement to offer. Whenever he stood up in the Assembly, unruly members of the nobility would pretend to blow candles out, with a great huffing and puffing; or a few of them would get together and orchestrate their imitation of a rabid lamb. No point him saying, ‘You were fine, Camille.’ No point in comforting lies.
After the meeting was closed, Mirabeau took the rostrum, and performed for his well-wishers and sycophants an imitation of Mayor Bailly trying to decide whether it was Monday or Tuesday: of Mayor Bailly viewing the moons of Jupiter to find the answer, and finally admitting (with an obscene flourish) that his telescope was too small. Camille was not much entertained by this; he felt almost tearful. Finishing to applause, the Comte strode down from the rostrum, slapped a few backs, and wrung a few hands. Robespierre touched Camille’s elbow: ‘Let’s get off, shall we?’ he suggested.
Too late. The Comte spied Camille. He caught him up in a rib-cracking hug. ‘You were grand,’ he said. ‘Ignore these provincials. Leave them to their poxy little standards. None of them could have done what you did. None of them. The fact is, you terrify them.’
Robespierre had faded to the back of the meeting room, trying to get out of the way. Camille looked so cheered up, so delighted at the prospect of terrifying people. Why couldn’t he have said what Mirabeau had said? It was all perfectly true. And he wanted to make things right for Camille, he wanted to look after him. Nearly twenty years ago he’d promised to look after him, and he saw nothing to suggest he’d been relieved of the duty. But there it was – he didn’t have the gift of saying the right thing. Camille’s needs and wishes were a closed book, largely: a volume written in a language he’d never learned. ‘Come to supper,’ he heard the Comte say. ‘And let’s tow the lamb along, why don’t we? Give him some red meat to fall on.’
There were fourteen at table. Tender beef bled on to the plates. Turbot’s slashed flesh breathed the scent of bay leaves and thyme. Blue-black shells of aubergines, seared on top, yielded creamy flesh to the probing knife.
The Comte was living very well these days. It was hard to tell if he was just running up more debts or if he could suddenly afford it; if the latter, one wondered