God keep you.’
You rely on it, he thought; I shan’t.
SIR FRANCIS BURDETT, British Ambassador, on Paris: ‘It is the most ill-contrived, ill-built, dirty stinking town that can possibly be imagined; as for the inhabitants, they are ten times more nasty than the inhabitants of Edinburgh.’
GEORGES-JACQUES came off the coach at the Cour des Messageries. The journey had been unexpectedly lively. There was a girl on board, Françoise-Julie; Françoise-Julie Duhauttoir, from Troyes. They hadn’t met before – he’d have recalled it – but he knew something of her; she was the kind of girl who made his sisters purse their lips. Naturally: she was good-looking, she was lively, she had money, no parents and spent six months of the year in Paris. On the road she amused him with imitations of her aunts: ‘Youth-doesn’t-last-for-ever, a-good-reputation-is-money-in-the-bank, don’t-you-think-it’s-time-you-settled-down-in-Troyes-where-all-your-relatives-are-and-found-yourself-a-husband-before-you-fall-apart?’ As if, Françoise-Julie said, there were going to be some sudden shortage of men.
He couldn’t see there ever would be, for a girl like her. She flirted with him as if he were just anybody; she didn’t seem to mind about the scar. She was like someone who has been gagged for months, let out of a gaol. Words tumbled out of her, as she tried to explain the city, tell him about her life, tell him about her friends. When the coach came to a halt she did not wait for him to help her down; she jumped.
The noise hit him at once. Two of the men who had come to see to the horses began to quarrel. That was the first thing he heard, a vicious stream of obscenity in the hard accent of the capital.
Her bags around her feet, Françoise-Julie stood and clung to his arm. She laughed, with sheer delight at being back. ‘What I like,’ she said, ‘is that it’s always changing. They’re always tearing something down and building something else.’
She had scrawled her address on a sheet of paper, tucked it into his pocket. ‘Can’t I help you?’ he said. ‘See you get to your apartment all right?’
‘Look, you take care of yourself,’ she said. ‘I live here, I’ll be fine.’ She spun away, gave some directions about her luggage, disbursed some coins. ‘Now, you know where you’re going, don’t you? I’ll expect to see you within a week. If you don’t turn up I’ll come hunting for you.’ She picked up her smallest bag; quite suddenly, she lunged at him, stretched up, planted a kiss on his cheek. Then she whirled away into the crowd.
He had brought only one valise, heavy with books. He hoisted it up, then put it down again while he fished in his pocket for the piece of paper in his stepfather’s handwriting:
The Black Horse
rue Geoffroy l’Asnier,
parish of Saint-Gervais.
All about him, church bells had begun to ring. He swore to himself. How many bells were there in this city, and how in the name of God was he to distinguish the bell of Saint-Gervais and its parish? He screwed the paper up and dropped it.
Half the passers-by were lost. You could tramp for ever in the alleyways and back courts; there were streets with no name, there were building sites strewn with rubble, there were people’s fireplaces standing in the streets. Old men coughed and spat, women hitched up skirts trailing yellow mud, children ran naked in it as if they were country children. It was like Troyes, and very unlike it. In his pocket he had a letter of introduction to an Île Saint-Louis attorney, Vinot by name. He would find somewhere to spend the night. Tomorrow, he would present himself.
A hawker, selling cures for toothache, collected a crowd that talked back to him. ‘Liar!’ a woman screamed. ‘Get them pulled out, that’s the only way.’ Before he walked away, he saw her wild, mad, urban eyes.
MAÎTRE VINOT was a rotund man, plump-pawed and pugnacious. He affected to be boisterous, like an elderly schoolboy.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we can but give you a try. We … can … but … give … you … a try.’
I can give it a try, Georges-Jacques thought.
‘One thing’s for sure, your handwriting is atrocious. What do they teach you nowadays? I hope your Latin’s up to scratch.’
‘Maître Vinot,’ Danton said, ‘I’ve clerked for two years, do you think I’ve come here to copy letters?’
Maître Vinot stared at him.
‘My Latin’s fine,’ he said. ‘My Greek’s fine, too. I also speak English fluently, and enough Italian to get by. If that interests you.’
‘Where did you learn?’
‘I taught myself.’
‘How extremely enterprising. Mind you, if we have any trouble with foreigners we get an interpreter in.’ He looked Danton over. ‘Like to travel, would you?’
‘Yes, I would, if I got the chance. I’d like to go to England.’
‘Admire the English, do you? Admire their institutions?’
‘A parliament’s what we need, don’t you think? I mean a properly representative one, not ruined by corruption like theirs. Oh, and a separation of the legislative and executive arms. They fall down there.’
‘Now listen to me,’ Maître Vinot said. ‘I shall say to you one word about all this, and I hope I shall not need to repeat it. I won’t interfere with your opinions – though I suppose you think they’re unique? Why,’ he said, spluttering slightly, ‘they’re the commonest thing, my coachman has those opinions. I don’t run around after my clerks inquiring after their morals and shepherding them off to Mass; but this city is no safe place. There are all kinds of books circulating without the censor’s stamp, and in some of the coffee houses – the smart ones, too – the gossip is near to treasonable. I don’t ask you to do the impossible, I don’t ask you to keep your mind off all that – but I do ask you to take care who you mix with. I won’t have sedition – not on my premises. Don’t ever consider that you speak in private, or in confidence, because for all you know somebody may be drawing you on, ready to report you to the authorities. Oh yes,’ he said, nodding to show that he had the measure of a doughty opponent: ‘oh yes, you learn a thing or two in our trade. Young men will have to learn to watch their tongues.’
‘Very well, Maître Vinot,’ Georges-Jacques said meekly.
A man put his head around the door. ‘Maître Perrin was asking,’ he said, ‘are you taking on Jean-Nicolas’s son, or what?’
‘Oh God,’ Maître Vinot groaned, ‘have you seen Jean-Nicolas’s son? I mean, have you had the pleasure of conversation with him?’
‘No,’ the man said, ‘I just thought, old friend’s boy, you know. They say he’s very bright, too.’
‘Do they? That’s not all they say. No,
