A Place of Greater Safety. Hilary Mantel
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this is the creature who oversets the household and suborns servants and clergyman,’ d’Anton said. ‘I wonder, my dear, do you know anything of the comedies of the English writer, Mr Sheridan?’
‘No.’
‘I wondered if you thought that Life ought to imitate Art?’
‘If it imitates life,’ Lucile said, ‘that’s quite exciting enough for me.’ She noticed the time on the clock. ‘I’ll be killed,’ she said.
She blew them all a kiss, swept up her feathered hat, ran out on to the stairs. In her haste she almost knocked over a small girl, who appeared to be listening at the door, and who, surprisingly, called out after her, ‘I like your jacket.’
In bed that night she thought, hm, that large ugly man, I seem to have made a conquest there.
ON 8 AUGUST the King fixed a date for the meeting of the Estates – 1 May 1789. A week later the Comptroller-General, Brienne, discovered (or so it was said) that the state’s coffers contained enough revenue for one-quarter of one day’s expenditure. He declared a suspension of all payments by the government. France was bankrupt. His Majesty continued to hunt, and if he did not kill he recorded the fact in his diary: Rien, rien, rien. Brienne was dismissed.
ROUTINE was so broken up these days, that Claude could be found in Paris when he should have been in Versailles. Mid-morning, he strolled out into the hot August air, made for the Café du Foy. Other years, August had found him sitting by an open window at his country place at Bourg-la-Reine.
‘Good morning, Maître d’Anton,’ he said. ‘Maître Desmoulins. I had no idea you knew each other.’ The idea seemed to be causing him pain. ‘Well, what do you think? Things can’t go on like this.’
‘I suppose we should take your word for it, M. Duplessis,’ Camille said. ‘How do you look forward to having M. Necker back?’
‘What does it matter?’ Claude said. ‘I think that even the Abbé Terray would have found the situation beyond him.’
‘Anything new from Versailles?’ d’Anton asked.
‘Someone told me,’ Camille said, ‘that when the King cannot hunt he goes up on the roofs at Versailles and takes pot-shots at the ladies’ cats. Do you think there’s anything in it?’
‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ Claude said.
‘It puzzles a lot of people to see how things have deteriorated since Necker was last in office. If you think back to ’81, to the public accounting, the books then showed a surplus –’
‘Cooked,’ Claude said dismally.
‘Really?’
‘Done to a turn.’
‘So much for Necker,’ d’Anton said.
‘But you know, it wasn’t such a crime,’ Camille suggested. ‘Not if he thought public confidence was the main thing.’
‘Jesuit,’ d’Anton said.
Claude turned to him. ‘I’m hearing things, d’Anton – straws in the wind. Your patron Barentin will be moving from the Board of Excise – he’s going to get the Ministry of Justice in the new government.’ He smiled. He looked very tired. ‘This is a sad day for me. I would have given anything to stop it coming to this. And it must give impetus to the wilder elements …’ His eye fell on Camille. He had been very civil this morning, very well-behaved, but that he was a wilder element Claude had no doubt. ‘Maître Desmoulins,’ he said, ‘I hope you aren’t still entertaining notions about marrying my daughter.’
‘I am, rather.’
‘If you could just see it from my point of view.’
‘No, I’m afraid I can see it only from my own.’
M. Duplessis turned away. D’Anton put a hand on his arm. ‘About Barentin – can you tell me something more?’
Claude held up a forefinger. ‘Least said, soonest mended. I hope I’ve not spoken out of turn. I expect I’ll be seeing you before long.’ He indicated Camille, hopelessly. ‘Him too.’
Camille looked after him. ‘“Straws in the wind”,’ he said savagely. ‘Have you ever heard such drivel? We ought to arrange him a cliché contest with Maître Vinot. Oh,’ he said suddenly, ‘I do see what he means. He means they’re going to offer you a job.’
UPON TAKING OFFICE, Necker began to negotiate a loan from abroad. The Parlements were reinstated. The price of bread rose two sous. On 29 August, a mob burned down the guard posts on the Pont-Neuf. The King found the money to move troops into the capital. Soldiers opened fire into a crowd of six hundred; seven or eight people were killed and an unknown number injured.
M. Barentin was appointed Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals. The mob made a straw doll in the likeness of his predecessor, and set fire to it on the Place de Grève, to the tune of hoots and jeers, the crack and whizz of fireworks and the drunken acquiescent singing of the French Guards, who were stationed permanently in the capital and who liked that sort of thing.
D’ANTON had given his reasons precisely, without heat but without equivocation; he had worked out beforehand what he would say, so that he would be perfectly clear. Barentin’s offer of a secretary’s post would quickly become common knowledge around City Hall and the ministries and beyond. Fabre suggested that he take Gabrielle some flowers and break it to her gently.
When he got home, Mme Charpentier was there, and Camille. They stopped talking when they saw him. The atmosphere was ill-humoured; but Angélique came over, beaming, and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Dear son Georges,’ she said, ‘our warmest congratulations.’
‘On what?’ he said. ‘My case didn’t come up. Really, the process of justice is moving like treacle nowadays.’
‘We understand,’ Gabrielle said, ‘that you have been offered a post in the government.’
‘Yes, but it’s of no consequence. I turned it down.’
‘I told you,’ Camille said.
Angélique stood up. ‘I’ll be off then.’
‘I’ll see you out,’ Gabrielle said, with extreme formality. Her face glowed. She got up; they went, and whispered outside the door.
‘Angélique will make her behave,’ d’Anton said. Camille sat and smiled at him. ‘You’re easily pleased. Come back in, calm yourself, shut the door,’ he said to his wife. ‘Please try to understand that I am acting for the best.’
‘When he said,’ she pointed to Camille, ‘that you’d turned it down, I said what kind of a fool did he suppose I was?’
‘This government won’t last a year. It doesn’t suit me, Gabrielle.’
She gaped at him. ‘So what are you going to do? Give up your practice because the state of the law doesn’t suit you? You were ambitious before, you used to say –’
‘Yes, and now he’s more ambitious,’ Camille cut in. ‘He’s far too good for a minor post under Barentin. Probably – oh, probably the Seal will be within his own gift one day.’
D’Anton laughed. ‘If it ever is,’ he said, ‘I’ll give it you. I promise.’
‘That’s probably treason,’ Gabrielle said. Her hair was slipping down, as it tended to do at points of crisis.
‘Don’t confuse the issue,’ Camille said. ‘Georges-Jacques is going to be a great man, however he is impeded.’
‘You’re mad,’ Gabrielle said. As she shook her head a shower of hairpins leapt out and slithered to the floor. ‘What I hate, Georges, is to see you trotting along in the wake of other people’s opinions.’
‘Me? You think I do that?’