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.