A Place of Greater Safety

Only one part of M. Réveillon’s programme caught the public attention – his proposal to cut wages. Saint-Antoine came out on the streets.

De Crosne, the Lieutenant of Police, had already warned that there could be trouble in the district. It was teeming with migrant workers, unemployment was high, it was cramped, talkative, inflammable. News spread slowly across the city; but Saint-Marcel heard, and a group of demonstrators began a march towards the river. A drummer at their head set the pace, and they shouted for death:

Death to the rich

Death to the aristocrats

Death to the hoarders

Death to the priests.

They were carrying a gibbet knocked together in five minutes by a carpenter’s apprentice anxious to oblige: dangling from it were two eyeless straw dolls with their straw limbs pushed into old clothes and their names, Hanriot and Réveillon, chalked on their chests. Shopkeepers put up their shutters when they heard them coming. The dolls were executed with full ceremony in the Place de Grève.

All this is not so unusual. So far, the demonstrators have not even killed a cat. The mock executions are a ritual, they diffuse anger. The colonel of the French Guards sent fifty men to stand about near Titonville, in case anger was not quite diffused. But he neglected Hanriot’s house, and it was a simple matter for a group of the marchers to wheel up the rue Cotte, batter the doors down and start a fire. M. Hanriot got out unharmed. There were no casualties. M. Réveillon was elected a deputy.

But by Monday, the situation looked more serious. There were fresh crowds on the rue Saint-Antoine, and another incursion from Saint-Marcel. As the demonstrators marched along the embankments stevedores fell in with them, and the workers on the woodpiles, and the down-and-outs who slept under the bridges; the workers at the royal glass factory downed tools and came streaming out into the streets. Another two hundred French Guards were dispatched; they fell back in front of Titonville, commandeered carts and barricaded themselves in. It was at this point that their officers felt the stirrings of panic. There could be five thousand people beyond the barricades, or there could be ten thousand; there was no way of telling. There had been some sharp action these last few months; but this was different.

As it happened, that day there was a race-meeting at Vincennes. As the fashionable carriages crossed the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, nervous ladies and gentlemen dressed à l’Anglais were haled out on to the sewage and cobblestones. They were required to shout, ‘Down with the profiteers,’ then roughly assisted back into their seats. Many of the gentlemen parted with sums of money to ensure good will, and some of the ladies had to kiss lousy apprentices and stinking draymen, as a sign of solidarity. When the carriage of the Duke of Orléans appeared, there was cheering. The Duke got out, said a few soothing words, and emptied his purse among the crowd. The carriages behind were forced to halt. ‘The Duke is reviewing his troops,’ said one high, carrying aristocratic voice.

The guardsmen loaded their guns and waited. The crowd milled about, sometimes approaching the carts to talk to the soldiers, but showing no inclination to attack the barricades. Out at Vincennes the Anglophiles urged their favourites past the post. The afternoon went by.

Some attempt was made to divert the returning race-goers, but when the carriage of the Duchess of Orléans appeared the situation became difficult. Up there was where she wanted to go, the Duchess’s coachman said: past those barricades. The problem was explained. The reticent Duchess did not alter her orders. Etiquette confronted expediency. Etiquette prevailed. Soldiers and bystanders began to take down the barricades. The mood altered, swung about; the idleness of the afternoon dissipated, slogans were shouted, weapons reappeared. The crowd surged through, after the Duchess’s carriage. After a few minutes there was nothing left of Titonville worth burning, smashing or carrying away.

When the cavalry arrived the crowds were already looting the shops on the rue Montreuil. They pulled the cavalrymen off their horses. Infantry appeared, faces set; orders crackled through the air, there was the sudden, shocking explosion of gunfire. Blank cartridges: but before anyone had grasped that, an infantryman was grazed by a roof tile dropped from above, and as he turned his face up to see where the tile had come from the rioter who had picked him out as a target skimmed down another tile, which took out his eye.

Within a minute the mob had splintered doors and smashed locks, and they were up on the roofs of the rue Montreuil, tearing up the slates at their feet. The soldiers fell back under the barrage, hands to their faces and scalps, blood dripping between their fingers, tripping on the bodies of men who had been felled. They opened fire. It was 6.30 p.m.

