Kitabı oku: «A Place of Greater Safety», sayfa 13

VI. Last Days of Titonville
(1789)

A DEPOSITION to the Estates-General:

The community of Chaillevois is composed of about two hundred persons. The most part of the inhabitants have no property at all, those who have any possess so little that it is not worth talking about. The ordinary food is bread steeped in salt water. As for meat, it is never tasted, except on Easter Sunday, Shrove Tuesday and the feast of the patron saint … A man may sometimes eat haricots, if the master does not forbid them to be grown among the vines … That is how the common people live under the best of Kings.

Honoré-Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau:

My motto shall be this: get into the Estates at all costs.

NEW YEAR. You go out in the streets and you think it’s here: the crash at last, the collapse, the end of the world. It is colder now than any living person can remember. The river is a solid sheet of ice. The first morning, it was a novelty. Children ran and shouted, and dragged their complaining mothers out to see it. ‘One could skate,’ people said. After a week, they began to turn their heads from the sight, keep their children indoors. Under the bridges, by dim and precarious fires, the destitute wait for death. A loaf of bread is fourteen sous, for the New Year.

These people have left their insufficient shelters, their shacks, their caves, abandoned the rock-hard, snow-glazed fields where they cannot believe anything will ever grow again. Tying up in a square of sacking a few pieces of bread, perhaps chestnuts: cording a small bundle of firewood: saying no goodbyes, taking to the road. They move in droves for safety, sometimes men alone, sometimes families, always keeping with the people from their own district, whose language they speak. At first they sing and tell stories. After two days or so, they walk in silence. The procession that marched now straggles. With luck, one may find a shed or byre for the night. Old women are wakened with difficulty in the morning and are found to have lost their wits. Small children are abandoned in village doorways. Some die; some are found by the charitable, and grow up under other names.

Those who reach Paris with their strength intact begin to look for work. Men are being laid off, they’re told, our own people; there’s nothing doing for outsiders. Because the river is frozen up, goods do not come into the city: no cloth to be dyed, no skins to be tanned, no corn. Ships are impaled on the ice, with grain rotting in their holds.

The vagrants congregate in sheltered spots, not discussing the situation because there is nothing to discuss. At first they hang around the markets in the late afternoons, because at the close of the day’s trading any bread that remains is sold off cheaply or given away; the rough, fierce Paris wives get there first. Later, there is no bread after midday. They are told that the good Duke of Orléans gives away a thousand loaves of bread to people who are penniless, like them. But the Paris beggars leave them standing again, sharp-elbowed and callous, willing to give them malicious information and to walk on people who are knocked to the ground. They gather in back courts, in church porches, anywhere that is out of the knife of the wind. The very young and the very old are taken in by the hospitals. Harassed monks and nuns try to bespeak extra linen and a supply of fresh bread, only to find that they must make do with soiled linen and bread that is days old. They say that the Lord’s designs are wonderful, because if the weather warmed up there would be an epidemic. Women weep with dread when they give birth.

Even the rich experience a sense of dislocation. Alms-giving seems not enough; there are frozen corpses on fashionable streets. When people step down from their carriages, they pull their cloaks about their faces, to keep the stinging cold from their cheeks and the miserable sights from their eyes.

‘YOU’RE GOING HOME for the elections?’ Fabre said. ‘Camille, how can you leave me like this? With our great novel only half finished?’

‘Don’t fuss,’ Camille said. ‘It’s possible that when I get back we won’t have to resort to pornography to make a living. We might have other sources of income.’

Fabre grinned. ‘Camille thinks elections are as good as finding a gold-mine. I like you these days, you’re so frail and fierce, you talk like somebody in a book. Do you have a consumption by any chance? An incipient fever?’ He put his hand against Camille’s forehead. ‘Think you’ll last out till May?’

When Camille woke up, these mornings, he wanted to pull the sheets back over his head. He had a headache all the time, and did not seem to comprehend what people were saying.

Two things – the revolution and Lucile – seemed more distant than ever. He knew that one must draw on the other. He had not seen her for a week, and then only briefly, and she had seemed cool. She had said, ‘I don’t mean to seem cool, but I –’ she had smiled painfully – ‘I daren’t let the painful emotion show through.’

In his calmer moments he talked to everyone about peaceful reform, professed republicanism but said that he had nothing against Louis, that he believed him to be a good man. He talked the same way as everybody else. But d’Anton said, ‘I know you, you want violence, you’ve got the taste for it.’

