a man in the Assembly.’
‘There’s you,’ Camille said.
‘Oh yes?’ He applied himself to the next sentence. ‘They call Mirabeau “The Torch of Provence”. And do you know what they call me? “The Candle of Arras”. ’
‘But in time, Max – ’
‘Yes, in time. They think I should hang around viscounts and cultivate rhetorical flourishes. No. In time, perhaps, they might respect me. But I don’t want them ever to approve of me because if they approve of me I’m finished. I want no kickbacks, no promises, no caucus and no blood on my hands. I’m not their man of destiny, I’m afraid.’
‘But are you the man of destiny, inside your own head?’
Robespierre looked down at his letter again. He contemplated a postscript. He reached for his pen. ‘No more than you are.’
SUNDAY, 12 JULY: five a.m. D’Anton said, ‘Camille, there are no answers to these questions.’
‘No?’
‘No. But look. Dawn has broken. It’s another day. You’ve made it.’
Camille’s questions: suppose I do get Lucile, how shall I go on without Annette? Why have I never achieved anything, not one damn thing? Why won’t they publish my pamphlet? Why does my father hate me?
‘All right,’ d’Anton said. ‘Short answers are best. Why should you go on without Annette? Get into both their beds, you’re quite capable of it, I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time in the history of the world.’
Camille looked at him wonderingly. ‘Nothing shocks you these days, does it?’
‘May I continue? You’ve never achieved anything because you’re always bloody horizontal. I mean, you’re supposed to be at some place, right, and you’re not, and people say, God, he’s so absentminded – but I know the truth – you started the day with very good intentions, you might even have been on the way to where you’re supposed to be going, and then you just run into somebody, and what’s the next thing? You’re in bed with them.’
‘And that’s the day gone,’ Camille said. ‘Yes, you’re right, you’re right.’
‘So what sort of a foundation for any career – oh, never mind. What was I saying? They won’t publish your pamphlet till the situation gives way a bit. As for your father – he doesn’t hate you, he probably cares too much, as I do and a very large number of other people. And Christ, you wear me out.’
D’Anton had been in court all day on Friday, and had spent Saturday working solidly. His face was creased with exhaustion. ‘Do me a favour.’ He got up and walked stiffly to the window. ‘If you’re going to commit suicide, would you leave it till about Wednesday, when my shipping case is over?’
‘I shall go back to Versailles now,’ Camille said. ‘I have to go and talk to Mirabeau.’
‘Poor sod.’ D’Anton slept momentarily on his feet. ‘It’s going to be hotter than ever today.’ He swung open the shutter. The glare leapt into the room.
CAMILLE’S DIFFICULTY was not staying awake; it was catching up with his personal effects. It was some time since he had been of fixed address. He wondered, really, if d’Anton could enter into his difficulties. When you turn up unexpectedly at somewhere you used to live, it’s very difficult to say to people, ‘Take your hands off me, I only came for a clean shirt.’ They don’t believe you. They think it’s a pretext.
And again, he is always in transit. It can easily take three hours to get from Paris to Versailles. Despite his difficulties, he is at Mirabeau’s house for the hour when normal people have their breakfast; he has shaved, changed, brushed his hair, he is every inch (he thinks) the modest young advocate waiting on the great man.
Teutch rolled his eyes and pushed him in at the door. ‘There’s a new cabinet,’ he said. ‘And it doesn’t include HIM.’
Mirabeau was pacing about the room, a vein distended in his temple. He checked his stride for a moment. ‘Oh, there you are. Been with fucking Philippe?’
The room was packed: angry faces, faces drawn with anxiety. Deputy Pétion dropped a perspiring hand on his shoulder. ‘Well, looking so good, Camille,’ he said. ‘Me, I’ve been up all night. You know they sacked Necker? The new cabinet meets this morning, if they can find a Minister of Finance. Three people have already turned it down. Necker’s popular – they’ve really done it this time.’
‘Is it Antoinette’s fault?’
‘They say so. There are deputies here who expected to be arrested, last night.’
‘There’s time, for arrests.’
‘I think,’ Pétion said sensibly, ‘that some of us ought to go to Paris – Mirabeau, don’t you think so?’
Mirabeau glared at him. He thinks a lot of himself, he thought, to interrupt me. ‘Why don’t you do that?’ he growled. He pretended to have forgotten Pétion’s name.
As soon as this reaches the Palais-Royal, Camille thought…He slid across the room to the Comte’s elbow. ‘Gabriel, I have to leave now.’
Mirabeau pulled him to his side, sneering – at what, was unclear. He held on to him, and with one large hand swept Camille’s hair back from his face. One of Mirabeau’s rings caught the corner of his mouth. ‘Maître Desmoulins feels he would like to attend a little riot. Sunday morning, Camille: why aren’t you at Mass?’
He pulled away. He left the room. He ran down the stairs. He was already in the street when Teutch came pounding after him. He stopped. Teutch stared at him without speaking.
‘Does the Comte send me some advice?’
‘He does, but I forget what it is now.’ He thought. ‘Oh yes.’ His brow cleared. ‘Don’t get killed.’
IT IS MID-AFTERNOON, almost three o’clock, when the news about Necker’s dismissal reaches the Palais-Royal. The reputation of the mild Swiss financier has been built up with great assiduity – and never more so than in this last week, when his fall has seemed imminent.
The whole populace seems to be out in the open: churning through the streets and heaving through the squares in the blistering heat to the public gardens with their avenues of chestnut trees and their Orléanist connections. The price of bread has just risen. Foreign troops are camped outside the city. Order is a memory, law has a tenuous hold. The French Guards have deserted their posts and returned to their working-men’s interests, and all the backroom skulkers are out in the daylight. Their closed and anaemic faces are marked by nocturnal fancies of hanging, of other public agonies and final solutions; and above this the sun is a wound, a boiling tropical eye.
Under this eye drink is spilled, tempers flash and flare. Wig-makers and clerks, apprentices of all descriptions and scene-shifters, small shopkeepers, brewers, drapers, tanners and porters, knife-grinders, coachmen and public prostitutes; these are the remnants of Titonville. The crowd moves backwards and forwards, scoured by rumour and dangerous unease, always back to the same place: and as this occurs the clock begins to strike.
Until