By eight o’clock fresh troops had arrived. The rioters were pushed back. The walking wounded were helped away. Women appeared on the streets, shawls over their heads, hauling buckets of water to bathe wounds and give drinks to those who had lost blood. The shopfronts gaped, doors creaked off their hinges, houses were stripped to the brick; there were smashed tiles and broken glass to walk on, spilt blood tacky on the tiles, small fires running along charred wood. At Titonville the cellars had been ransacked, and the men and women who had breached the casks and smashed the necks of the bottles were lying half-conscious, choking on their vomit. The French Guards, out for revenge, bludgeoned their unresisting bodies where they lay. A little stream of claret ran across the cobbles. At nine o’clock the cavalry arrived at full strength. The Swiss Guard brought up eight cannon. The day was over. There were three hundred corpses to shovel up off the streets.

UNTIL THE DAY of the funeral, Gabrielle did not go out. Shut in her bedroom, she prayed for the little soul already burdened with sin, since it had shown itself intemperate, demanding, greedy for milk during its year’s stay in a body. Later she would go to church to light candles to the Holy Innocents. For now, huge slow tears rolled down her cheeks.

Louise Gély came from upstairs. She did what the maids had not sense to do; parcelled up the baby’s clothes and his blankets, scooped up his ball and his rag doll, carried them upstairs in an armful. Her small face was set, as if she were used to attending on the bereaved and knew she must not give way to their emotions. She sat beside Gabrielle, the woman’s plump hand in her bony child’s grasp.

‘That’s how it is,’ Maître d’Anton said. ‘You’re just getting your life set to rights, then the wisdom of the bloody Almighty –’ The woman and the girl raised their shocked faces. He frowned. ‘This religion has no consolation for me any more.’

After the baby was buried, Gabrielle’s parents came back to sit with her. ‘Look to the future,’ Angélique prompted. ‘You might have another ten children.’ Her son-in-law gazed miserably into space. M. Charpentier walked about sighing. He felt useless. He went to the window to look out into the street. Gabrielle was coaxed to eat.

Mid-afternoon, another mood got into the room: life must go on. ‘This is a poor situation for a man who used to know all the news,’ M. Charpentier said. He tried to signal to his son-in-law that the women would like to be left alone.

Georges-Jacques got up reluctantly. They put on their hats, and walked through the crowded and noisy streets to the Palais-Royal and the Café du Foy. M. Charpentier attempted to draw the boy into conversation, failed. His son-in-law stared straight ahead of him. The slaughter in the city was no concern of his; he looked after his own.

As they pushed their way into the café, Charpentier said, ‘I don’t know these people.’

D’Anton looked around. He was surprised at how many of them he did know. ‘This is where the Patriotic Society of the Palais-Royal holds its meetings.’

‘Who may they be?’

‘The usual bunch of time-wasters.’

Billaud-Varennes was threading his way towards them. It was some weeks since d’Anton had put any work his way; his yellow face had become an irritation, and you can’t keep going, his clerk Paré had told him, all the lazy malcontents in the district.

‘What do you think of all this?’ Billaud’s eyes, perpetually like small, sour fruits, showed signs of ripening into expectation. ‘Desmoulins has declared his interest at last, I see. Been with Orléans’s people. They’ve bought him.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Well, talk of the devil.’

Camille came in alone. He looked around warily. ‘Georges-Jacques, where have you been?’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you for a week. What do you make of Réveillon?’

‘I’ll tell you what I make of it,’ Charpentier said. ‘Lies and distortion. Réveillon is the best master in this city. He paid his men right through the lay-offs last winter.’

‘Oh, so you think he is a philanthropist?’ Camille said. ‘Excuse me, I must speak to Brissot.’

D’Anton had not seen Brissot until now; unless he had seen him and overlooked him, which would have been easy enough. Brissot turned to Camille, nodded, turned again to his group to say, ‘No, no, no, purely legislative.’ He turned back, extended a hand to Camille. He was a thin man, meagre, mousy, with narrow shoulders hunched to the point of deformity. Ill-health and poverty made him look older than his thirty-five years, yet today his wan face and pale eyes were as hopeful as a child’s on its first day at school. ‘Camille,’ he said, ‘I mean to start a newspaper.’

