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nowadays.’

      ‘We understand,’ Gabrielle said, ‘that you have been offered a post in the government.’

      ‘Yes, but it’s of no consequence. I turned it down.’

      ‘I told you,’ Camille said.

      Angélique stood up. ‘I’ll be off then.’

      ‘I’ll see you out,’ Gabrielle said, with extreme formality. Her face glowed. She got up; they went, and whispered outside the door.

      ‘Angélique will make her behave,’ d’Anton said. Camille sat and smiled at him. ‘You’re easily pleased. Come back in, calm yourself, shut the door,’ he said to his wife. ‘Please try to understand that I am acting for the best.’

      ‘When he said,’ she pointed to Camille, ‘that you’d turned it down, I said what kind of a fool did he suppose I was?’

      ‘This government won’t last a year. It doesn’t suit me, Gabrielle.’

      She gaped at him. ‘So what are you going to do? Give up your practice because the state of the law doesn’t suit you? You were ambitious before, you used to say – ’

      ‘Yes, and now he’s more ambitious,’ Camille cut in. ‘He’s far too good for a minor post under Barentin. Probably – oh, probably the Seal will be within his own gift one day.’

      D’Anton laughed. ‘If it ever is,’ he said, ‘I’ll give it you. I promise.’

      ‘That’s probably treason,’ Gabrielle said. Her hair was slipping down, as it tended to do at points of crisis.

      ‘Don’t confuse the issue,’ Camille said. ‘Georges-Jacques is going to be a great man, however he is impeded.’

      ‘You’re mad,’ Gabrielle said. As she shook her head a shower of hairpins leapt out and slithered to the floor. ‘What I hate, Georges, is to see you trotting along in the wake of other people’s opinions.’

      ‘Me? You think I do that?’

      ‘No,’ Camille said hurriedly, ‘he doesn’t do that.’

      ‘He takes notice of you, and no notice of me whatsoever.’

      ‘That’s because – ’ Camille stopped. He could not think of a tactful reason why it was. He turned to d’Anton. ‘Can I produce you to the Café du Foy tonight? You may be expected to make a short speech, you don’t mind, of course not.’

      Gabrielle looked up from the floor, hairpin in hand. ‘Do I understand that this business has glorified you, somehow?’

      ‘I wouldn’t say “glory”.’ Camille looked modest. ‘But it’s a start.’

      ‘Would you mind?’ d’Anton said to her. ‘I’ll not be late. When I come home I’ll explain it better. Gabrielle, leave those, Catherine will pick them up.’

      Gabrielle shook her head again. She would not be explained to, and if Catherine were asked to crawl around the floor after her hairpins, she would probably give notice; why did he not know this?

      The men went downstairs. Camille said, ‘I’m afraid it’s just my existence that irks Gabrielle. Even when my desperate fiancée turns up at her door she still believes I’m trying to inveigle you into bed with me.’

      ‘Aren’t you?’

      ‘Time to think of higher things,’ Camille said. ‘Oh, I am so happy. Everybody says changes are coming, everyone says the country will be overturned. They say it, but you believe it. You act on it. You are seen to act on it.’

      ‘There was a pope – I forget which one – who told everyone that the world was going to end. They all put their estates on the market, and the pope bought them and became rich.’

      ‘That’s a nice story,’ Camille said. ‘You are not a pope, but never mind, I think you will do quite well for yourself.’

      AS SOON AS THEY HEARD in Arras that there were going to be elections, Maximilien began to put his affairs in order. ‘How do you know you’ll be elected?’ his brother Augustin said. ‘They might form a cabal against you. It’s very likely.’

      ‘Then I’ll have to sing small between now and the election,’ he said grimly. ‘Here in the provinces almost everyone has a vote, not just the moneyed men.’ For that reason, ‘They won’t be able to keep me out,’ he said.

      His sister Charlotte said, ‘They’ll be ungrateful beasts if they don’t elect you. After all you’ve done for the poor. You deserve it.’

      ‘It isn’t a prize.’

      ‘You’ve worked so hard, all for nothing, no money, no credit. There’s no need to pretend you don’t resent it. You’re not obliged to be saintly.’

      He sighed. Charlotte has this way of cutting him to the bone. Hacking away, with the family knife.

      ‘I know what you think, Max,’ she said. ‘You don’t believe you’ll come back from Versailles in six months, or even a year. You think this will alter your life. Do you want them to have a revolution just to please you?’

      I DON’T CARE what the Estates-General do,’ said Philippe d’Orléans, ‘as long as I am there when they deal with the liberty of the individual, so that I can use my voice and vote for a law after which I can be sure that, on a day when I have a fancy to sleep at Raincy, no one can send me against my will to Villers-Cotterêts.’

      Towards the end of 1788 the Duke appointed a new private secretary. He liked to embarrass people, and this may have been a major reason for his choice. The addition to his entourage was an army officer named Laclos. He was in his late forties, a tall, angular man with fine features and cold blue eyes. He had joined the army at the age of eighteen, but had never seen active service. Once this had grieved him, but twenty years spent in provincial garrison towns had endowed him with an air of profound and philosophic indifference. To amuse himself, he had written some light verse, and the libretto of an opera that came off after one night. And he had watched people, recorded the details of their manoeuvres, their power-play. For twenty years there had been nothing else to do. He became familiar with that habit of mind which dispraises what it most envies and admires: with that habit of mind which desires only what it cannot have.

      His first novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses was published in Paris in 1782. The first edition sold out within days. The publishers rubbed their hands and remarked that if this shocking and cynical book was what the public wanted, who were they to act as censors? The second edition was sold out. Matrons and bishops expressed outrage. A copy with a blank binding was ordered for the Queen’s private library. Doors were slammed in the author’s face. He had arrived.

      It seemed his military career was over. In any case, his criticism of army traditions had made his position untenable. ‘It seems to me I could do with such a man,’ the Duke said. ‘Your every affectation is an open book to him.’ When Félicité de Genlis heard of the appointment, she threatened to resign her post as Governor of the Duke’s children. Laclos could think of bigger disasters.

      It was a crucial time in the Duke’s affairs. If he was to take advantage of the unsettled times, he must have an organization, a power base. His easy popularity in Paris must be put to good use. Men must be secured to his service, their past lives probed and their futures planned for them. Loyalties must be explored. Money must change hands.

      Laclos surveyed this situation, brought his cold intelligence to bear. He began to know writers who were known to the police. He made discreet inquiries among Frenchmen living abroad as to the reasons for their exile. He got himself a big map of Paris and marked with blue circles points that could be fortified. He sat up by lamplight combing through the pages of the pamphlets that had come that day from the Paris presses; the censorship had broken down. He was looking for writers who were bolder and more outspoken than the rest; then he would make overtures. Few of these fellows had ever had a bestseller.

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