the lover of a marquise.’
‘Naturally, you don’t believe that.’
‘Look, I can’t help my birth,’ Hérault said, with a flash of irritation. ‘I try to atone for it – perhaps you think I should imitate Mlle de Kéralio and open a shop? Or your butcher might take me on to scrub the floors?’ He broke off. ‘Oh, really, one shouldn’t be talking like this, losing one’s temper. It must be the air in this district. Be careful, Marat will be wanting to move in.’
‘But why is this gentleman verminous? You mean it as a figure of speech?’
‘I mean it literally. This man abandoned his life, walked out, chooses to live as some sort of tramp.’ Hérault shuddered; the story had a horrible grip on his imagination.
‘What does he do?’
‘He appears to have dedicated himself to the overthrowing of everything.’
‘Ah, the overthrowing of everything. Lucrative business, that. Business to put your son into.’
‘What I am telling you is perfectly true – but look now, I’m getting diverted. I came to ask you to do something about Camille, as a matter of urgency – ’
‘Oh, Camille,’ Legendre said. He added a phrase he had seldom used since his merchant navy days.
‘Well, quite,’ Hérault said. ‘But one doesn’t want to see him taken up by the police. The Palais-Royal is full of people standing on chairs making inflammatory speeches. I don’t know if he is there now, but he was there yesterday, and the day before – ’
‘Camille is making a speech?’
This seemed unlikely: and yet, possible. A picture came into d’Anton’s mind. It was some weeks ago, late at night. Fabre had been drinking. They had all been drinking. Fabre said, we are going to be public men. He said, d’Anton, you know what I told you about your voice when we first met, when you were a boy? I told you, you’ve got to be able to speak for hours, you’ve got to fetch up your voice from here, from here – well, you’re good, but you’re not that good yet. Courtrooms are one thing, but we’re growing out of courtrooms.
Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d’Anton’s temples. ‘Put your fingers here,’ he said. ‘Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.’ He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. ‘I’ll teach you like an actor,’ he said. ‘This city is our stage.’
Camille said: ‘Book of Ezekiel. “This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh.”’
Fabre turned. ‘This stutter,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to do it.’
Camille put his hands over his eyes. ‘Leave me alone;’ he said.
‘Even you.’ Fabre’s face was incandescent. ‘Even you, I am going to teach.’
He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. ‘You’re going to talk properly,’ Fabre said. ‘Even if it kills one of us.’
Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.
Now, in bright sunlight, on an April morning, he wondered if this scene could really have occurred. Nevertheless, he began to walk.
THE GARDENS of the Palais-Royal were full to overflowing. It seemed to be hotter here than anywhere else, as if it were high summer. The shops in the arcades were all open, doing brisk business, and people were arguing, laughing, parading; the stockbrokers from the bourse had wrenched their cravats off and were drinking lemonade, and the patrons of the cafés had spilled into the gardens and were fanning themselves with their hats. Young girls had come out to take the air and show off their summer dresses and compare themselves with the prostitutes, who saw chances of midday trade and were out in force. Stray dogs ran about grinning; broadsheet sellers bawled. There was an air of holiday: dangerous holiday, holiday with an edge.
Camille stood on a chair, the light breeze fanning out his hair. He was holding a piece of paper, and was reading from what appeared to be a police file. When he had finished he held the piece of paper at arm’s length between finger and thumb and released it to let it flutter to the ground. The crowd hooted with laughter. Two men exchanged glances and melted away from the back of the crowd. ‘Informers,’ Fréron said. Then Camille spoke of the Queen with cordial contempt, and the crowd hissed and groaned; he spoke of delivering the King from evil advisers, and praised M. Necker, and the crowd clapped its hands. He spoke of Good Duke Philippe and his concern for the people, and the crowd threw its hat into the air and cheered.
‘They’ll arrest him,’ Hérault said.
‘What, in the face of this crowd?’ Fabre said.
‘They’ll pick him up afterwards.’
D’Anton looked very grave. The crowd was increasing. Camille’s voice reached out to them without a trace of hesitation. By accident or design he had developed a marked Parisian accent. People were drifting over from across the gardens. From the upper window of a jeweller’s shop, the Duke’s man Laclos gazed down dispassionately, sipping from time to time from a glass of water and jotting down notes for his files. Hot, getting hotter: Laclos alone was cool. Camille flicked his fingers across his forehead, brushing the sweat away. He launched into grain speculators. Laclos wrote, ‘The best this week.’
‘I’m glad you came to tell us, Hérault,’ d’Anton said. ‘But I don’t see any chance of stopping him now.’
‘It’s all my doing,’ Fabre said. His face shone with pleasure. ‘I told you, you have to take a firm line with Camille. You have to hit him.’
THAT EVENING, as Camille was leaving Fréron’s apartment, two gentlemen intercepted him and asked him politely to accompany them to the Duc de Biron’s house. A carriage was waiting. On the way, no one spoke.
Camille was glad of this. His throat hurt. His stutter had come back. Sometimes in court he had managed to lose it, when he was caught up in the excitement of a case. When he was angry it would go, when he was beside himself, possessed; but it would be back. And now it was back, and he must revert to his old tactics: he couldn’t get through a sentence without the need for his mind to dart ahead, four or five sentences ahead, to see words coming that he wouldn’t be able to pronounce. Then he must think of synonyms – the most bizarre ones, at times – or he must simply alter what he’s going to say…He remembered Fabre, banging his head rather painfully against the arm of a chair.
The Duc de Biron made only the briefest appearance; he accorded Camille a nod, and then he was whisked through a gallery, away, into the interior of the house. The air was close; sconces diffused the light. On walls of muffling tapestry, dim figures of goddesses, horses, men: woollen arms, woollen hooves, draperies exuding the scent of camphor and damp. The topic was the thrill of the chase; he saw hounds and spaniels with dripping jaws, dough-faced huntsmen in costumes antique: a cornered stag foundered in a stream. He stopped suddenly, gripped by panic, by an impulse to cut and run. One of his escorts took him – quite gently – by the arm and steered him on.
Laclos waited for him in a little room with walls of green silk. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Tell me about yourself. Tell me what was going through your mind when you got up there today.’ Self-contained, constrained,
