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‘That seems unwise of her.’
‘I leave them where she can read them.’
‘That makes neither of you any better.’
‘No. Worse.’
Gabrielle shook her head. ‘I can’t condone it. I would never have defied my parents. Or deceived them.’
Lucile said, with passion, ‘Don’t you think women should choose who they marry?’
‘Oh yes. Within reason. It just isn’t reasonable to marry Maître Desmoulins.’
‘Oh. You wouldn’t do it then?’ Lucile looked as if she were hesitating over a few yards of lace. She picked up an inch of her skirt, ran the material slowly between her fingers. ‘The thing is, Mme d’Anton, I’m in love with him.’
‘I doubt it. You’re just going through that phase, you want to be in love with somebody.’
Lucile looked at her with curiosity. ‘Before you met your husband, were you always falling in love with people?’
‘To be honest, no – I wasn’t that sort of girl.’
‘What makes you think I am, then? All this business of going through phases, it’s just a thing that older people say, they think they have the right to look at you from their mouldy perches and pass judgement on your life.’
‘My mother, who is a woman of some experience, would say it is an infatuation.’
‘Fancy having a mother with that sort of experience. Quite like mine.’
Gabrielle felt the first stirrings of dismay. Trouble, under her own roof. How can she make this little girl understand? Can she understand anything any more, or has common sense loosened its hold for good, or did it have a hold in the first place? ‘My mother tells me,’ she said, ‘never to criticize my husband’s choice of friends. But in this case – if I tell you that with one thing and another I don’t admire him …’
‘That becomes clear.’
Gabrielle had a mental picture of herself, in the months before the baby was born, waddling about the house. Her pregnancy, delightful in its results, had been in one way a trial and embarrassment. Even by the end of the third month she’d been quite big, and she could see people sizing her up, quite unashamedly; she knew that after the birth they would count on their fingers. As the weeks passed, Georges-Jacques treated her as interesting but alien. He talked to her even less about matters not strictly domestic. She missed the café, more than he could know; she missed that undemanding masculine company, the easy talk of the outside world.
So … what did it matter if Georges always brought his friends home? But Camille was always arriving or just about to leave. If he sat on a chair it was on the very edge, and if he remained there for more than thirty seconds it was because he was deeply fatigued. A note of panic in his veiled eyes struck a corresponding note in her heavy body. The baby was born, the heaviness dispersed; a rootless anxiety remained. ‘Camille is a cloud in my sky,’ she said. ‘He is a thorn in my flesh.’
‘Goodness, Mme d’Anton,’ Lucile said, ‘are those the metaphors you feel forced to employ?’
‘To begin … you know he has no money?’
‘Yes, but I have.’
‘He can’t just live on your money.’
‘Lots of men live on women’s money. It’s quite respectable, in some circles it’s always done.’
‘And this business of your mother, that they may have been having – I don’t know how to put it.’
‘I don’t either,’ Lucile said. ‘There are terms for it, but I’m not feeling robust this morning.’
‘You must find out the truth about it.’
‘My mother won’t talk to me. I could ask Camille. But why should I make him lie to me? So I dismiss it from my mind. I regard the subject as closed. You see, I think about him all day. I dream about him – I can’t be blamed for that. I write him letters and I tear them up. I imagine that I might meet him by chance in the street –’ Lucile broke off, raised a hand, and pushed back from her forehead an imaginary strand of hair. Gabrielle watched her with horror. This is obsession, she thought, this parody of gesture. Lucile felt herself do it; she saw herself in the glass; she thought, it is an evocation.
Catherine put her head around the door. ‘Monsieur is home early.’
Gabrielle leapt up. Lucile sat back in her chair. She allowed her arms to lie along the chair’s arms, and flexed her hands like a cat testing its claws. D’Anton walked in. As he was taking off his coat he was saying, ‘There’s a mob around the Law Courts, and here I am, you told me to stay away from trouble. They’re letting off fireworks and shouting for Orléans. The Guards aren’t interested in breaking it up –’ He saw Lucile. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘trouble has come home, I see. Camille is talking to Legendre, he will be here directly. Legendre,’ he added pointlessly, ‘is our butcher.’
