‘Well, so it is. Our dear Thing. I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised.’
‘I should be there. In that procession. De Robespierre is my intellectual inferior.’
‘What?’ The abbé turned, amazed. Laughter engulfed him. ‘Louis XVI by the grace of God is your intellectual inferior. So no doubt is our Holy Father the Pope. What else would you like to be, besides a deputy?’ Camille did not reply. ‘Dear, dear.’ The abbé affected to wipe his eyes.
‘There’s Mirabeau,’ Camille said. ‘He’s starting a newspaper. I’m going to write for it.’
‘How did you arrange that?’
‘I haven’t. Tomorrow I will.’
De Bourville looked sideways at him. Camille is a liar, he thinks, always was. No, that’s too harsh; let’s say, he romances. ‘Well, good luck to you,’ he said. ‘Did you see how the Queen was received? Nasty, wasn’t it? They cheered Orléans though. And Lafayette. And Mirabeau.’
And d’Anton, Camille said: under his breath, to try out the sound of it. D’Anton had a big case in hand, would not even come to watch. And Desmoulins, he added. They cheered Desmoulins most of all. He felt a dull ache of disappointment.
It had rained all night. At ten o’clock, when the procession began, the streets had been steaming under the early sun, but by midday the ground was quite hot and dry.
CAMILLE had arranged to spend the night in Versailles at his cousin’s apartment; he had made a point of asking this favour of the deputy when there were several people about, so that he could not with dignity refuse. It was well after midnight when he arrived.
‘Where on earth have you been till this time?’ de Viefville said.
‘With the Duc de Biron. And the Comte de Genlis,’ Camille murmured.
‘Oh I see,’ de Viefville said. He was annoyed, because he did not know whether to believe him or not. And there was a third party present, inhibiting the good row they might have had.
A young man rose from his quiet seat in the chimney corner. ‘I’ll leave you, M. de Viefville. But think over what I’ve said.’
De Viefville made no effort to effect introductions. The young man said to Camille, ‘I’m Barnave, you might have heard of me.’
‘Everyone has heard of you.’
‘Perhaps you think I am only a troublemaker. I do hope to show I’m something more. Good-night, Messieurs.’
He drew the door quietly behind him. Camille would have liked to run after him and ask him questions, try to cement their acquaintance; but his faculty of awe had been overworked that day. This Barnave was the man who in the Dauphiné had stirred up resistance to royal edicts. People called him Tiger – gentle mockery, Camille now saw, of a plain, pleasant, snub-nosed young lawyer.
‘What’s the matter?’ de Viefville inquired. ‘Disappointed? Not what you thought?’
‘What did he want?’
‘Support for his measures. He could only spare me fifteen minutes, and that in the small hours.’
‘So are you insulted?’
‘You’ll see them all tomorrow, jockeying for advantage. They’re all in it for what they can grab, if you ask me.’
‘Does nothing shake your tiny provincial convictions?’ Camille asked. ‘You’re worse than my father.’
‘Camille, if I’d been your father I’d have broken your silly little neck years ago.’
At the palace and across the town, the clocks began to strike one, mournfully concordant; de Viefville turned, walked out of the room, went to bed. Camille took out the draft of his pamphlet ‘La France Libre’. He read each page through, tore it once across and dropped it on the fire. It had failed to keep up with the situation. Next week, deo volente, next month, he would write it again. In the flames he could see the picture of himself writing, the ink skidding over the paper, his hand scooping the hair off his forehead. When the traffic stopped rumbling under the window he curled up in a chair and fell asleep by the dying fire. At five the light edged between the shutters and the first cart passed with its haul of dark sour bread for the Versailles market. He woke, and sat looking around the strange room, sick apprehension running through him like a slow, cold flame.
THE VALET – who was not like a valet, but like a bodyguard – said: ‘Did vou write this?’
In his hand he had a copy of Camille’s first pamphlet, ‘A Philosophy for the French People’. He flourished it, as if it were a writ.
Camille shrank back. Already at eight o’clock, Mirabeau’s antechamber was crowded. All Versailles wanted an interview, all Paris. He felt small, insignificant, completely flattened by the man’s aggression. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My name’s on the cover.’
‘Good God, the Comte’s been after you.’ The valet took him by the elbow. ‘Come with me.’
Nothing had been easy so far: he could not believe that this was going to be easy. The Comte de Mirabeau was wrapped in a crimson silk dressing-gown, which suggested some antique drapery: as if he waited on a party of sculptors. Unshaven, his face glistened a little with sweat; it was pock-marked, and the shade of putty.
‘So I have got the Philosopher,’ he said. ‘Teutch, give me coffee.’ He turned, deliberately. ‘Come here.’ Camille hesitated. He felt the lack of a net and trident. ‘I said come here,’ the Comte said sharply. ‘I am not dangerous.’ He yawned. ‘Not at this hour.’
The Comte’s scrutiny was like a physical mauling, and designed to overawe. ‘I meant to get around to waylaying you in some public place,’ he said, ‘and having you fetched here. Unfortunately I waste my time, waiting for the King to send for me.’
‘He should send for you, Monsieur.’
‘Oh, you are a partisan of mine?’
‘I have had the honour of arguing from your premises.’
‘Oh, I like that,’ Mirabeau said mockingly. ‘I dearly love a sycophant, Maître Desmoulins.’
Camille cannot understand this: the way Orléans people look at him, the way Mirabeau now looks at him: as if they had plans for him. Nobody has had plans for him, since the priests gave him up.
‘You must forgive my appearance,’ the Comte said smoothly. ‘My affairs keep me up at nights. Not always, I am bound to say, my political ones.’
This is nonsense, Camille sees at once. If it suited the Comte, he would receive his admirers shaven and sober. But nothing he does is without its calculated effect, and by his ease and carelessness, and by his careless apologies for it, he means to dominate and outface the careful and anxious men who wait on him. The Comte looked into the face of his impassive servant Teutch, and laughed uproariously, as if the man had made a joke; then broke off and said, ‘I like your writings, Maître Desmoulins. So much emotion, so much heart.’
‘I used
