A Place of Greater Safety. Hilary Mantel
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house on the Place des Armes. Maître Desmoulins had an obsession nowadays, and de Viefville dreaded meeting him, meeting his baffled eyes and being asked once again the question that no one could answer: what had happened to the good and beautiful child he had sent to Cateau-Cambrésis nine years earlier?
On Camille’s sixteenth birthday, his father was stamping about the house. ‘I sometimes think,’ he said, ‘that I have got on my hands a depraved little monster with no feelings and no sense.’ He has written to the priests in Paris, to ask what they teach his son; to ask why he looks so untidy, and why during his last visit home he has seduced the daughter of a town councillor, ‘a man,’ he says, ‘whom I see every day of my working life’.
Jean-Nicolas did not really expect answers to these questions. His real objections to his son were rather different. Why, he really wanted to know, was his son so emotional? Where did he get this capacity to infect others with emotion: to agitate them, discomfit them, shake them out of their ease? Ordinary conversations, in Camille’s presence, went off at peculiar tangents, or turned into blazing rows. Safe social conventions took on an air of danger. You couldn’t, Desmoulins thought, leave him alone with anybody.
It was no longer said that his son was a little Godard. Neither did the de Viefvilles rush to claim him. His brothers were thriving, his sisters blooming, but when Camille slipped in at the front door of the Old House, he looked as if he had come on a message from the Foundling Hospital.
Perhaps, when he is grown up, he will be one of those boys who you pay to stay away from home.
THERE ARE SOME noblemen in France who have discovered that their best friends are their lawyers. Now that revenue from land is falling steadily, and prices are rising, the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting poorer too. It has become necessary to assert certain privileges that have been allowed to lapse over the years. Often, dues to which one is entitled have not been paid for a generation; that lax and charitable lordship must now cease. Again, one’s ancestors have allowed part of their estates to become known as ‘common land’ – an expression for which there is usually no legal foundation.
These were the golden days of Jean-Nicolas; if, privately, he had worries, at least professionally he was prospering. Maître Desmoulins was no bootlicker – he had a lively sense of his own dignity, and was moreover a liberal-minded man, an advocate of reform in most spheres of national life. He read Diderot after dinner, and subscribed to the Geneva reprint of the Encyclopédie, which he took in instalments. Nevertheless, he found himself much occupied with registers of rights and tracing of titles. A couple of old strongboxes were brought around and trundled up to his study, and when they were opened a faint musty smell crept out. Camille said, ‘So that is what tyranny smells like.’ His father swept his own work aside and delved into the boxes; very tenderly he held the old yellow papers up to the light. Clément, the youngest, thought he was looking for buried treasure.
The Prince de Condé, the district’s premier nobleman, called personally on Maître Desmoulins in the tall, white, book-filled, very very humble house on the Place des Armes. Normally he would have sent his land agent, but he was piqued by curiosity to know the man who was doing such good work for him. Besides, if honoured by a visit, the fellow would never dare to send in a bill.
It was late afternoon, autumn. Warming in his hand a glass of deep red wine, and mellow, aware of his condescension, the Prince lounged in a wash of candlelight; evening crept up around them, and painted shadows in the corners of the room.
‘What do you people want?’ he asked.
‘Well …’ Maître Desmoulins considered this large question. ‘People like me, men of the professional classes, we would like a little more say, I suppose – or let me put it this way, we would welcome the opportunity to serve.’ It is a fair point, he thinks; under the old King, noblemen were never ministers, but, increasingly, all the ministers are noblemen. ‘Civil equality,’ he said. ‘Fiscal equality.’
Condé raised his eyebrows. ‘You want the nobility to pay your taxes for you?’
‘No, Monseigneur, we want you to pay your own.’
‘I do pay tax,’ Condé said. ‘I pay my poll tax, don’t I? All this property-tax business is nonsense. And so, what else?’
Desmoulins made a gesture, which he hoped was eloquent. ‘An equal chance. That’s all. An equal chance at promotion in the army or the church …’ I’m explaining it as simply as I can, he thought: an ABC of aspiration.
‘An equal chance? It seems against nature.’
‘Other nations conduct themselves differently. Look at England. You can’t say it’s a human trait, to be oppressed.’
‘Oppressed? Is that what you think you are?’
‘I feel it; and if I feel it, how much more do the poor feel it?’
‘The poor feel nothing,’ the Prince said. ‘Do not be sentimental. They are not interested in the art of government. They only regard their stomachs.’
‘Even regarding just their stomachs –’
‘And you,’ Condé said, ‘are not interested in the poor – oh, except as they furnish you with arguments. You lawyers only want concessions for yourselves.’
‘It isn’t a question of concessions. It’s a question of human beings’ natural rights.’
‘Fine phrases. You use them very freely to me.’
‘Free thought, free speech – is that too much to ask?’
‘It’s a bloody great deal to ask, and you know it,’ Condé said glumly. ‘The pity of it is, I hear such stuff from my peers. Elegant ideas for a social re-ordering. Pleasing plans for a “community of reason”. And Louis is weak. Let him give an inch, and some Cromwell will appear. It’ll end in revolution. And that’ll be no tea-party.’
‘But surely not?’ Jean-Nicolas said. A slight movement from the shadows caught his attention. ‘Good heavens,’ he said, ‘what are you doing there?’
‘Eavesdropping,’ Camille said. ‘Well, you could have looked and seen that I was here.’
Maître Desmoulins turned red. ‘My son,’ he said. The Prince nodded. Camille edged into the candlelight. ‘Well,’ said the Prince, ‘have you learned something?’ It was clear from his tone that he took Camille for younger than he was. ‘How did you manage to keep still for so long?’
‘Perhaps you froze my blood,’ Camille said. He looked the Prince up and down, like a hangman taking his measurements. ‘Of course there will be a revolution,’ he said. ‘You are making a nation of Cromwells. But we can go beyond Cromwell, I hope. In fifteen years you tyrants and parasites will be gone. We shall have set up a republic, on the purest Roman model.’
‘He goes to school in Paris,’ Jean-Nicolas said wretchedly. ‘He has these ideas.’
‘And I suppose he thinks he is too young to be made to regret them,’ Condé said. He turned on the child. ‘Whatever is this?’
‘The climax of your visit, Monseigneur. You want to take a trip to see how your educated serfs live, and amuse yourself by trading platitudes with them.’ He began to shake – visibly, distressingly. ‘I detest you,’ he said.
‘I cannot stay to be abused,’ Condé muttered. ‘Desmoulins, keep this son of yours out of my way.’ He looked for somewhere to put his glass, and ended by thrusting it into his host’s hand. Maître Desmoulins followed him on to the stairs.
‘Monseigneur –’
‘I was wrong to condescend. I should have sent my agent.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘No need to speak of it. I could not possibly be offended. It is not in me.’
‘May I continue your work?’
‘You