LITMIR.BIZ

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Charlotte did the housekeeping and thought up cutting remarks about them both.

      During his vacations from Louis-le-Grand, he had never neglected his round of duty calls. A visit to the bishop, a visit to the abbot, a visit to the masters at his first school to tell them how he was getting on. It was not that he was enchanted with their company; it was that he knew how later he would need their good will. So when he returned home, his carefulness paid off. The family had one opinion, but the town had another. He was called to the Bar of the Council of Arras, and he was made as welcome as anyone could be. Because of course he was not his father and the world had moved on; he was sober, neat and punctilious; he was a credit to the town, a credit to the abbot, and a credit to the respected relatives who had brought him up.

      If only that unspeakable du Rut would quit his reminiscing…If only you could order your own mind, so that certain conversations, certain allusions, certain thoughts even, did not make you nauseated. As if you were guilty of a crime. After all, you are not a criminal, but a judge.

      IN HIS FIRST YEAR he had fifteen cases, which was considered better than average. Usually his papers would be prepared a clear week in advance, but on the eve of the first hearing he would work till midnight, till dawn if necessary. He would forget everything he had done so far, lay his papers aside; he would survey the facts again; he would build the case once more, painstakingly, from its foundations. He had a mind like a miser’s strongbox; once a fact went in, it stayed there. He knew he frightened his colleagues, but what could he do? Did they imagine that he was going to be less than a very very good lawyer indeed?

      He began to advise his clients to settle out of court where they could. This brought little profit to himself or his opponent, but it saved clients a lot of time and expense. ‘Other people aren’t so scrupulous,’ Augustin said.

      After four months of practice he was appointed to a part-time judicial position. It was an honour, coming so soon, but immediately he wondered if it were double-edged. In his first weeks he had seen things that were wrong, and said so, naturally; and M. Liborel, who had sponsored him in his introduction to the Bar, seemed to think he had made a series of gaffes. Liborel had said (they had all said), ‘Of course, we agree on the need for a certain degree of reform, but we in Artois would prefer things not to be rushed.’ In this way, misunderstandings began. God knows, he had not set out to ruffle anyone’s feelings, but he seemed to have managed it. And so whether this judicial position was because they thought he merited it, or whether it was a sop, a bribe, a device to blunt his judgement, or whether it was a prize, a favour, or even a piece of compensation…compensation for an injury not yet inflicted?

      THAT DAY CAME: that day appointed, for him to give a judgement. He sat up, the shutters open, watching the progress of the night across the sky. Someone had put down a supper tray among his papers for the case. He got up and locked the door. He left the food untouched. He expected to see it rot before his eyes; he looked, as if it were putrescent, at the thin green skin of an apple on a plate.

      If you died it might be, like his mother, in a way never discussed; but he remembered her face, when she sat propped against the bolsters waiting to be butchered, and he remembered how one of the servants had said afterwards that they were going to burn the sheets. You might die like Henriette: alone, your blood pumping out on to white linen, unable to call, unable to move, shocked to death, paralysed – while downstairs, people were making small talk and passing cakes around. You might die like Grandfather Carraut – palsied and decrepit and disgusting, memory gone, fretting about the will, chattering to his under-manager about the age of the wood for the barrels; breaking off, from time to time, to chide the family for faults committed thirty years before, and to curse his pretty dead daughter for her shameful swollen womb. That was not Grandfather’s fault. That was old age. But he couldn’t imagine old age. He couldn’t imagine approaching it.

      And if you were hanged? He did not want to think about it. The workaday criminal death could take half an hour.

      He tried praying: some beads to keep his mind ordered. But then slipping through his fingers they reminded him of a rope, and he dropped them gently on to the floor. He kept count: ‘Pater noster, qui es in coeli, Ave Maria, Ave Maria’, and that pious addendum, ‘Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto, Amen’. The blessed syllables ran together. They made nonsense words, everted themselves, darted in and out of sense. Anyway, what is the sense? God is not going to tell him what to do. God is not going to help him. He does not believe in a God of that sort. He’s not an atheist, he tells himself: just an adult.

      Dawn: he heard the clatter of wheels below the window, the leathery creak of the harness and the snort and whinny of the horse drawing a cart bringing vegetables for those who would still be alive at dinner-time. Priests were wiping their vessels for early Mass, and the household below was rising, washing, boiling water and lighting fires. At Louis-le-Grand, he would have been at his first class by now. Where were they, the children he had known? Where was Louis Suleau? Pursuing his sarcastic path. Where was Fréron? Cutting a swathe through society. And Camille would be sleeping still, this morning, gathered to the city’s dark heart: sleeping unconscious of his perhaps damned soul draped about in muscle and bone.

      Brount whined at the door. Charlotte came, called him sharply to come away. Brount’s reluctant paws scrabbled down the stairs.

      He unlocked the door to let the barber in. The man looked into the face of his regular, amiable client; he knew better than to try his morning chatter. The clock ticked without compunction towards ten.

      It occurred to him at the last moment that he need not go; he could simply sit here and say, I’m not going into court today. They would wait for him for ten minutes, post a clerk to look along the road, and then they would send a message; and he would reply that he was not going into court today.

      They could not drag him out, or carry him, could they? They could not force the sentence out of his throat?

      But it was the law, he thought wearily, and if he could not carry it out he should have resigned: should have resigned yesterday.

      THREE P.M.: the aftermath. He is going to be sick. Here, by the side of the road. He doubles up. Sweat breaks out along his back. He goes down on his knees and retches. His eyes mist over, his throat hurts. But there’s nothing in his stomach; he hasn’t eaten for twenty-four hours.

      He puts out a hand, gets to his feet and steadies himself. He wishes for someone to take his hand, to stop him from shivering; but when you are ill, no one comes to help.

      If there were anyone to watch his progress along the road they would see that he is staggering, lurching from foot to foot. He tries consciously to stand up straight and put some order in his steps, but his legs feel too far away. The whole despicable body is teaching him a lesson again: be true to yourself.

      This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a criminal to death. And now he is going to pay for it.

      A MAN SURVIVES: he comes through. Even here in Arras it was possible to find allies, if not friends. Joseph Fouché taught at the Oratorian College. He had thought of the priesthood but had grown away from the idea. He taught physics, and was interested in anything new. Fouché came to dinner quite often, invited by Charlotte. He seemed to have proposed to her – or at any rate, they had come to some understanding. Max was surprised that any girl would be attracted by Fouché, with his frail, stick-like limbs and almost lashless eyes. Still, who’s to know? He did not like Fouché at all, in point of fact, but Charlotte had her own life to lead.

      Then there was Lazare Carnot, a captain of engineers at the garrison; a man older than himself, reserved, rather bitter about the lack of opportunities open to him, as a commoner in His Majesty’s forces. Carnot went for company to the Academy’s meetings, formulae revolving in his head while they discussed the sonnet form. Sometimes he treated them to a tirade about the deplorable state of the army. Members would exchange amused glances.

      Only Maximilien listened earnestly – quite ignorant of military matters, and a little overawed.

      When

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