After all,’ he said rudely, ‘you yourself are never going to set the world ablaze.’ He ruminated. ‘He’s a charming child. We suppose he’ll grow out of the stutter. We must think of scholarships. If we could get him into Louis-le-Grand the expense to the family would be trifling.’
‘They’d take him, would they?’
‘From what I hear, he’s extraordinarily bright. When he is called to the Bar, he will be quite an ornament to the family. Look, next time my brother’s in Paris, I’ll get him to exert himself on your behalf. Can I say more?’
LIFE EXPECTANCY in France has now increased to almost twenty-nine years.
THE COLLÈGE Louis-le-Grand was an old foundation. It had once been run by Jesuits, but when they were expelled from France it was taken over by the Oratorians, a more enlightened order. Its alumni were celebrated if diverse; Voltaire, now in honoured exile, had studied there and Monsieur the Marquis de Sade, now holed up in one of his châteaux while his wife worked for the commutation of a sentence passed on him recently for poisoning and buggery.
The Collège stood on the rue Saint-Jacques, cut off from the city by high solid walls and iron gates. It was not the custom to heat the place, unless ice formed on the holy water in the chapel font; so in winter it was usual to go out early to harvest some icicles and drop them in, and hope that the principal would stretch a point. The rooms were swept by piercing draughts, and by gusts of subdued chatter in dead languages.
Maximilien de Robespierre had been there for a year now.
When he had first arrived he had been told that he would want to work hard, for the Abbot’s sake, since it was to the Abbot he owed this great opportunity. He had been told that if he were homesick, it would pass. Upon his arrival he sat down to make a note of everything he had seen on the journey, because then he would have done his duty to it, and need not carry it around in his head. Verbs conjugated in Paris just as they did in Artois. If you kept your mind on the verbs, everything would fall into place around them. He followed every lesson with close attention. His teachers were quite kind to him. He made no friends.
One day a senior pupil approached him, propelling in front of him a small child. ‘Here, Thing,’ the boy said. (They had this affectation of forgetting his name.)
Maximilien stopped dead. He didn’t immediately turn around. ‘You want me?’ he said. Quite pleasant-offensive; he knew how to do that.
‘I want you to keep your eye on this infant they have unaccountably sent. He is from your part of the country – Guise, I believe.’
Maximilien thought: these ignorant Parisians think it is all the same. Quietly, he said, ‘Guise is in PICARDY. I come from ARRAS. ARRAS is in ARTOIS.’
‘Well, it’s of no consequence, is it? I hope you can take time from your reputedly very advanced studies to help him find his way about.’
‘All right,’ Maximilien said. He swung around to look at the so-called infant. He was a very pretty child, very dark.
‘Where is it you want to find your way to?’ he asked.
Just then Father Herivaux came shivering along the corridor. He stopped. ‘Ah, you have arrived, Camille Desmoulins,’ he said.
Father Herivaux was a distinguished classicist. He made a point of knowing everything. Scholarship didn’t keep the autumn chills out; and there was so much worse to come.
‘And I believe that you are only ten years old,’ Father said.
The child looked up at him and nodded.
‘And that altogether you are very advanced for your years?’
‘Yes,’ said the child. ‘That’s right.’
Father Herivaux bit his lip. He scurried on. Maximilien removed the spectacles he was obliged to wear, and rubbed the corners of his eyes. ‘Try “Yes, Father,”’ he suggested. ‘They expect it. Don’t nod at them, they tend to resent it. Also, when he asked you if you were clever, you should have been more modest about it. You know – “I try my best, Father.” That sort of thing.’
‘Groveller, are you, Thing?’ the little boy said.
‘Look, it’s just an idea. I’m only giving you the benefit of my experience.’ He put his glasses back on. The child’s large dark eyes swam into his. For a moment he thought of the dove, trapped in its cage. He had the feel of the feathers on his hands, soft and dead: the little bones without pulse. He brushed his hand down his coat.
The child had a stutter. It made him uneasy. In fact there was something about the whole situation that upset him. He felt that the modus vivendi he had achieved was under threat; that life would become more complicated, and that his affairs had taken a turn for the worse.
WHEN HE RETURNED to Arras for the summer holiday, Charlotte said, ‘You don’t grow much, do you?’
Same thing she said, year after year.
His teachers held him in esteem. No flair, they said; but he always tells the truth.
He was not quite sure what his fellow pupils thought of him. If you asked him what sort of a person he thought he was, he would tell you he was able, sensitive, patient and deficient in charm. But as for how this estimate might have differed from that of the people around him – well, how can you be sure that the thoughts in your head have ever been thought by anyone else?
He did not have many letters from home. Charlotte sent quite often a neat childish record of small concerns. He kept her letters for a day or two, read them twice; then, not knowing what to do with them, threw them away.
Camille Desmoulins had letters twice a week, huge letters; they became a public entertainment. He explained that he had first been sent away to school when he was seven years old, and as a consequence knew his family better on paper than he did in real life. The episodes were like chapters of a novel, and as he read them aloud for the general recreation, his friends began to think of his family as ‘characters’. Sometimes the whole group would be seized by pointless hilarity at some phrase such as ‘Your mother hopes you have been to confession’, and would repeat it to each other for days with tears of merriment in their eyes. Camille explained that his father was writing an Encyclopaedia of Law. He thought that the only purpose of the project was to excuse his father from conversing with his mother in the evenings. He ventured the suggestion that his father shut himself away with the Encyclopaedia, and then read what Father Proyart, the deputy principal, called ‘bad books’.
Camille replied to these letters in page after page of his formless handwriting. He was keeping the correspondence so that it could be published later.
‘Try to learn this truth, Maximilien,’ Father Herivaux said: ‘most people are lazy, and will take you at your own valuation. Make sure the valuation you put on yourself is high.’
For Camille this had never been a problem. He had the knack of getting himself into the company of the older, well-connected pupils, of making himself in some way fashionable. He was taken up by Stanislas Fréron, who was five years older, who was named after his godfather, the King of Poland. Fréron’s family was rich and learned, his uncle a noted foe of Voltaire. At six years old he had been taken to Versailles, where he had recited a poem for Mesdames Adelaide, Sophie and Victoire, the old King’s daughters; they had made a fuss of him and given him sweets. Fréron said to Camille, ‘When you are older I will take you about in society, and make your career.’
Was Camille grateful? Hardly at all. He poured scorn on Fréron’s ideas. He started to call him ‘Rabbit’. Fréron was incubating sensitivity. He would stand in front of a mirror to scrutinize his face, to see if his teeth stuck out or if he looked timid.
Then there was Louis Suleau, an ironical sort of boy, who smiled when the young aristocrats denigrated the status quo. It is an education, he said, to watch people mine the ground under their own feet. There will be a war in our lifetime, he told Camille, and you and I will be on different sides. So let us be fond of each