(The Queen had not expected to see him again.)
‘Let them be,’ he says to the soldiers. ‘I believe they are truly fond of me.’
Some semblance of normal life takes hold. The shops re-open. An old man, shrunken and bony, with a long white beard, is paraded through the city to wave to the crowds who still hang about on every street. His name is Major Whyte – he is perhaps an Englishman, perhaps an Irishman – and no one knows how long he has been locked up in the Bastille. He seems to enjoy the attention he is getting, though when asked about the circumstances of his incarceration he weeps. On a bad day he does not know who he is at all. On a good day he answers to Julius Caesar.
EXAMINATION of Desnot, July 1789, in Paris:
Being asked if it was with this knife that he had mutilated the head of the Sieur de Launay, he answered that it was with a black knife, a smaller one; and when it was observed to him that it was impossible to cut off heads with so small and weak an instrument, he answered that, in his capacity as cook, he had learned how to handle meat.
18 August 1789
At Astley’s Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge
(after rope-dancing by Signior Spinacuta)
An Entire New and Splendid Spectacle
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
From Sunday 12 July to Wednesday 15 July (inclusive)
called
PARIS IN AN UPROAR
displaying one of the grandest and most extraordinary
entertainments that ever appeared
grounded on
Authentic Fact
BOX 3s., PIT 2s., GAL 1s., SIDE GAL 6d.
The doors to be opened at half-past five, to begin at
half-past six o’clock precisely.
CAMILLE WAS NOW persona non grata at the rue Condé. He had to rely on Stanislas Fréron to come and go, bring him the news, convey his sentiments (and letters) to Lucile.
‘You see,’ Fréron told him, ‘if I grasp the situation, she loved you for your fine spiritual qualities. Because you were so sensitive, so elevated. Because – as she believed – you were on a different planet from us more coarse-grained mortals. But now what happens? You turn out to be the kind of man who goes storming round the streets covered in mud and blood, inciting butchery.’
D’Anton said that Fréron was ‘trying to clear the field for himself, one way or another’. His tone was cynical. He quoted the remark Voltaire had made about Rabbit’s father: ‘If a snake bit Fréron, the snake would die.’
The truth was – but Fréron was not about to mention this – Lucile was more besotted than ever. Claude Duplessis remained convinced that if he could introduce his daughter to the right man she’d get over her obsession. But he’d have a hard job finding anyone who remotely interested her; if he found them suitable, it followed she wouldn’t. Everything about Camille excited her: his unrespectability, his faux-naïf little mannerisms, his skittish intellect. Above all, the fact that he’d suddenly become famous.
Fréron – the old family friend – had seen the change in Lucile. A pretty curds-and-whey miss had become a dashing young woman, with a mouth full of political jargon and a knowing light in her eye. Be good in bed, Fréron thought, when she gets there. He himself had a wife, a stay-at-home who hardly counted in his scheme of things. Anything’s possible, these days, he thought.
Unfortunately, Lucile had taken up this ludicrous fashion for calling him ‘Rabbit’.
CAMILLE didn’t sleep much: no time. When he did, his dreams exhausted him. He dreamt, inter alia, that the whole world had gone to a party. The scene, variously, was the Place de Grève: Annette’s drawing room: the Hall of the Lesser Pleasures. Everyone in the world was at this party. Angélique Charpentier was talking to Hérault de Séchelles; they were comparing notes about him, exploding his fictions. Sophie from Guise, whom he had slept with when he was sixteen, was telling everything to Laclos; Laclos had his notebook out, and Maître Perrin was at his elbow, demanding attention in a lawyer’s bellow. The smirking, adhesive Deputy Pétion had linked arms with the dead governor of the Bastille; de Launay flopped about, useless without his head. His old schoolfriend, Louis Suleau, was arguing in the street with Anne Théroigne. Fabre and Robespierre were playing a children’s game; they froze like statues when the argument stopped.
He would have worried about these dreams, except that he was going out to dinner every night. He knew they contained a truth; all the people in his life were coming together now. He said to d’Anton, ‘What do you think of Robespierre?’
‘Max? Splendid little chap.’
‘Oh no, you mustn’t say that. He’s sensitive about his height. He used to be, anyway, when we were at school.’
‘Good God,’ d’Anton said. ‘Then just take it that he’s splendid. I haven’t time to pussyfoot around people’s vanities.’
‘And you accuse me of having no tact.’
‘Are you trying to start an argument?’
So he never found out what d’Anton thought of Robespierre.
He said to Robespierre, ‘What do you think of d’Anton?’ Robespierre took off his spectacles and polished them. He mulled over the question. ‘Very pleasant,’ he said at length.
‘But what do you think, really? You’re being evasive. I mean you don’t just think that someone is pleasant, and that’s all you think, surely?’
‘Oh, you do, Camille, you do,’ Robespierre said gently.
So he never found out what Robespierre thought of d’Anton, either.
THE EX-MINISTER FOULON had once remarked, in a time of famine, that if the people were hungry they could eat grass. Or so it was believed. That was why – and reason enough – on 22 July he was in the Place de Grève, with an audience.
He was under guard, but it seemed likely that the small but ugly crowd, who had plans for him, would tear him away. Lafayette arrived and spoke to them. He had no wish to stand in the way of the people’s justice; but at least Foulon should have a fair trial.
‘What’s the use of a trial,’ someone called out, ‘for a man who’s been convicted these thirty years?’
Foulon was old; it was many years since he had ventured his bon mot. To escape this fate he had hidden, and put about rumours of his own death. It was said that a funeral had been conducted over a coffin packed with stones. Tracked down, arrested, he now looked beseechingly at the general. From the narrow streets beyond City Hall, there came the low rumble which Paris now identified as marching feet.
‘They’re converging,’ an aide reported to the general. ‘From the Palais-Royal on one hand, and from Saint-Antoine on the other.’
‘I know,’ the general said. ‘I can hear on both sides of my head. How many?’
No