‘You must be careful,’ d’Anton told him. ‘The police haven’t entirely let the situation go. You may find you can’t distribute it.’

Brissot’s eyes travelled across d’Anton’s frame, and upwards, across his scarred face. He did not ask to be introduced.

‘First I thought I’d begin on 1 April and publish twice weekly, then I thought no, wait till 20 April, make it four times weekly, then I thought, no, leave it till next week, when the Estates meet – that’s the time to make a splash. I want to get all the news from Versailles to Paris and out on to the streets – the police may pick me up, but what does it matter? I’ve been in the Bastille once, I can go again. I’ve not had a moment to spare, I’ve been helping with the elections in the Filles-Saint-Thomas district, they were desperate for my advice –’

‘People always are,’ Camille said. ‘Or so you tell me.’

‘Don’t be snide,’ Brissot said gently. There was impatience in the faint lines around his eyes. ‘I know you think I haven’t a chance of keeping a paper going, but we can’t spare ourselves now. Who would have thought, a month ago, that we’d have advanced this far?’

‘This man calls three hundred dead an advance,’ Charpentier said.

‘I think –’ Brissot broke off. ‘I’ll tell you in private all that I think. There might be police informers here.’

‘There’s you,’ a voice said behind him.

Brissot winced. He did not turn. He looked at Camille to see if he had caught the words. ‘Marat put that about,’ he muttered. ‘After all I’ve done to further that man’s career and bolster his reputation, all I get is smears and innuendos – the people I’ve called comrades have treated me worse than the police have ever done.’

Camille said, ‘Your trouble is, you’re backtracking. I heard you, saying the Estates would save the country. Two years ago you said nothing was possible unless we got rid of the monarchy first. Which is it, which is it to be? No, don’t answer. And will there be an inquiry into the cause of these riots? No. A few people will be hanged, that’s all. Why? Because nobody dares to ask what happened – not Louis, not Necker, not even the Duke himself. But we all know that Réveillon’s chief crime was to stand for the Estates against the candidate put up by the Duke of Orléans.’

There was a hush. ‘One should have guessed,’ Charpentier said.

‘One never anticipated the scale of it,’ Brissot whispered. ‘It was planned, yes, and people were paid – but not ten thousand people. Not even the Duke could pay ten thousand people. They acted for themselves.’

‘And that upsets your plans?’

‘They have to be directed.’ Brissot shook his head. ‘We don’t want anarchy. I shudder when I find myself in the presence of some of the people we have to use …’ He made a gesture in d’Anton’s direction; with M. Charpentier, he had walked away. ‘Look at that fellow. The way he’s dressed he might be any respectable citizen. But you can see he’d be happiest with a pike in his hand.’

Camille’s eyes widened. ‘But that is Maître d’Anton, the King’s Councillor. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Let me tell you, Maître d’Anton could be in government office. Except that he knows where his future lies. But anyway, Brissot – why so unnerved? Are you afraid of a man of the people?’

‘I am at one with the people,’ Brissot said reverently. ‘With their pure and elevated soul.’

‘Not really you aren’t. You look down on them because they smell and can’t read Greek.’ He slid across the room to d’Anton. ‘He took you for some cut-throat,’ he said happily. ‘Brissot,’ he told Charpentier, ‘married one Mlle Dupont, who used to work for Félicité de Genlis in some menial capacity. That’s how he got involved with Orléans. I respect him really. He’s spent years abroad, writing and, you know, talking about it. He deserves a revolution. He’s only a pastry-cook’s son, but he’s very learned, and he gives himself airs because he’s suffered so much.’

M. Charpentier was puzzled, angry. ‘You, Camille – you who are taking the Duke’s money – you admit to us that Réveillon has been victimized –’

‘Oh, Réveillon’s of no account now. If he didn’t say those things, he might have done. He might have been thinking them. The literal truth doesn’t matter any more. All that matters is what they think on the streets.’

‘God knows,’ Charpentier said, ‘I like the present scheme of things very little, but I dread to think what will happen if the conduct of reform falls into hands like yours.’

‘Reform?’ Camille said. ‘I’m not talking about reform. The city will explode this summer.’

