LITMIR.BIZ

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to hold up the story every time there is a riot, to tell the reader which one is on the scene.

      Again, why do I call the Hôtel de Ville ‘City Hall’? In Britain, the term ‘Town Hall’ conjures up a picture of comfortable aldermen patting their paunches and talking about Christmas decorations or litter bins. I wanted to convey a more vital, American idea; power resides at City Hall.

      A smaller point still: my characters have their dinner and their supper at variable times. The fashionable Parisian dined between three and five in the afternoon, and took supper at ten or eleven o’clock. But if the latter meal is attended with a degree of formality, I’ve called it ‘dinner’. On the whole, the people in this book keep late hours. If they’re doing something at three o’clock, it’s usually three in the morning.

      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 Robespierre’s 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 d’Églantine, 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 Danton’s mistress

       At the rue Condé:

      Claude Duplessis, a senior civil servant

      Annette, his wife

      Adèle and Lucile, his daughters

      Abbé Laudréville, Annette’s confessor, a go-between

       In Guise:

      Rose-Fleur Godard, Camille Desmoulins’s fiancée

       In Arras:

      Joseph Fouché, a teacher, Charlotte de Robespierre’s 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 – Félicité’s husband, a former naval officer, a gambler

      Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, a novelist, the Duke’s secretary

      Agnès de Buffon, the Duke’s mistress

      Grace Elliot, the Duke’s ex-mistress, a spy for the British Foreign Office

      Axel von Fersen, the Queen’s lover

       At Danton’s 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

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