a bear got out of the pit. ‘This is my new acquisition, M. Desmoulins.’
Deputy Pétion smiled at him amiably. Laclos caught his eye and turned away.
‘Now, gentlemen, if you would just give me a moment to dress, Teutch, the door for the gentlemen, and I will be with you directly.’ They filed out. ‘You stay,’ he said to Camille.
There was a sudden silence. The Comte passed his hand over his face. ‘What a farce,’ he said.
‘It seems a waste of time. But I don’t know how these things are conducted.’
‘You don’t know much at all, my dear, but that doesn’t stop you having your prim little opinions.’ He bounced across the room, arms outstretched. ‘The Rise and Rise of the Comte de Mirabeau. They have to see me, they have to see the ogre. Laclos comes here with his pointed nose twitching. Brissot ditto. He wears me out, that man Brissot, he never stays still. I don’t mean he runs around the room like you, I mean he fidgets. Incidentally, I presume you are taking money from Orléans? Quite right. One must live, and at other people’s expense if at all possible. Teutch,’ he said, ‘you may shave me, but do not put lather in my mouth, I want to talk.’
‘As if that were anything new,’ the man said. His employer leaned forward and punched him in the ribs. Teutch spilled a little hot water, but was not otherwise incommoded.
‘I’m in demand with the patriots,’ Mirabeau said. ‘Patriots! You notice how we can’t get through a paragraph without using that word? Your pamphlet will be got out, within a month or two.’
Camille sat and looked at him sombrely. He felt calm, as if he were drifting out to sea.
‘Publishers are a craven breed,’ the Comte said. ‘If I had the ordering and disposition of the Inferno, I would keep a special circle for them, where they would grill slowly on white-hot presses.’
Camille’s eyes flickered to Mirabeau’s face. He found in its temper and tensions some indication that he was not the devil’s only steady bet. ‘Are you married?’ the Comte asked suddenly.
‘No, but in a way I am engaged.’
‘Has she money?’
‘Quite a lot.’
‘I warm to you with every admission.’ He waved Teutch away. ‘I think you had better move in here, at least when you are in Versailles. I’m not sure you’re fit to be at large.’ He pulled at his cravat. His mood had altered. ‘Do you know, Camille,’ he said softly, ‘you may wonder how you got here, but I wonder the same thing about myself … to be here, in Versailles, expecting daily a summons from the Palace, and this on the strength of my writings, my speeches, the support I command among the people … to be playing at last my natural role in this Kingdom … because the King must send, mustn’t he? When all the old solutions have been tried and have failed?’
‘I think so. But you must show him clearly how dangerous an opponent you can be.’
‘Yes … and that will be another gamble. Have you ever tried to kill yourself?’
‘It comes up as a possibility from time to time.’
‘Everything is a joke,’ the Comte snapped. ‘I hope you’re flippant when you’re in the dock for treason.’ He dropped his voice again. ‘Yes, I take your point, it’s been an option. You see, people say they’ve no regrets, they boast about it, but I, I tell you, I have regrets – the debts I’ve incurred and daily incur, the women I’ve ruined and let go, my own nature that I can’t curb, that I’ve never learned to curb, that’s never learned to wait and bide its time – yes, I can tell you, death would have been a reprieve, it would have given me time off from myself. But I was a fool. Now I want to be alive so –’ He broke off. He wanted to say that he had been made to suffer, had felt his face ground into his own errors, had been undermined, choked off, demeaned.
‘Well, why?’
Mirabeau grinned. ‘So I can give them hell,’ he said.
THE HALL of the Lesser Pleasures, it was called. Until now it had been used for storing scenery for palace theatricals. These two facts occasioned comment.
When the King decided that this hall was a suitable meeting place for the Estates-General, he called in carpenters and painters. They hung the place with velvet and tassels, knocked up some imitation columns and splashed around some gold paint. It was passably splendid, and it was cheap. There were seats to the right and left of the throne for the First and Second Estates; the Commons were to occupy an inadequate number of hard wooden benches at the back.
It began badly. After the King’s solemn entry, he surveyed them with a rather foolish smile, and removed his hat. Then he sat down, and put it on again. The brilliant robes and silk coats swept and rustled into their places. Three hundred plumes were raised and replaced on three hundred noble heads. But protocol dictates that in the presence of the monarch, commoners remain hatless and standing.
A moment later a red-faced man clamped his plain hat over his forehead and sat down with as much noise as he found he could make. With one accord, the Third Estate assumed its seat. The Comte de Mirabeau jostled on the benches with the rest.
Unruffled, His Majesty rose to make his speech. It was unreasonable, he had thought personally, to keep the poor men standing all afternoon, since they had already been waiting three hours to be let into the hall. Well, they had taken the initiative, he would not make a fuss. He began to speak. A moment later, the back rows leaned into the front rows. What? What did he say?
Immediately it is evident: only giants with brazen lungs will prosper in this hall. Being one such, Mirabeau smiled.
The King said – very little, really. He spoke of the debt burden of the American war. He said that the taxation system might be reformed. He did not say how. M. Barentin rose next: Minister of Justice, Keeper of the Seals. He warned against precipitate action, dangerous innovation; invited the Estates to meet separately the next day, to elect officers, draw up procedures. He sat down.
It is the earnest desire of the Commons that the Estates should meet as one body, and that the votes should be counted individually, by head. Otherwise, the churchmen and the nobles will combine against the Commons; the generous grant of double representation – their six hundred to the three hundred each of the Nobles and the Clergy – will avail them nothing. They might as well go home.
But not before Necker’s speech. The Comptroller of Finances rose, to an expectant hush; and Maximilien de Robespierre moved, imperceptibly, forward on his bench. Necker began. You could hear him better than Barentin. It was figures, figures, figures.
After ten minutes, Maximilien de Robespierre’s eyes followed the eyes of the other men in the hall. The ladies of the court were stacked on benches like crockery on a shelf, rigid and trapped inside their impossible gowns and stays and trains. Each one sat upright; then, when this exhausted her, leaned back for support against the knees of the lady behind. After ten minutes, those knees would twitch and flex; then the first lady would shoot upright again. Soon she would droop, stir, yawn, twitch, she would shift in the little space allowed, she would rustle and moan silently to herself, and pray for the torture to be over. How they longed to lean forward, drop their addled heads on to their knees! Pride kept them upright – more or less. Poor things, he thought. Poor little creatures. Their spines will break.
The first half hour passed. Necker must have been
