Madrid, the fevered reactionary sentiments of an imbecile King.
These revolutionaries, they say, are the scourge of mankind. I will move against them – if you will.
From Paris the future looks precarious. Marat sees conspirators everywhere, treason on the breeze drifting the new tricolour flag outside the King’s windows. Behind that façade, patrolled by National Guardsmen, the King eats, drinks, grows stout, is seldom out of countenance. ‘My greatest fault,’ he had once written, ‘is a sluggishness of mind which makes all my mental efforts wearisome and painful.’
In the left-wing press, Lafayette is now referred to not by his title, but by his family name of Mottie. The King is referred to as Louis Capet. The Queen is called ‘the King’s wife’.
There is religious dissension. About one-half of the cures of France agree to take the constitutional oath. The rest we call refractory priests. Only seven bishops support the new order. In Paris, nuns are attacked by fishwives. At Saint-Sulpice, where Father Pancemont is obdurate, a mob tramps through the nave singing that wholesome ditty: ‘Ça ira, ç ira, les aristocrats à la Lanterne’. The King’s aunts, Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, leave secretly for Rome. The patriots have to be assured that the two old ladies have not packed the Dauphin in their luggage. The Pope pronounces the civil constitution schismatic. The head of a policeman is thrown into the carriage of the Papal Nuncio.
In a booth at the Palais-Royal, a male and female ‘savage’ exhibit themselves naked. They eat stones, babble in an unknown tongue and for a few small coins will copulate.
Barnave, summer: ‘One further step towards liberty must destroy the monarchy, one further step towards equality must destroy private property.’
Desmoulins, autumn: ‘Our revolution of 1789 was a piece of business arranged between the English government and a minority of the nobility, prepared by some in the hopes of turning out the Versailles aristocracy, and taking possession of their castles, houses and offices: by others to saddle us with a new master: and by all, to give us two Houses, and a constitution like that of England.’
’91: eighteen months of revolution, and securely under the heel of a new tyranny.
‘That man is a liar,’ Robespierre says, ‘who claims I have ever advocated disobedience to the laws.’
JANUARY AT BOURG-LA-REINE. Annette Duplessis stood at the window, gazing into the branches of the walnut tree that shaded the courtyard. From here, you could not see the foundations of the new cottage; just as well, for they were as melancholy as ruins. She sighed in exasperation at the silence welling from the room behind her. All of them would be beseeching her, inwardly, to turn and make some remark. If she were to leave the room, she would come back to find it alive with tension. Taking chocolate together mid-morning: surely that should not be too much of a strain?
Claude was reading the Town and Court Journal, a right-wing scandal-sheet. He had a faintly defiant air. Camille was gazing at his wife, as he often did. (Two days married, she discovered with a sense of shock that the black soul-eating eyes were short-sighted. ‘Perhaps you should wear spectacles.’ ‘Too vain.’) Lucile was reading Clarissa, in translation and with scant attention. Every few minutes her eyes would flit from the page to her husband’s face.
Annette wondered if this were what had plunged Claude so deeply into disagreeableness – the girl’s air of sexual triumph, the high colour in her cheeks when they met in the mornings. You wish she were nine years old, she thought, kept happy with her dolls. She studied her husband’s bent head, the strands of grey neatly dressed and powdered; rural interludes wrung no concessions from Claude. Camille, a few feet away, looked like a gypsy who had mislaid his violin and had been searching for it in a hedgerow; he frustrated daily the best efforts of an expensive tailor, wearing his clothes as a subtle comment on the collapsing social order.
Claude let his paper fall. Camille snapped out of his reverie and turned his head. ‘What now? I told you, if you read that thing you must expect to be shocked.’
Claude seemed unable to articulate. He pointed to the page; Annette thought he whimpered. Camille reached forward for it; Claude clasped it to his chest. ‘Don’t be silly, Claude,’ Annette said, as one does to a baby. ‘Give the paper to Camille.’
Camille ran his eyes down the page. ‘Oh, you’ll enjoy this. Lolotte, will you go away for a minute?’
‘No.’
Where did she get this pet-name? Annette had some feeling that Danton had given it to her. A little too intimate, she thought; and now Camille uses it. ‘Do as you’re told,’ she said.
Lucile didn’t move. I’m married now, she thought; don’t have to do what anybody says.
‘Stay then,’ Camille said, ‘I was only thinking to spare your feelings. According to this, you’re not your father’s daughter.’
‘Oh, don’t say it,’ Claude said. ‘Burn the paper.’
‘You know what Rousseau said.’ Annette looked grim. ‘“Burning isn’t answering.”’
‘Whose daughter am I?’ Lucile asked. ‘Am I my mother’s daughter, or am I a foundling?’
‘You’re certainly your mother’s daughter, and your father’s the abbé Terray.’
Lucile giggled. ‘Lucile, I am not beyond slapping you,’ her mother said.
‘Hence the money for the dowry,’ Camille said, ‘comes from the abbé’s speculation in grain at times of famine.’
‘The abbé did not speculate in grain.’ Claude held Camille in a red-faced inimical stare.
‘I do not suggest he did. I am paraphrasing the newspaper.’
‘Yes…of course.’ Claude looked away miserably.
‘Did you ever meet Terray?’ Camille asked his mother-in-law.
‘Once, I think. We exchanged about three words.’
‘You know,’ Camille said to Claude, ‘Terray did have a reputation with women.’
‘It wasn’t his fault.’ Claude flared up again. ‘He never wanted to be a priest. His family forced him into it.’
‘Do calm yourself,’ Annette suggested.
Claude hunched forward, hands pressed together between his knees. ‘Terray was our best hope. He worked hard. He had energy. People were afraid of him.’ He stopped, seeming to realize that for the first time in years he had added a new statement, a coda.
‘Were you afraid of him?’ Camille asked: not scoring a point, simply curious.
Claude considered. ‘I might have been.’
‘I’m quite often afraid of people,’ Camille said. ‘It’s a terrible admission, isn’t it?’
‘Like who?’ Lucile said.
‘Well, principally I’m afraid of Fabre. If he hears me stutter, he shakes me and takes me by the hair and bangs my head against the wall.’
‘Annette,’ Claude said, ‘there have been other imputations.