When Camille appeared Lucile rose smoothly from her chair, crossed the room and kissed him on the mouth. She watched herself in the mirror, watched him. She saw him take her hands from his shoulders and return them to her gently, folded together as if in prayer. He saw how different she looked with her hair unpowdered, how dramatic were her strong features and perfect pallor. He saw Gabrielle’s hostility towards him melt a little. He saw how she watched her husband, watching Lucile. He saw d’Anton thinking, for once he did not lie, he did not exaggerate, he said Lucile was beautiful and she is. This took one second; Camille smiled. He knows that all his derelictions can be excused if he is deeply in love with Lucile; sentimental people will excuse him, and he knows how to encourage sentiment. He thinks that perhaps he is deeply in love; after all, what else is the name for the excited misery he sees on Lucile’s face, and which his own face, he feels sure, reflects?
What has put her into this state? It must be his letters. Suddenly, he remembers what Georges had said: ‘Try prose.’ At that, it might not be so futile. He has a good deal to say, and if he can reduce his complicated and painful feelings about the Duplessis household to a few telling and effective pages, it ought to be child’s play to analyse the state of the nation. Moreover, while his life is ridiculous and inept and designed to make people smile, his writing could be stylish and heartless, and produce weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For quite thirty seconds, Lucile had forgotten to look into the mirror. For the first time, she felt she had taken a hold upon her life; she had become embodied, she wasn’t a spectator any more. But how long would the feeling last? His actual physical presence, so much longed for, she now found too much to bear. She wished he would go away, so she could imagine him again, but she was unsure how to request this without appearing demented. Camille framed in his mind the first and last sentences of a political pamphlet, but his eyes did not shift from her face; as he was extremely shortsighted, his gaze gave the impression of an intensity of concentration that made her weak at the knees. Deeply at cross-purposes, they stood frozen, hypnotized, until – as moments do – the moment passed.
‘So this is the creature who oversets the household and suborns servants and clergyman,’ d’Anton said. ‘I wonder, my dear, do you know anything of the comedies of the English writer, Mr Sheridan?’
‘No.’
‘I wondered if you thought that Life ought to imitate Art?’
‘If it imitates life,’ Lucile said, ‘that’s quite exciting enough for me.’ She noticed the time on the clock. ‘I’ll be killed,’ she said.
She blew them all a kiss, swept up her feathered hat, ran out on to the stairs. In her haste she almost knocked over a small girl, who appeared to be listening at the door, and who, surprisingly, called out after her, ‘I like your jacket.’
In bed that night she thought, hm, that large ugly man, I seem to have made a conquest there.
ON 8 AUGUST the King fixed a date for the meeting of the Estates – 1 May 1789. A week later the Comptroller-General, Brienne, discovered (or so it was said) that the state’s coffers contained enough revenue for one-quarter of one day’s expenditure. He declared a suspension of all payments by the government. France was bankrupt. His Majesty continued to hunt, and if he did not kill he recorded the fact in his diary: Rien, rien, rien. Brienne was dismissed.
ROUTINE was so broken up these days, that Claude could be found in Paris when he should have been in Versailles. Mid-morning, he strolled out into the hot August air, made for the Café du Foy. Other years, August had found him sitting by an open window at his country place at Bourg-la-Reine.
‘Good morning, Maître d’Anton,’ he said. ‘Maître Desmoulins. I had no idea you knew each other.’ The idea seemed to be causing him pain. ‘Well, what do you think? Things can’t go on like this.’
‘I suppose we should take your word for it, M. Duplessis,’ Camille said. ‘How do you look forward to having M. Necker back?’
‘What does it matter?’ Claude said. ‘I think that even the Abbé Terray would have found the situation beyond him.’