He went to see Claude Duplessis and told him that his fortune was made. Even if Picardy did not send him as a deputy to the Estates (he pretended to think it likely) it would certainly send his father. Claude said, ‘I do not know what sort of man your father is, but if he is wise he will disassociate himself from you while he is in Versailles, to avoid being exposed to embarrassment.’ His gaze, fixed at a high point on the wall, descended to Camille’s face; he seemed to feel that it was a descent. ‘A hack writer, now,’ he said. ‘My daughter is a fanciful girl, idealistic, quite innocent. She doesn’t know the meaning of hardship or worry. She may think she knows what she wants, but she doesn’t, I know what she wants.’

He left Claude. They were not to meet again for some months. He stood in the rue Condé looking up at the first-floor windows, hoping that he might see Annette. But he saw no one. He went once more on a round of the publishers of whom he had hopes, as if – since last week – they might have become devil-may-care. The presses are busy day and night, and their owners are balancing the risk; inflammatory literature is in request, but no one can afford to see his presses impounded and his workmen marched off. ‘It’s quite simple – I publish this, I go to gaol,’ the printer Momoro said. ‘Can’t you tone it down?’

‘No,’ Camille said. No, I can’t compromise: just like Billaud-Varennes used to say. He shook his head. He had let his hair grow, so when he shook his head with any force its dark waves bounced around somewhat theatrically. He liked this effect. No wonder he had a headache.

The printer said, ‘How is the salacious novel with M. Fabre? Your heart not in it?’

‘When he’s gone,’ Fabre said gleefully to d’Anton, ‘I can revise the manuscript and make our heroine look just like Lucile Duplessis.’

If the Assembly of the Estates-General takes place, according to the promise of the King … there is little doubt but some revolution in the government will be effected. A constitution, probably somewhat similar to that of England, will be adopted, and limitations affixed to the power of the Crown.

J. C. Villiers, MP for Old Sarum

GABRIEL RIQUETTI, Comte de Mirabeau, forty years old today: happy birthday. In duty to the anniversary, he scrutinized himself in a long mirror. The scale and vivacity of the image seemed to ridicule the filigree frame.

Family story: on the day of his birth the accoucheur approached his father, the baby wrapped in a cloth. ‘Don’t be alarmed …’ he began.

He’s no beauty, now. He might be forty, but he looks fifty. One line for his undischarged bankruptcy: just the one, he’s never worried about money. One line for every agonizing month in the state prison at Vincennes. One line per bastard fathered. You’ve lived, he told himself; do you expect life not to leave a mark?

Forty’s a turning point, he told himself. Don’t look back. The early domestic hell: the screaming bloody quarrels, the days of tight-lipped, murderous silence. There was a day when he had stepped between his mother and his father; his mother had fired a pistol at his head. Only fourteen years old, and what did his father say of him? I have seen the nature of the beast. Then the army, a few routine duels, fits of lechery and blind, obstinate rage. Life on the run. Prison. Brother Boniface, getting roaring drunk every day of his life, his body blowing out to the proportions of a freak at a fair. Don’t look back. And almost incidentally, almost unnoticed, a bankruptcy and a marriage: tiny Émilie, the heiress, the little bundle of poison to whom he’d sworn to be true. Where, he wondered, is Émilie today?

Happy birthday, Mirabeau. Appraise the assets. He drew himself up. He was a tall man, powerful, deep-chested: capacious lungs. The face was a shocker: badly pock-marked, not that it seemed to put women off. He turned his head slightly so that he could study the aquiline curve of his nose. His mouth was thin, intimidating; it could be called a cruel mouth, he supposed. Take it all in all – it was a man’s face, full of vigour and high breeding. By a few embellishments to the truth he had made his family into one of the oldest and noblest in France. Who cared about the embellishments? Only pedants, genealogists. People take you at your own valuation, he said to himself.

But now the nobility, the second Estate of the Realm, had disowned him. He would have no seat. He would have no voice. Or so they thought.

It was all complicated by the fact that last summer there had appeared a scandalous book called A Secret History of the Court at Berlin. It dealt in some detail with the seamier side of the Prussian set-up and the sexual predilections of its prominent members. However strenuously he denied authorship, it was plain to everyone that the book was based on his observations during his time as a diplomat. (Diplomat, him? What a joke.) Strictly, he was not at fault: had he not given the manuscript to his secretary, with orders not to part with it to anyone, especially not to himself? How could he know that his current mistress, a publisher’s wife, was in the habit of picking locks and rifling his secretary’s desk? But that was not quite the sort of excuse that would satisfy the government. And besides, in August he had been very, very short of money.

