must be very brave,’ she said. ‘Your mother has gone to live with Jesus.’
Baby Jesus, he thought. He said, ‘I know.’
When this happened, he was six. A white curtain fluttered in the breeze from the open window, sparrows fussed on the sill; God the Father, trailing clouds of glory, looked down from a picture on the wall.
THEN IN A DAY OR TWO, sister Charlotte pointing to the coffin; his smaller sister Henriette grumbling in a corner, fractious and disregarded.
‘I will read to you,’ he told Charlotte. ‘But not that animal book. It is too childish for me.’
Later the grown-up Henriette, who was his aunt, lifted him up to look in the coffin before it was closed. She was shaking, and said over his head, ‘I didn’t want to show him, it was Grandfather Carraut who said it must be done.’ He understood very well that it was his mother, the hatchet-nosed corpse with its terrifying paper hands.
Aunt Eulalie ran out into the street. She said, ‘François, I beg of you.’ Maximilien ran after her, grabbing at her skirts; he saw how his father did not once turn back. François strode down the street, off into the town. Aunt Eulalie towed the child with her, back into the house. ‘He has to sign the death certificate,’ she said. ‘He says he won’t put his name to it. What are we going to do?’
Next day, François came back. He smelled of brandy and Grandfather Carraut said it was obvious he had been with a woman.
During the next few months François began to drink heavily. He neglected his clients, and they went elsewhere. He would disappear for days at a time; one day he packed a bag, and said he was going for good.
They said – Grandmother and Grandfather Carraut – that they had never liked him. They said, we have no quarrel with the de Robespierres, they are decent people, but him, he is not a decent person. At first they kept up the fiction that he was engaged in a lengthy and prestigious case in another city. He did return from time to time, drifting in, usually to borrow money. The elder de Robespierres – ‘at our time of life’ – did not feel they could give his children a home. Grandfather Carraut took the two boys, Maximilien and Augustin. Aunt Eulalie and Aunt Henriette, who were unmarried, said they would take the little girls.
At some point during his childhood, Maximilien found out, or was told, that he had been conceived out of wedlock. Possibly he put the worst construction on his family circumstances, because during the rest of his life he never mentioned his parents at all.
IN 1768 FRANÇOIS de Robespierre turned up in Arras after an absence of two years. He said he had been abroad, but he did not say where, or how he had lived. He went over to Grandfather Carraut’s house, and asked to see his son. Maximilien stood in a passageway and heard them shouting from behind a closed door.
‘You say you have never got over it,’ Grandfather Carraut said. ‘But have you stopped to ask your son whether he has got over it? The child is her image, he’s not strong; she was not strong; you knew that when you forced yourself on her after each childbirth. It’s only thanks to me that they have any clothes to their backs and are growing up Christians.’
His father came out and found him and said, he’s thin, he’s small for his age. He spent a few minutes talking to him in a strained and embarrassed way. Leaving, he bent down to kiss him on the forehead. His breath was sour. The love child jerked his head back, with an adult expression of distaste. François seemed disappointed. Perhaps he wanted a hug, a kiss, to swing his son around in the air?
Afterwards the child, who had learned to measure out sparingly his stronger emotions, wondered if he ought to be sorry. He asked his grandfather, ‘Did my father come to see me?’
The old man grumbled as he moved away. ‘He came to borrow money again. Grow up.’
Maximilien gave his grandparents no trouble at all. You would hardly know he was in the house, they said. He was interested in reading and in keeping doves in a cote in the garden. The little girls were brought over on Sundays, and they played together. He let them stroke – very gently, with one finger – the doves’ quivering backs.
They begged for one of the doves, to take home and keep for themselves. I know you, he said, you’ll be tired of it within a day or two, you have to take care of them, they’re not dolls you know. They wouldn’t give up: Sunday after Sunday, bleating and whining. In the end he was persuaded. Aunt Eulalie bought a pretty gilt cage.
Within a few weeks the dove was dead. They had left the cage outside, there had been a storm. He imagined the little bird dashing itself in panic against the bars, its wings broken, the thunder rolling overhead. When Charlotte told him she hiccupped and sobbed with remorse; but in five minutes, he knew, she would run out into the sunshine and forget it. ‘We put the cage outside so he would feel free,’ she sniffed.
‘He was not a free bird. He was a bird that needed looking after. I told you. I was right.’
But his rightness gave him no pleasure. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.
His grandfather said that when he was old enough he would take him into the business. He escorted the child around the brewery, to look at the various operations and speak with the men. The boy took only a polite interest. His grandfather said that, as he was more bookish than practical, he might like to be a priest. ‘Augustin can go into the business,’ he said. ‘Or it can be sold. I’m not sentimental. There are other trades than brewing.’
When Maximilien was ten years old, the Abbot of Saint-Waast was induced to interest himself in the family. He interviewed Maximilien in person, and did not quite take to him. Despite his self-effacing manner, he seemed basically contemptuous of the Abbot’s opinions, as if he had his mind on higher things and plenty of tasks to engage him elsewhere. However, it seemed clear that he had a good brain going to waste. The Abbot went so far as to think that his misfortunes were not his fault. He was a child for whom one might do something; he had been three years at school in Arras, and his teachers were full of praise for his progress and industry.
The Abbot arranged a scholarship. When he said, ‘I will do something for you,’ he did not mean a mere trifle. It was to be Louis-le-Grand, the best school in the country, where the sons of the aristocracy were educated – a school that looked out for talent, too, and where a boy with no fortune might get on. So the Abbot said: moreover, he enjoined furious hard work, abject obedience, unfailing gratitude.
Maximilien said to his Aunt Henriette, ‘When I go away, you will have to write me letters.’
‘Of course.’
‘And Charlotte and Henriette are to write me letters, please.’
‘I’ll see they do.’
‘In Paris I shall have a lot of new friends, as well.’
‘I expect so.’
‘And when I am grown up I will be able to provide for my sisters and my brother. No one else will have to do it.’
‘What about your old aunts?’
‘You too. We’ll get a big house together. We won’t have any quarrels at all.’
Fat chance, she thought. She wondered: ought he to go? At twelve he was still such a small boy, so softly spoken and unobtrusive; she was afraid he would be overlooked altogether once he left his grandfather’s house.
