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 without one. ‘Let me put your hair up,’ Annette wheedled. ‘Like I used to? With flowers?’
Lucile said vehemently that she would rather die. She didn’t want pins, ribbons, blossoms, devices. She wanted a mane that she could toss about, and if she was willing to torture a few curls into it, Annette thought, that was only for greater verisimilitude. ‘Oh really,’ she said crossly, ‘if you’re going to impersonate Camille, at least get it right. If you go on like that you’ll get a crick in your neck.’ Adèle put her hand over her mouth, and snorted with mirth. ‘You’ve got to do it like this,’ Annette said, demonstrating. ‘You don’t simultaneously toss your head back and shake the hair out of your eyes. The movements are actually quite separate.’
Lucile tried it, smirking. ‘You could be right. Adèle, you have a go. Stand up, you have to stand up to get the effect.’
The three women jostled for the mirror. They began to splutter with laughter, then to shriek and wail. ‘Then there’s this one,’ Lucile said. ‘Out of my way, minions, while I show you.’ She wiped the smile from her face, stared into the mirror in a rapture of wide-eyed narcissism, and removed an imaginary tendril of hair with a delicate flick.
‘Imbecile,’ her mother said. ‘Your wrist’s at quite the wrong angle. Haven’t you eyes to see?’
Lucile opened her eyes very wide and gave her a Camille-look. ‘I was only born yesterday,’ she said pitifully.
Adèle and her mother staggered around the room. Adèle fell on to Annette’s bed and sobbed into the pillow. ‘Oh, stop it, stop it,’ Annette said. Her hair had fallen down and tears were running through her rouge. Lucile subsided to the floor and beat the carpet with her fist. ‘I think I’ll die,’ she said.
Oh, the relief of it! When for months now, the three of them had hardly spoken! They got to their feet, tried to compose themselves; but as they reached for powder and scent, great gouts of laughter burst from one or the other. All evening they’re not safe: ‘Maître Danton, you know Maximilien Robespierre, don’t you?’ Annette said, and turned away because tears were beginning to well up in her eyes and her lips were twitching and another scream of laughter was about to be born. Maître Danton had this exceedingly aggressive habit of planting a fist on his hip and frowning, while he was talking about the weather or something equally routine. Deputy Maximilien Robespierre had the most curious way of not blinking, and a way of insinuating himself around the furniture; it would be marvellous to see him spring on a mouse. She left them to their self-importance, guffawing inside.
‘So where are you living now?’ Danton inquired.
‘On the rue Saintonge in the Marais.’
‘Comfortable?’
Robespierre didn’t reply. He couldn’t think what Danton’s standard of comfort might be, so anything he said wouldn’t mean much. Scruples like this were always tripping him up, in the simplest conversations. Luckily, Danton seemed not to want a reply. ‘Most of the deputies don’t seem very happy about moving to Paris.’
‘Most of them aren’t there half the time. When they are they don’t pay attention. They sit gossiping to each other about clarifying wine and fattening pigs.’
‘They’re thinking of home. After all, this is an interruption to their lives.’
Robespierre smiled faintly. He was not supercilious, he just thought that was a peculiar way of looking at things. ‘But this is their life.’
‘But you can understand it – they think about the farm going to seed and the children growing up and the wife hopping into bed with all and sundry – they’re only human.’
Robespierre flicked a glance up at him. ‘Really, Danton, the times being what they are, I think we could all do with being a bit more than that.’
Annette moved amongst her guests, trying to discipline her grin to a social smile. Somehow it no longer seemed possible to see her male guests as they wished to be seen. Deputy Pétion (self-regarding smirk) seemed amiable; so did Brissot (a whole set of little tics and twitches). Danton was watching her across the room. Wonder what he’s thinking? She had a shrewd idea. She imagined Maître Danton’s drawl: ‘Not a bad-looking woman, considering her age.’ Fréron stood alone, conspicuously alone; his eyes followed Lucile.
Camille, as usual these days, had an audience. ‘All we really have to do is decide on a title,’ he said. ‘And organize the provincial subscriptions. It’s going to come out every Saturday, though more often when events require it. It will be in octavo, with a grey paper cover. Brissot is going to write for us, and Fréron, and Marat. We shall invite correspondence from readers. We shall carry particularly scathing theatre reviews. The universe and all its follies shall be comprehended in the pages of this hyper-critical journal.’
‘Will it make money?’ Claude asked.
‘Oh, not at all,’ Camille said happily. ‘I don’t even expect to cover costs. The idea is to keep the cover price as low as possible, so that nearly everybody will be able to afford it.’
‘How are you going to pay your printer, then?’
Camille