D’Anton felt sick, shaken by a spasm of grief. He wanted to draw Camille aside, tell him about the baby. That would stop him in his tracks. But he was so happy, arranging the forthcoming slaughter. D’Anton thought, who am I to spoil his week?

VERSAILLES: a great deal of hard thinking has gone into this procession. It isn’t just a matter of getting up and walking, you know.

The nation is expectant and hopeful. The long-awaited day is here. Twelve hundred deputies of the Estates walk in solemn procession to the Church of Saint-Louis, where Monseigneur de la Fare, Bishop of Nancy, will address them in a sermon and put God’s blessing on their enterprise.

The Clergy, the First Estate: optimistic light of early May glints on congregated mitres, coruscates over the jewel-colours of their robes. The Nobility follows: the same light flashes on three hundred sword-hilts, slithers blithely down three hundred silk-clad backs. Three hundred white hat plumes wave cheerfully in the breeze.

But before them comes the Commons, the Third Estate, commanded by the Master of Ceremonies into plain black cloaks; six hundred strong, like an immense black marching slug. Why not put them into smocks and order them to suck straws? But as they march, the humiliating business takes on a new aspect. These mourning coats are a badge of solidarity. They are called, after all, to attend on the demise of the old order, not to be guests at a costume ball. Above the plain cravats a certain pride shows in their starched faces. We are the men of purpose: goodbye to frippery.

Maximilien de Robespierre walked with a contingent from his own part of the country, between two farmers; if he turned his head he could see the embattled jaws of the Breton deputies. Shoulders trapped him, walled him in. He kept his eyes straight ahead, suppressed his desire to scan the ranks of the cheering crowds that lined the routes. There was no one here who knew him; no one cheering, specifically, for him.

In the crowd Camille had met the Abbé de Bourville. ‘You don’t recognize me,’ the abbé complained, pushing through. ‘We were at school together.’

‘Yes, but in those days you had a blue tinge, from the cold.’

‘I recognized you right away. You’ve not changed a bit, you look about nineteen.’

‘Are you pious now, de Bourville?’

‘Not noticeably. Do you ever see Louis Suleau?’

‘Never. But I expect he’ll turn up.’

They turned back to the procession. For a moment he was swept by an irrational certainty that he, Desmoulins, had arranged all this, that the Estates were marching at his behest, that all Paris and Versailles revolved around his own person.

‘There’s Orléans.’ De Bourville pulled at his arm. ‘Look, he’s insisting on walking with the Third Estate. Look at the Master of Ceremonies pleading with him. He’s broken out in a sweat. Look, that’s the Duc de Biron.’

‘Yes, I know him. I’ve been to his house.’

‘That’s Lafayette.’ America’s hero stepped out briskly in his silver waistcoat, his pale young face serious and a little abstracted, his peculiarly pointed head hidden under a tricorne hat à la Henri Quatre. ‘Do you know him too?’

‘Only by reputation,’ Camille muttered. ‘Washington pot-au-feu.’

Bourville laughed. ‘You must write that down.’

‘I have.’

At the Church of Saint-Louis, de Robespierre had a good seat by an aisle. A good seat, to fidget through the sermon, to be close to the procession of the great. So close; the billowing episcopal sea parted for a second, and between the violet robes and the lawn sleeves the King looked him full in the face without meaning to, the King, overweight in cloth-of-gold; and as the Queen turned her head (this close for the second time, Madame) the heron plumes in her hair seemed to beckon to him, civilly. The Holy Sacrament in its jewelled monstrance was a small sun, ablaze in a bishop’s hands; they took their seat on a dais, under a canopy of velvet embroidered with gold fleur-de-lis. Then the choir:

O salutaris hostia

If you could sell the Crown Jewels what could you buy for France?

Quae coeli pandis ostium,

The King looks half-asleep.

Bella premunt hostilia,

The Queen looks proud.

Da robur, fer auxilium.

She looks like a Hapsburg.

Uni trinoque Domino,

Madame Deficit.

Sit sempiterna gloria,

Outside, the women were shouting for Orléans.

Qui vitam sine termino,

There is no one here I know.

Nobis donet in patria.

Camille might be here somewhere. Somewhere.

Amen.

‘LOOK, LOOK,’ Camille said to de Bourville. ‘Maximilien.’

‘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.’