‘Anything new from Versailles?’ d’Anton asked.
‘Someone told me,’ Camille said, ‘that when the King cannot hunt he goes up on the roofs at Versailles and takes pot-shots at the ladies’ cats. Do you think there’s anything in it?’
‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ Claude said.
‘It puzzles a lot of people to see how things have deteriorated since Necker was last in office. If you think back to ’81, to the public accounting, the books then showed a surplus –’
‘Cooked,’ Claude said dismally.
‘Really?’
‘Done to a turn.’
‘So much for Necker,’ d’Anton said.
‘But you know, it wasn’t such a crime,’ Camille suggested. ‘Not if he thought public confidence was the main thing.’
‘Jesuit,’ d’Anton said.
Claude turned to him. ‘I’m hearing things, d’Anton – straws in the wind. Your patron Barentin will be moving from the Board of Excise – he’s going to get the Ministry of Justice in the new government.’ He smiled. He looked very tired. ‘This is a sad day for me. I would have given anything to stop it coming to this. And it must give impetus to the wilder elements …’ His eye fell on Camille. He had been very civil this morning, very well-behaved, but that he was a wilder element Claude had no doubt. ‘Maître Desmoulins,’ he said, ‘I hope you aren’t still entertaining notions about marrying my daughter.’
‘I am, rather.’
‘If you could just see it from my point of view.’
‘No, I’m afraid I can see it only from my own.’
M. Duplessis turned away. D’Anton put a hand on his arm. ‘About Barentin – can you tell me something more?’
Claude held up a forefinger. ‘Least said, soonest mended. I hope I’ve not spoken out of turn. I expect I’ll be seeing you before long.’ He indicated Camille, hopelessly. ‘Him too.’
Camille looked after him. ‘“Straws in the wind”,’ he said savagely. ‘Have you ever heard such drivel? We ought to arrange him a cliché contest with Maître Vinot. Oh,’ he said suddenly, ‘I do see what he means. He means they’re going to offer you a job.’
UPON TAKING OFFICE, Necker began to negotiate a loan from abroad. The Parlements were reinstated. The price of bread rose two sous. On 29 August, a mob burned down the guard posts on the Pont-Neuf. The King found the money to move troops into the capital. Soldiers opened fire into a crowd of six hundred; seven or eight people were killed and an unknown number injured.
M. Barentin was appointed Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals. The mob made a straw doll in the likeness of his predecessor, and set fire to it on the Place de Grève, to the tune of hoots and jeers, the crack and whizz of fireworks and the drunken acquiescent singing of the French Guards, who were stationed permanently in the capital and who liked that sort of thing.
D’ANTON had given his reasons precisely, without heat but without equivocation; he had worked out beforehand what he would say, so that he would be perfectly clear. Barentin’s offer of a secretary’s post would quickly become common knowledge around City Hall and the ministries and beyond. Fabre suggested that he take Gabrielle some flowers and break it to her gently.
When he got home, Mme Charpentier was there, and Camille. They stopped talking when they saw him. The atmosphere was ill-humoured; but Angélique came over, beaming, and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Dear son Georges,’ she said, ‘our warmest congratulations.’
‘On what?’ he said. ‘My case didn’t come up. Really, the process of justice is moving like treacle nowadays.’
‘We understand,’ Gabrielle said, ‘that you have been offered a post in the government.’
‘Yes, but it’s of no consequence. I turned it down.’
‘I told you,’ Camille said.
Angélique stood up. ‘I’ll be off then.’
‘I’ll see you out,’ Gabrielle said, with extreme formality. Her face glowed. She got up; they went, and whispered outside the door.
‘Angélique will make her behave,’ d’Anton said. Camille sat and smiled at him. ‘You’re easily pleased. Come back in, calm yourself, shut the door,’ he said to his wife. ‘Please try to understand that I am acting for the best.’
