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.’
The Comte’s scrutiny was like a physical mauling, and designed to overawe. ‘I meant to get around to waylaying you in some public place,’ he said, ‘and having you fetched here. Unfortunately I waste my time, waiting for the King to send for me.’
‘He should send for you, Monsieur.’
‘Oh, you are a partisan of mine?’
‘I have had the honour of arguing from your premises.’
‘Oh, I like that,’ Mirabeau said mockingly. ‘I dearly love a sycophant, Maître Desmoulins.’
Camille cannot understand this: the way Orléans people look at him, the way Mirabeau now looks at him: as if they had plans for him. Nobody has had plans for him, since the priests gave him up.
‘You must forgive my appearance,’ the Comte said smoothly. ‘My affairs keep me up at nights. Not always, I am bound to say, my political ones.’
This is nonsense, Camille sees at once. If it suited the Comte, he would receive his admirers shaven and sober. But nothing he does is without its calculated effect, and by his ease and carelessness, and by his careless apologies for it, he means to dominate and outface the careful and anxious men who wait on him. The Comte looked into the face of his impassive servant Teutch, and laughed uproariously, as if the man had made a joke; then broke off and said, ‘I like your writings, Maître Desmoulins. So much emotion, so much heart.’
‘I used to write poetry. I see now that I had no talent for it.’
‘There are enough constraints, without the metrical, I think.’
‘I did not mean to put my heart into it. I expect I meant it to be statesman-like.’
‘Leave that to the elderly.’ The Comte held up the pamphlet. ‘Can you do this again?’
‘Oh that – yes, of course.’ He had developed a contempt for the first pamphlet, which seemed for a moment to extend to anyone who admired it. ‘I can do that…like breathing. I don’t say like talking, for reasons which will be clear.’
‘But you do talk, Maître Desmoulins. You talk to the Palais-Royal.’
‘I force myself to do it.’
‘Nature framed me for a demogogue.’ The Comte turned his head, displaying his better profile. ‘How long have you had that stutter?’
He made it sound like some toy, or tasteful innovation. Camille said, ‘A very long time. Since I was seven. Since I first went away from home.’
‘Did it overset you so much, leaving your people?’
‘I don’t remember now. I suppose it must have done. Unless I was trying to articulate relief.’
‘Ah, that sort of home.’ Mirabeau smiled. ‘I myself am familiar with every variety of domestic difficulty, from short temper at the breakfast table to the consequences of incest.’ He put out a hand, drawing Camille into the room. ‘The King – the late King – used to say that there should be a Secretary of State with no other function but to arbitrate in my family’s quarrels. My family, you know, is very old. Very grand.’
‘Really? Mine just pretends to be.’
‘What is your father?’
‘A magistrate.’ Honesty compelled him to add. ‘I’m afraid I am a great disappointment to him.’
‘Don’t tell me. I shall never understand the middle classes. I wish you would sit down. I must know something of your biography. Tell me, where were you educated?’
‘At Louis-le-Grand. Did you think I was brought up by the local curé?’
Mirabeau put down his coffee cup. ‘De Sade was there.’
‘He’s not entirely typical.’
‘I had the bad luck to be incarcerated with de Sade once. I said to him, “Monsieur, I do not wish to associate with you; you cut up women into little pieces.” Forgive me, I am digressing.’ He sank into a chair, an unmannerly aristocrat who never sought forgiveness for anything. Camille watched him, monstrously vain and conceited, going on like a Great Man. When the Comte moved and spoke, he prowled and roared. When he reposed, he suggested some tatty stuffed lion in a museum of natural history: dead, but not so dead as he might be. ‘Continue,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Why am I bothering with you? Do you think I want to leave your little talents to the Duke’s pack of rascals? I am preparing to give you good advice. Does the Duke give you good advice?’
‘No. He has never spoken to me.’
‘How pathetically you say it. Of course he has not. But myself, I take an interest. I have men of genius in my employ. I call them my slaves. And I like everyone to be happy, down on the plantation. You know what I am of course?’
Camille remembers how Annette spoke of Mirabeau: a bankrupt, an immoralist. The thought of Annette seems out of place