I am very conscious that a novel is a cooperative effort, a joint venture between writer and reader. I purvey my own version of events, but facts change according to your viewpoint. Of course, my characters did not have the blessing of hindsight; they lived from day to day, as best they could. I am not trying to persuade my reader to view events in a particular way, or to draw any particular lessons from them. I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions, change sympathies: a book that one can think and live inside. The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.
Cast of Characters
PART I
In Guise:
Jean-Nicolas Desmoulins, a lawyer
Madeleine, his wife
Camille, his eldest son (b. 1760)
Elisabeth, his daughter
Henriette, his daughter (died aged nine)
Armand, his son
Anne-Clothilde, his daughter
Clément, his youngest son
Adrien de Viefville and Jean-Louis de Viefville, their snobbish relations
The Prince de Condé, premier nobleman of the district and a client of Jean-Nicolas Desmoulins
In Arcis-sur-Aube:
Marie-Madeleine Danton, a widow, who marries
Jean Recordain, an inventor
Georges-Jacques, her son (b. 1759)
Anne Madeleine, her daughter
Pierrette, her daughter
Marie-Cécile, her daughter, who becomes a nun
In Arras:
François de Robespierre, a lawyer
Maximilien, his son (b. 1758)
Charlotte, his daughter
Henriette, his daughter (died aged nineteen)
Augustin, his younger son
Jacqueline, his wife, née Carraut, who dies after giving birth to a fifth child
Grandfather Carraut, a brewer
Aunt Eulalie and Aunt Henriette, François de Robespierres sisters
In Paris, at Louis-le-Grand:
Father Poignard, the principal a liberal minded man
Father Proyart, the deputy principal not at all a liberal-minded man
Father Herivaux, a teacher of classical languages
Louis Suleau, a student
Stanislas Fréron, a very well-connected student, known as Rabbit
In Troyes:
Fabre dÉglantine, an unemployed genius
PART II
In Paris:
Maître Vinot, a lawyer in whose chambers Georges-Jacques Danton is a pupil
Maître Perrin, a lawyer in whose chambers Camille Desmoulins is a pupil
Jean-Marie Hérault de Séchelles, a young nobleman and legal dignitary
François-Jérôme Charpentier, a café owner and Inspector of Taxes
Angélique (Angelica) his Italian wife
Gabrielle, his daughter
Françoise-Julie Duhauttoir, Georges-Jacques Dantons mistress
At the rue Condé:
Claude Duplessis, a senior civil servant
Annette, his wife
Adèle and Lucile, his daughters
Abbé Laudréville, Annettes confessor, a go-between
In Guise:
Rose-Fleur Godard, Camille Desmoulinss fiancée
In Arras:
Joseph Fouché, a teacher, Charlotte de Robespierres beau
Lazare Carnot, a military engineer, a friend of Maximilien de Robespierre
Anaïs Deshorties, a nice girl whose relatives want her to marry Maximilien de Robespierre
Louise de Kéralio, a novelist: who goes to Paris, marries François Robert and edits a newspaper
Hermann, a lawyer, a friend of Maximilien de Robespierre
The Orléanists:
Philippe, Duke of Orléans, cousin of King Louis XVI
Félicité de Genlis, an author his ex-mistress, now Governor of his children
Charles-Alexis Brulard de Sillery, Comte de Genlis Félicités husband, a former naval officer, a gambler
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, a novelist, the Dukes secretary
Agnès de Buffon, the Dukes mistress
Grace Elliot, the Dukes ex-mistress, a spy for the British Foreign Office
Axel von Fersen, the Queens lover
At Dantons chambers:
Jules Paré, his clerk
François Deforgues, his clerk
Billaud-Varennes, his part-time clerk, a man of sour temperament
At the Cour du Commerce:
Mme Gély, who lives upstairs from Georges-Jacques and Gabrielle Danton
Antoine, her husband
Louise, her daughter
Catherine and Marie, the Dantons servants
Legendre, a master butcher, a neighbour of the Dantons
François Robert, a lecturer in law: marries Louise de Kéralio, opens a delicatessen, and later becomes a radical journalist
René Hébert, a theatre box-office clerk
Anne Théroigne, a singer
In the National Assembly:
Antoine Barnave, a deputy: at first a radical, later a royalist
Jérôme Pétion, a radical deputy, later called a Brissotin
Dr Guillotin, an expert on public health
Jean-Sylvain Bailly, an astronomer, later Mayor of Paris.
