Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien. Hilary Mantel
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The rain is spoiling the plumes on her hat.
A message to General Lafayette, on the road: the King has decided after all to accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Oh really? To the general, weary and dispirited, his hands frozen on the harness and rain running down his pointed nose, it is not the most relevant piece of news.
PARIS: Fabre talking round the cafés, making opinion. ‘The point is,’ he said, ‘one initiates something like this, one should take the credit. Who can deny that the initiative was seized by President Danton and his district? As for the march itself, who better than the women of Paris to undertake it? They won’t fire on women.’
Fabre felt no disappointment that Danton had stayed at home; he felt relief. He began to sense dimly the drift of events. Camille was right; in public, before his appropriate audience, Danton had the aura of greatness about him. From now on, Fabre would always urge him to think of his physical safety.
NIGHT. Still raining. Lafayette’s men waiting in the darkness, while he is interrogated by the Assembly. What is the reason for this unseemly military demonstration?
In his pocket Lafayette has a desperate note from the president of this same Assembly, begging him to march his men to Versailles and rescue the King. He would like to put his hand in his pocket, to be sure that the message is not a dream, but he cannot do that in front of the Assembly; they would think he was being disrespectful. What would Washington do? he asks himself: without result. So he stands, mud-spattered up to his shoulders, and answers these strange questions as best he can, pleading with the Assembly in an increasingly husky voice – could the King, to save a lot of trouble, be persuaded to make a short speech in favour of the new national colours?
A little later, exhausted, he is assisted into the presence of the King and, still covered in mud, addresses himself to His Majesty, His Majesty’s brother the Comte de Provence, the Archbishop of Bordeaux and M. Necker. ‘Well,’ the King says, ‘I suppose you’ve done what you could.’
Become semi-articulate, the general clasps his hands to his breast in an attitude he has hitherto seen only in paintings, and pledges his life as surety for the King’s – he is also the devoted servant of the constitution, and someone, someone, he says, has been paying out a great deal of money.
The Queen stood in the shadows, looking at him with dislike.
He went out, fixed patrols about the palace and the town, watched from a window the low burning of torches and heard drunken singing on the night wind. Ballads, no doubt, relating to Court life. Melancholy swept him, a sort of nostalgia for heroism. He checked his patrols, visited the royal apartments once more. He was not admitted; they had retired for the night.
Towards dawn, he threw himself down fully clothed and shut his eyes. General Morpheus, they called him later.
Sunrise. Drumbeats. One small gate is left unguarded, by negligence or treachery; shooting breaks out, the Bodyguard are overwhelmed, and within minutes there are heads on pikes. The mob are in the palace. Women armed with knives and clubs are sprinting through the galleries towards their victims.
The general awake. Move, and at the double. Before he arrives the mob have reached the door of the Salon de la
Lafayette arrives. He meets the eyes of the barefoot woman – the woman who drove him from Court, who once ridiculed his manners and laughed at his dancing. Now she requires of him more than a courtier’s skills. The mob seethes beneath the windows. Lafayette indicates the balcony. ‘It is necessary,’ he says.
The King steps out. The people shout, ‘To Paris.’ They wave pikes and level guns. They call for the Queen.
Inside the room, the general makes a gesture of invitation to her. ‘Don’t you hear what they are shouting?’ she says. ‘Have you seen the gestures they make?’
‘Yes.’ Lafayette draws his finger across his throat. ‘But either you go to them, or they come for you. Step out, Madame.’
Her face frozen, she takes her children by the hands, steps out on to the balcony. ‘No children!’ the mob call. The Queen drops the Dauphin’s hand; he and his sister are drawn back inside the room.
Antoinette stands alone. Lafayette’s mind is racing to consequences – all hell will be let loose, there will be total war by nightfall. He steps out beside her, hoping to shield her with his body if the worst…and the people howl…and then – O perfect courtier! – he takes the Queen’s hand, he raises it, he bows low, he kisses her fingertips.
Immediately, the mood swings around. ‘Vive Lafayette!’ He shivers at their fickleness; shivers inside. And ‘Vive la reine,’ someone calls. ‘Vive la reine!’ That cry has not been heard in a decade. Her fists unclench, her mouth opens a little; he feels her lean against him, floppy with relief. A Bodyguard steps out to assist her, a tricolour cockade in his hat. The crowd cheer. The Queen is handed back inside. The King declares he will go to Paris.
This takes all day.
On the way to Paris Lafayette rides by the King’s carriage, and speaks hardly a word. There will be no bodyguards after this, he thinks, except those I provide. I have the nation to protect from the King, and now the King to protect from the people. I saved her life, he thinks. He sees again the white face, the bare feet, feels her sag against him as the crowd cheer. She will never forgive him, he knows. The armed forces are now at my disposal, he thinks, my position should be unassailable…but slouching along in the halfdark, the anonymous many, the People. ‘Here we have them,’ they cry, ‘the baker, the baker’s wife, and the baker’s little apprentice.’ The National Guardsmen and the Bodyguards exchange hats, and thus make themselves look ridiculous: but more ridiculous still are the bloody defaced heads that bob, league upon league, before the royal carriage.
That was October.
THE ASSEMBLY followed the King to Paris, and took up temporary lodgings in the archbishop’s palace. The Breton Club resumed its meetings in the refectory of an empty conventual building in the rue Saint-Jacques. The former tenants, Dominicans, were always called by the people ‘Jacobins’, and the name stuck to the deputies and journalists and men of affairs who debated there like a second Assembly. They moved, as their numbers grew, into the library; and finally into the old chapel, which had a gallery for the public.
In November the Assembly moved to the premises of what had formerly been an indoor riding-school. The hall was cramped and badly lit, an inconvenient shape, difficult to speak in. Members faced each other across a gangway. One side of the room was broken by the president’s seat and the secretaries’ table, the other by the speaker’s rostrum. The stricter upholders of royal power sat on the right of the gangway; the patriots, as they often called themselves, sat on the left.
Heat was provided by a stove in the middle of the floor, and ventilation was poor. At Dr Guillotin’s suggestion, vinegar and herbs were sprinkled twice daily. The public galleries were cramped too, and the three hundred spectators they held could be organized and policed – not necessarily by the authorities.
From now on the Parisians never called the Assembly anything but ‘the Riding-School’.
RUE CONDÉ: towards the end of the year, Claude permitted a thaw in relations. Annette gave a party. His daughters asked their friends, and the friends asked their friends. Annette looked around: ‘Suppose a fire were to break out?’ she said. ‘So much of the Revolution would go up in smoke.’
There had been, before the guests arrived, the usual row with Lucile; nothing was accomplished nowadays