to see eye-to-eye. Never mind this “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” rot. Do you know our manifesto? “Liberty, Gaiety, Royal Democracy”. When it comes down to it, we both want the same – we want people to be happy. What’s the use of your Revolution if it breeds long faces? What’s the use of a revolution run by miserable little men in miserable little rooms?’
Liberty, Gaiety, Royal Democracy. The Duplessis women give orders to their dressmakers for the autumn of 1790. Black silks with scarlet sashes and cut-away coats piped with the tricolour take them to first nights, supper parties, private views. Take them to meet new people…
It was still summer, though, when Antoine Saint-Just came to Paris. Not to stay, just to visit; Lucile was avid to get a sight of him. She’d heard the stories, about how he’d absconded with the family silver and had run through the money in a fortnight. She was highly prepared to like him.
He was twenty-two now. The episode with the silver was three years ago. Had Camille perhaps made it up? It was hard to believe a person could change so much. She looked up at Saint-Just – he was tall – and noted the awesome neutrality of his expression. Introductions were made, and he looked at her as if he were not interested in her at all. He was with Robespierre; it seemed they’d exchanged letters. It was quite strange, she thought – most men seemed to fall over themselves in their eagerness to get more out of her than her normal workaday affability. Not that she held it against him: it made a change.
Saint-Just was handsome. He had velvet eyes and a sleepy smile; he moved his fine body carefully, as big men sometimes do. He had a fair skin and dark brown hair – if there was any fault in his face, it was that his chin was too large, too long. It saved him from prettiness, she thought, but seen from certain angles his face had an oddly overbalanced look.
Camille was with her, of course. He was in one of those precarious moods; teasing, but quite ready for a fight. ‘Done any more poems?’ he asked. Last year, Saint-Just had published an epic, and sent it for his opinion; it was interminable, violent, faintly salacious.
‘Why? Would you read them?’ Saint-Just looked hopeful.
Camille slowly shook his head. ‘Torture has been abolished,’ he said.
Saint-Just’s lip curled. ‘I suppose it offended you, my poem. I suppose you thought it was pornographic.’
‘Nothing so good,’ Camille said, laughing.
Their eyes met. Saint-Just said, ‘My poem had a serious point. Do you think I would waste my time?’
‘I don’t know,’ Camille said, ‘whether you would or not.’
Lucile’s mouth went dry. She watched the two men try to face each other down: Saint-Just waxen, passive, waiting for results, and Camille nervously aggressive, his eyes bright. This is nothing to do with a poem, she thought. Robespierre, too, looked faintly alarmed. ‘You’re a little severe, Camille,’ he said. ‘Surely the work had some merit?’
‘None, none,’ Camille said. ‘But if you like, Antoine, I could bring you some specimens of my own early efforts, and let you mock them at your leisure. You are probably a better poet than I was, and you will certainly be a better politician. Because look at you, you have self-control. You would like to hit me, but you aren’t going to.’
Saint-Just’s expression had deepened; it was not fathomable.
‘Have I really offended you?’ Camille tried to sound sorry.
‘Oh, deeply.’ Saint-Just smiled. ‘I am wounded to the core of my being. Because isn’t it obvious that you are the one human being whose good opinion I crave? You without whom no aristocrat’s dinner party is complete?’
Saint-Just turned his back to speak to Robespierre. ‘Why couldn’t you be kind?’ Lucile whispered.
Camille shrugged. ‘As a friend, I’d have been kind. But he was talking to an editor, not to a friend. He wanted me to put a piece in the paper crying up his talents. He didn’t want my personal opinion, he wanted my professional opinion. So he got it.’
‘What’s happened? I thought you liked him?’
‘He was all right. He’s changed. He used to be always thinking up mad schemes and getting into difficulties with women. But look at him, he’s become so solemn. I wish Louis Suleau could see him, he’s a fine example of a miserable revolutionary. He’s a republican, he says. I wouldn’t like to live in his republic.’
‘Perhaps he wouldn’t let you.’
Later she heard Saint-Just tell Robespierre, ‘He is frivolous.’
She contemplated the word. She associated it with giggly summer picnics, or gossipy theatre suppers with champagne: the rustling hot still-painted actresses sitting down beside her and saying, I see you are much in love, he is beautiful, I hope you will be happy. She had never before heard it uttered as an indictment, charged with menace and contempt.
THAT YEAR the Assembly made bishops and priests into public officials, salaried by the state and subject to election, and in time also required of them an oath of loyalty to the new constitution. To some it seemed a mistake to force the priests to a stark choice; to refuse was to be counted disloyal, and dangerous. Everybody agreed (at her mother’s little afternoon salons) that religious conflict was the most dangerous force that could be unleashed in a nation.
From time to time her mother would sigh over the new developments. ‘Life will be so prosaic,’ she complained. ‘The constitution, and the high-mindedness, and the Quaker hats.’
‘What would you have, my dear?’ Danton asked her. ‘Plumes and grand passions at the Riding-School? Mayhem among the Municipality? Love and death?’
‘Oh, don’t laugh. Our romantic aspirations have received a shock. Here is the Revolution, the spirit of Rousseau made flesh, we thought – ’
‘And it is only M. Robespierre, with defective eyesight and a provincial accent.’
‘It is only a lot of people discussing their bank balances.’
‘Who has been gossiping to you about my affairs?’
‘The walls and gateposts talk of you, M. Danton.’ She paused, touched his arm. ‘Tell me something, will you? Do you dislike Max?’
‘Dislike him?’ he seemed surprised. ‘I don’t think so. He makes me a bit uneasy, that’s all. He does seem to set everyone very high standards. Will you be able to scrape up to them when you’re his mother-in-law?’
‘Oh, that’s – not settled yet.’
‘Can’t Adèle make up her mind?’
‘It’s more that the question hasn’t been asked.’
‘Then it’s what they call an understanding,’ Danton said.
‘I’m not sure whether Max thinks he has asked her – well, no, I must decline to comment. You need not raise your eyebrows in that way. How can a mere woman say what a deputy understands?’
‘Oh, we don’t have “mere women” any more. Last week your two prospective sons-in-law defeated me in argument. I am told that women are in every respect the equal of men.