Honoré-Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, a renegade aristocrat sitting for the Commons, or Third Estate
Teutch, Mirabeaus valet
Clavière, Dumont and Duroveray, his slaves, Genevan politicians in exile
Jean-Pierre Brissot, a journalist
Momoro, a printer
Réveillon, owner of a wallpaper factory
Hanriot, owner of a saltpetre works
De Launay, Governor of the Bastille
PART III
M. Soulès, temporary Governor of the Bastille
The Marquis de Lafayette, Commander of the National Guard
Jean-Paul Marat, a journalist, editor of the Peoples Friend
Arthur Dillon, Governor of Tobago and a general in the French army; a friend of Camille Desmoulins
Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a well-known author
Collot dHerbois, a playwright
Father Pancemont, a truculent priest
Father Bérardier, a gullible priest
Caroline Rémy, an actress
Père Duchesne, a furnace-maker: fictitious alter ego of René. Hébert, box-office clerk turned journalist
Antoine Saint-Just, a disaffected poet, acquainted with or related to Camille Desmoulins
Jean-Marie Roland, an elderly ex-civil servant
Manon Roland, his young wife, a writer
François-Léonard Buzot, a deputy, member of the Jacobin Club and friend of the Rolands
Jean-Baptiste Louvet, a novelist, Jacobin, friend of the Rolands
PART IV
At the rue Saint-Honoré:
Maurice Duplay, a master carpenter
Françoise Duplay, his wife
Eléonore, an art student, his eldest daughter
Victoire, his daughter
Elisabeth (Babette), his youngest daughter
Charles Dumouriez, a general, sometime Foreign Minister
Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, a lawyer; Camille Desmoulinss cousin
PART IV
At the rue Saint-Honoré:
Maurice Duplay, a master carpenter
Françoise Duplay, his wife
Eléonore, an art student, his eldest daughter
Victoire, his daughter
Elisabeth (Babette), his youngest daughter
Charles Dumouriez, a general, sometime Foreign Minister
Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, a lawyer; Camille Desmoulinss cousin
Jeanette, the Desmoulinss servant
PART V
Politicians described as Brissotins or Girondins:
Jean-Pierre Brissot, a journalist
Jean-Marie and Manon Roland
Pierre Vergniaud, member of the National Convention, famous as an orator
Jérôme Pétion
François-Léonard Buzot
Jean-Baptiste Louvet
Charles Barbaroux, a lawyer from Marseille and many others
Albertine Marat, Marats sister
Simone Evrard, Marats common-law wife
Defermon, a deputy, sometime President of the National Convention
Jean-François Lacroix, a moderate deputy: goes on mission to Belgium with Danton in 1792 and 1793
David, a painter
Charlotte Corday, an assassin
Claude Dupin, a young bureaucrat who proposes marriage to Louise Gély, Dantons neighbour
Souberbielle, Robespierres doctor
Renaudin, a violin-maker, prone to violence
Father Kéravenen, an outlaw priest
Chauveau-Lagarde, a lawyer: defence council for Marie-Antoinette
Philippe Lebas, a left-wing deputy: later a member of the Committee of General Security, or Police Committee; marries Babette Duplay
Vadier, known as the Inquisitor, a member of the Police Committee
Implicated in the East India Company fraud:
Chabot, a deputy, ex-Capuchin friar
Julien, a deputy, former Protestant pastor
Proli, secretary to Hérault de Séchelles, and said to be an Austrian spy
Emmanuel Dobruska and Siegmund Gotleb, known as Emmanuel and Junius Frei: speculators
Guzman, a minor politician, Spanish-born
Diedrichsen, a Danish businessman
Abbé dEspanac, a crooked army contractor
Basire and Delaunay, deputies
Citizen de Sade, a writer, formerly a marquis
Pierre Philippeaux, a deputy: writes a pamphlet against the government during the Terror
Some members of the Committee of Public Safety:
Saint-André
Barère
Couthon, a paraplegic, a friend of Robespierre
Robert Lindet, a lawyer from Normandy, a friend of Danton
Etienne Panis, a left-wing deputy, a friend of Danton
At the trial of the Dantonists:
Hermann (once of Arras), President of the Revolutionary
Tribunal
Dumas, his deputy
Fouquier-Tinville, now Public Prosecutor