‘When he said,’ she pointed to Camille, ‘that you’d turned it down, I said what kind of a fool did he suppose I was?’
‘This government won’t last a year. It doesn’t suit me, Gabrielle.’
She gaped at him. ‘So what are you going to do? Give up your practice because the state of the law doesn’t suit you? You were ambitious before, you used to say –’
‘Yes, and now he’s more ambitious,’ Camille cut in. ‘He’s far too good for a minor post under Barentin. Probably – oh, probably the Seal will be within his own gift one day.’
D’Anton laughed. ‘If it ever is,’ he said, ‘I’ll give it you. I promise.’
‘That’s probably treason,’ Gabrielle said. Her hair was slipping down, as it tended to do at points of crisis.
‘Don’t confuse the issue,’ Camille said. ‘Georges-Jacques is going to be a great man, however he is impeded.’
‘You’re mad,’ Gabrielle said. As she shook her head a shower of hairpins leapt out and slithered to the floor. ‘What I hate, Georges, is to see you trotting along in the wake of other people’s opinions.’
‘Me? You think I do that?’
‘No,’ Camille said hurriedly, ‘he doesn’t do that.’
‘He takes notice of you, and no notice of me whatsoever.’
‘That’s because –’ Camille stopped. He could not think of a tactful reason why it was. He turned to d’Anton. ‘Can I produce you to the Café du Foy tonight? You may be expected to make a short speech, you don’t mind, of course not.’
Gabrielle looked up from the floor, hairpin in hand. ‘Do I understand that this business has glorified you, somehow?’
‘I wouldn’t say “glory”.’ Camille looked modest. ‘But it’s a start.’
‘Would you mind?’ d’Anton said to her. ‘I’ll not be late. When I come home I’ll explain it better. Gabrielle, leave those, Catherine will pick them up.’
Gabrielle shook her head again. She would not be explained to, and if Catherine were asked to crawl around the floor after her hairpins, she would probably give notice; why did he not know this?
The men went downstairs. Camille said, ‘I’m afraid it’s just my existence that irks Gabrielle. Even when my desperate fiancée turns up at her door she still believes I’m trying to inveigle you into bed with me.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Time to think of higher things,’ Camille said. ‘Oh, I am so happy. Everybody says changes are coming, everyone says the country will be overturned. They say it, but you believe it. You act on it. You are seen to act on it.’
‘There was a pope – I forget which one – who told everyone that the world was going to end. They all put their estates on the market, and the pope bought them and became rich.’
‘That’s a nice story,’ Camille said. ‘You are not a pope, but never mind, I think you will do quite well for yourself.’
AS SOON AS THEY HEARD in Arras that there were going to be elections, Maximilien began to put his affairs in order. ‘How do you know you’ll be elected?’ his brother Augustin said. ‘They might form a cabal against you. It’s very likely.’
‘Then I’ll have to sing small between now and the election,’ he said grimly. ‘Here in the provinces almost everyone has a vote, not just the moneyed men.’ For that reason, ‘They won’t be able to keep me out,’ he said.
His sister Charlotte said, ‘They’ll be ungrateful beasts if they don’t elect you. After all you’ve done for the poor. You deserve it.’
‘It isn’t a prize.’
‘You’ve worked so hard, all for nothing, no money, no credit. There’s no need to pretend you don’t resent it. You’re not obliged to be saintly.’
He sighed. Charlotte has this way of cutting him to the bone. Hacking away, with the family knife.
‘I know what you think, Max,’ she said. ‘You don’t believe you’ll come back from Versailles in six months, or even a year. You think this will alter your life. Do you want them to have a revolution just to please you?’
I DON’T CARE what the Estates-General do,’ said Philippe d’Orléans, ‘as long as I am there when they deal with the liberty of the individual, so that I can use my voice and vote for a law after which I can be sure that, on a day when I have a fancy to sleep at Raincy, no one can send me against my will to Villers-Cotterêts.’
