occurred to him at the last moment that he need not go; he could simply sit here and say, I’m not going into court today. They would wait for him for ten minutes, post a clerk to look along the road, and then they would send a message; and he would reply that he was not going into court today.
They could not drag him out, or carry him, could they? They could not force the sentence out of his throat?
But it was the law, he thought wearily, and if he could not carry it out he should have resigned: should have resigned yesterday.
THREE P.M.: the aftermath. He is going to be sick. Here, by the side of the road. He doubles up. Sweat breaks out along his back. He goes down on his knees and retches. His eyes mist over, his throat hurts. But there’s nothing in his stomach; he hasn’t eaten for twenty-four hours.
He puts out a hand, gets to his feet and steadies himself. He wishes for someone to take his hand, to stop him from shivering; but when you are ill, no one comes to help.
If there were anyone to watch his progress along the road they would see that he is staggering, lurching from foot to foot. He tries consciously to stand up straight and put some order in his steps, but his legs feel too far away. The whole despicable body is teaching him a lesson again: be true to yourself.
This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a criminal to death. And now he is going to pay for it.
A MAN SURVIVES: he comes through. Even here in Arras it was possible to find allies, if not friends. Joseph Fouché taught at the Oratorian College. He had thought of the priesthood but had grown away from the idea. He taught physics, and was interested in anything new. Fouché came to dinner quite often, invited by Charlotte. He seemed to have proposed to her – or at any rate, they had come to some understanding. Max was surprised that any girl would be attracted by Fouché, with his frail, stick-like limbs and almost lashless eyes. Still, who’s to know? He did not like Fouché at all, in point of fact, but Charlotte had her own life to lead.
Then there was Lazare Carnot, a captain of engineers at the garrison; a man older than himself, reserved, rather bitter about the lack of opportunities open to him, as a commoner in His Majesty’s forces. Carnot went for company to the Academy’s meetings, formulae revolving in his head while they discussed the sonnet form. Sometimes he treated them to a tirade about the deplorable state of the army. Members would exchange amused glances.
Only Maximilien listened earnestly – quite ignorant of military matters, and a little overawed.
When Mlle de Kéralio was voted in by the Academy – its first lady member – he made a speech in her honour about the genius of women, their role in literature and the arts. After this she’d said, ‘Why don’t you call me Louise?’ She wrote novels – thousands of words a week. He envied her facility. ‘Listen to this,’ she’d say, ‘and tell me what you think.’
He made sure not to – authors are touchy. Louise was pretty, and she never quite got the ink scrubbed off her little fingers. ‘I’m off to Paris,’ she said, ‘one can’t go on stagnating in this backwater, saving your presences.’ Her hand tapped a rolled sheaf of manuscript against a chair-back. ‘O solemn and wondrous Maximilien de Robespierre, why don’t you come to Paris too? No? Well, at least let’s take off for the afternoon with a picnic. Let’s start a rumour, shall we?’
Louise belonged to the real nobility. ‘Nothing to be thought of there,’ said the Aunts: ‘poor Maximilien.’
‘Noble or not,’ Charlotte said, ‘the girl’s a trollop. She wanted my brother to up and go to Paris with her, imagine.’ Yes, just imagine. Louise packed her bags and hurtled off into the future. He was dimly aware of a turning missed; one of those forks in the road, that you remember later when you are good and lost.
Still, there was Aunt Eulalie’s stepdaughter, Anaïs. Both the Aunts favoured her above all other candidates. They said she had nice manners.
ONE DAY BEFORE LONG the mother of a poor rope-maker turned up at his door with a story about her son who was in prison because the Benedictines at Anchin had accused him of theft. She said the accusation was false and malicious; the Abbey treasurer, Dom Brognard, was notoriously light-fingered, and had in addition tried to get the rope-maker’s sister into bed, and she wouldn’t by any means be the first girl …
Yes, he said. Calm down. Have a seat. Let’s start at the beginning.
This was the kind of client he was beginning to get. An ordinary man – or frequently a woman – who’d fallen foul of vested interests. Naturally, there was no hope of a fee.
The rope-maker’s tale sounded too bad to be true. Nevertheless, he said, we’ll let it see the light. Within a month, Dom Brognard was under investigation, and the rope-maker was sueing the abbey for damages. When the Benedictines wanted to retain a lawyer, who did they get? M. Liborel, his one-time sponsor. He said, gratitude does not bind me here, the truth is at stake.
Little hollow words, echoing through the town. Everyone takes sides, and most of the legal establishment takes Liborel’s. It turns into a dirty fight; and of course in the end they do what he imagined they would do – they offer the rope-maker more money than he earns in years to settle out of court and go away and keep quiet.
Obviously, things are not going to be the same after this. He’ll not forget how they got together, conspired against him, condemned him in the local press as an anti-clerical troublemaker. Him? The abbot’s protégé? The bishop’s golden boy? Very well. If that’s how they want to see him, he will not trouble from now on to make things easy for his colleagues, to be so very helpful and polite. It is a fault, that persistent itch to have people think well of him.
The Academy of Arras elected him president, but he bored them with his harangues about the rights of illegitimate children. You’d think there was no other issue in the universe, one of the members complained.
‘If your mother and your father had conducted themselves properly,’ Grandfather Carraut had said, ‘you would never have been born.’
CHARLOTTE would take out her account books and observe that the cost of his conscience grew higher by the month. ‘Of course it does,’ he said. ‘What did you expect?’
Every few weeks she would round on him and deliver these wounding blows, proving to him that he was not understood even in his own house.
‘This house,’ she said. ‘I can’t call it a home. We have never had a home. Some days you are so preoccupied that you hardly speak. I may as well not be here. I am a good housekeeper, what interest do you display in my arrangements? I am a fine cook, but you have no interest in food. I invite company, and when we take out the cards or prepare to make conversation you withdraw to the other side of the room and mark passages in books.’
He waited for her anger to subside. It was understandable; anger these days was her usual condition. Fouché had offered her marriage – or something – and then left her high and dry, looking a bit of a fool. He wondered vaguely if something ought to be done about it, but he was convinced she’d be better off without the man in the long run.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to be more sociable. It’s just that I’ve a lot of work on.’
‘Yes, but is it work you’ll be paid for?’ Charlotte said that in Arras he had got himself the reputation