Fleuriot and Liendon, prosecution lawyers
Fabricius Pâris, Clerk of the Court
Laflotte, a prison informer
Henri Sanson, public executioner
Map of Revolutionary Paris
PART ONE
LOUIS XV is named the Well-Beloved. Ten years pass. The same people believe the Well-Beloved takes baths of human blood Avoiding Paris, ever shut up at Versailles, he finds even there too many people, too much daylight. He wants a shadowy retreat
In a year of scarcity (they were not uncommon then) he was hunting as usual in the Forest of Sénart. He met a peasant carrying a bier and inquired, Whither he was conveying it? To such a place. For a man or a woman? A man. What did he die of? Hunger.
Jules Michelet
I. Life as a Battlefield
(17631774)
NOW THAT THE DUST has settled, we can begin to look at our situation. Now that the last red tile has been laid on the roof of the New House, now that the marriage contract is four years old. The town smells of summer; not very pleasant, that is, but the same as last year, the same as the years to follow. The New House smells of resin and wax polish; it has the sulphurous odour of family quarrels brewing.
Maître Desmoulinss study is across the courtyard, in the Old House that fronts the street. If you stand in the Place des Armes and look up at the narrow white façade, you can often see him lurking behind the shutters on the first floor. He seems to stare down into the street; but he is miles away, observers say. This is true, and his location is very precise. Mentally, he is back in Paris.
Physically, at this moment, he is on his way upstairs. His three-year-old son is following him. As he expects the child to be under his feet for the next twenty years, it does not profit him to complain about this. Afternoon heat lies over the streets. The babies, Henriette and Elisabeth, are asleep in their cribs. Madeleine is insulting the laundry girl with a fluency and venom that belie her gravid state, her genteel education. He closes the door on them.
As soon as he sits down at his desk, a stray Paris thought slides around his mind. This happens often. He indulges himself a little: places himself on the steps of the Châtelet court with a hard-wrung acquittal and a knot of congratulatory colleagues. He gives his colleagues names and faces. Where is Perrin this afternoon? And Vinot? Now he goes up twice a year, and Vinot who used to discuss his Life Plan with him when they were students had walked right past him in the Place Dauphine, not knowing him at all.
That was last year, and now it is August, in the year of Grace 1763. It is Guise, Picardy; he is thirty-three years old, husband, father, advocate, town councillor, official of the bailiwick, a man with a large bill for a new roof.
He takes out his account books. It is only two months ago that Madeleines family came up with the final instalment of the dowry. They pretended knowing that he could hardly disabuse them that it was a kind of flattering oversight; that a man in his position, with steady work coming in, would hardly notice the last few hundred.
This was a typical de Viefville trick, and he could do nothing about it. They hammered him to the family mast while, quivering with embarrassment, he handed them the nails. Hed come home from Paris at their behest, to set things up for Madeleine. He hadnt known that shed be turned thirty before her family considered his situation even half-way satisfactory.
What de Viefvilles do, they run things: small towns, large legal practices. There are cousins all over the Laon district, all over Picardy: a bunch of nerveless crooks, always talking. One de Viefville is Mayor of Guise, another is a member of that august judicial body, the Parlement of Paris. De Viefvilles generally marry Godards; Madeleine is a Godard, on her fathers side. The Godards name lacks the coveted particle of nobility; for all that, they tend to get on in life, and when you attend in Guise and environs a musical evening or a funeral or a Bar Association dinner, there is always one present to whom you can genuflect.