the carriage.’
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH Annette addressed her coachman. ‘We’ll be – how long will we be? Do you favour a long confession?’
‘I’m not actually going to confess anything. Perhaps just a few token peccadilloes. Thirty minutes.’
A man in a dark coat was pacing in the background, a folder of documents tucked under his arm. The clock struck. He advanced on them. ‘Just three, M. Desmoulins. Shall we go in?’
‘This is my solicitor,’ Camille said.
‘What?’ Annette said.
‘My solicitor, notary public. He specializes in canon law. Mirabeau recommended him.’
The man looked pleased. How interesting, she thought, that you still see Mirabeau. But she was having trouble with this notion: ‘Camille, you’re taking your solicitor to confession with you?’
‘A wise precaution. No serious sinner should neglect it.’
He swept her through the church at an unecclesiastical pace. ‘I’ll just kneel down,’ she said, lurching sideways to get away from him. It was quiet; a gaggle of grannies praying for the old days to come back, and a small dog curled up, snoring. The priest seemed to see no reason to lower his voice. ‘It’s you, is it?’ he said.
Camille said to the notary, ‘Write that down.’
‘I didn’t think you’d come, I must say. When I got your message I thought it was a joke.’
‘It’s certainly not a joke. I have to be in a state of grace, don’t I, like everybody else?’
‘Are you a Catholic?’
A short pause.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because if you’re not a Catholic I can’t confer on you the sacraments.’
‘All right then. I’m a Catholic.’
‘Have you not said – ’ Annette heard the priest clearing his throat ‘ – have you not said in your newspaper that the religion of Mahomet is quite as valid as that of Jesus Christ?’
‘You read my newspaper?’ Camille sounded gratified. A silence. ‘You won’t marry us, then?’
‘Not until you have made a public profession of the Catholic faith.’
‘You have no right to ask that. You have to take my word for it. Mirabeau says – ’
‘Since when has Mirabeau been a Church Father?’
‘Oh, he’ll like that, I’ll tell him. But do change your mind, Father, because I am dreadfully in love, and I cannot abide even as you abide, and it is better to marry than to burn.’
‘Whilst we are on the subject of Saint Paul,’ the priest said, ‘may I remind you that the powers that be are ordained of God? And whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God, and that they that resist shall receive unto them damnation?’
‘Yes, well, I’ll have to take my chances on that,’ Camille said. ‘As you know very well – see verse fourteen – the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife. If you’re going to be obstructive, I’ll have to take it to an ecclesiastical commission. You are just putting a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in your brother’s way. You’re not supposed to go to law, you’re supposed to rather suffer yourself to be defrauded. See chapter six.’
‘That’s about going to law with unbelievers. The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens is not an unbeliever.’
‘You know you’re wrong,’ Camille said. ‘Where do you think I was educated? Do you think you can get away with talking this sort of rubbish to me? No,’ he said to his lawyer, ‘you needn’t write that down.’
They emerged. ‘Strike that out,’ Camille said. ‘I was being hasty.’ The notary looked cowed. ‘Write at the top of the page, “In the matter of the solemnization of the marriage of L. C. Desmoulins, barrister-at-law”. That’s right, put some lines under it.’ He took Annette’s arm. ‘Were you praying?’ he said. ‘Get it to the commission right away,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘NO CHURCH,’ Lúcile said. ‘No priest. Marvellous.’
‘The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Sens says I am responsible for the loss of half of his annual revenue,’ Camille said. ‘He says it was because of me that his château was burned to the ground. Adèle, stop giggling.’
They sat around Annette’s drawing room. ‘Well, Maximilien,’ Camille said, ‘you’re good at solving people’s problems. Solve this.’
Adèle tried to compose herself. ‘Haven’t you a tame priest? Someone you were at school with?’
Robespierre looked up. ‘Surely Father Bérardier could be persuaded? He was our last principal,’ he explained, ‘at Louis-le-Grand, and he sits in the Assembly now. Surely, Camille…he was always so fond of you.’
‘When he sees me now, he smiles, as if to say, “I predicted how you would turn out”. They say he will refuse the oath to the constitution, you know.’
‘Never mind that,’ Lucile said. ‘If there’s any chance…’
‘ON THESE CONDITIONS,’ Bérardier said. ‘That you make a public profession of faith, in your newspaper. That you cease to make anticlerical gibes in that publication, and that you erase from it its habitually blasphemous tone.’
‘Then what am I to do for a living?’ Camille asked.
‘It was foolish of you not to foresee this when you decided to take on the church. But then, you never did plan your life more than ten minutes ahead.’
‘On the conditions stipulated,’ Father Pancemont said, ‘I will let Father Bérardier marry you at Saint-Sulpice. But I’m damned if I’ll do it myself, and I think Father is making a mistake.’
‘He is a creature of impulse,’ Father Bérardier said. ‘One day his impulses will lead him in the right direction; isn’t that so, Camille?’
‘The difficulty is that I wasn’t thinking of bringing an issue out before the New Year.’
The priests exchanged glances. ‘Then we will expect to see the statement in the first issue of 1791.’
Camille nodded.
‘Promise?’ Bérardier said.
‘Promise.’
‘You always lied with amazing facility.’
‘HE WON’T DO IT,’ Father Pancemont said. ‘We should have said, statement first, marriage after.’
Bérardier sighed. ‘What is the use? Consciences cannot be forced.’
‘I believe Deputy Robespierre was your pupil too?’
‘For a little while.’
Father Pancemont looked at him as one who said, I was in Lisbon during the earthquake year. ‘You have given up teaching now?’ he asked.
‘Oh, look – there are worse people.’
‘I can’t think of any,’ the priest said.
THE WITNESSES to the marriage: Robespierre, Pétion, the writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier, and the Duke’s friend, the Marquis de Sillery. A diplomatically chosen selection, representing the left wing of the Assembly, the literary establishment and the Orléanist connection.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Camille said to Danton. ‘Really I wanted Lafayette, Louis Suleau, Marat and the public executioner.’
‘Of course I don’t mind.’ After all, he thought,