The government should have been more understanding. If they had given him a job last year, instead of ignoring him – something worthy of his talents, say the Constantinople embassy, or Petersburg – then he would have burned A Secret History, or thrown it in a pond. If they had listened to his advice, he wouldn’t be getting ready, now, to teach them the hard way.

So the Nobility rejected him. Very well. Three days ago he had entered Aix-en-Provence as a candidate for the Commons, the Third Estate. What resulted? Scenes of wild enthusiasm. ‘Father of his Country’, they had called him; he was popular, locally. When he got to Paris those bells of Aix would still be ringing jubilee, the night sky of the south would still be criss-crossed by the golden scorch-trails of fireworks. Living fire. He would go to Marseille (taking no chances) and get a reception in no way less noisy and splendid. Just to ensure it, he would publish in the city an anonymous pamphlet in praise of his own character and attributes.

So what’s to be done with these worms at Versailles? Conciliate? Calumniate? Would they arrest you in the middle of a General Election?

A PAMPHLET by the Abbé Sieyès, 1789:

What is the Third Estate?

Everything.

What has it been, until now?

Nothing.

What does it want?

To become something.

THE FIRST Electoral Assembly of the Third Estate of Guise, in the district of Laon: 5 March 1789. Maître Jean-Nicolas Desmoulins presiding, as Lieutenant-General of the Bailiwick of Vermandois: assisted by M. Saulce, Procurator: M. Marriage as Secretary: 292 persons present.

In deference to the solemnity of the occasion, M. Desmoulins’s son had tied his hair back with a broad green ribbon. It had been a black ribbon earlier that morning, but he had remembered just in time that black was the colour of the Hapsburgs and of Antoinette, and that was not at all the kind of partisanship he wished to display. Green, however, was the colour of liberty and the colour of hope. His father waited for him by the front door, fuming at the delay and wearing a new hat. ‘I never know why Hope is accounted a virtue,’ Camille said. ‘It seems so self-serving.’

It was a raw, blustery day. On the rue Grand-Pont, Camille stopped and touched his father’s arm. ‘Come to Laon with me, to the district assembly. Speak for me. Please.’

‘You think I should stand aside for you?’ Jean-Nicolas said. ‘The traits which the electors will prefer in me, are not the ones you have inherited. I am aware that there are certain persons in Laon making a noise on your behalf, saying you must know your way about and so on. Just let them meet you, that’s all I say. Just let them try to have a five-minute normal conversation with you. Just let them set eyes on you. No, Camille, in no way will I be party to foisting you on the electorate.’

Camille opened his mouth to reply. His father said, ‘Do you think it is a good idea to stand about arguing in the street?’

‘Yes, why not?’

Jean-Nicolas took his son’s arm. Not very dignified to drag him to the meeting, but he’d do it if necessary. He could feel the damp wind penetrating his clothes and stirring aches and pains in every part. ‘Come on,’ he snapped, ‘before they give us up for lost.’

‘Ah, at last,’ the de Viefville cousins said. Rose-Fleur’s father looked Camille over sourly. ‘I had rather hoped not to see you, but I suppose you are a member of the local Bar, and your father pointed out that we could not very well disenfranchise you. This may, after all, be your only chance to play any part in the nation’s affairs. I hear you’ve been writing,’ he said. ‘Pamphleteering. Not, if I may say so, a gentleman’s method of persuasion.’

Camille gave M. Godard his best, his sweetest smile. ‘Maître Perrin sends his regards,’ he said.

After the meeting nothing remained except for Jean-Nicolas to go to Laon to collect a formal endorsement. Adrien de Viefville, the Mayor of Guise, walked home with them. Jean-Nicolas seemed dazed by his easy victory; he’d have to start packing for Versailles. He stopped as they crossed the Place des Armes and stood looking up at his house. ‘What are you doing?’ his relative asked.

‘Inspecting the guttering,’ Jean-Nicolas explained.

By next morning everything had fallen apart. Maître Desmoulins did not appear for breakfast. Madeleine had anticipated the festive chink of coffee cups, congratulations all round, perhaps even a little laughter. But those children who remained at home all had colds, and were coddling themselves, and she was left to preside over one son, whom she did not know well enough to talk to, and who did not eat breakfast anyway.

‘Can he be sulking?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t think he’d sulk, today of all days. This comes of apeing royalty and having separate bedrooms. I never know what the bastard’s thinking.’

‘I could go and find him,’ Camille suggested.

‘No, don’t trouble. Have some more coffee. He’ll probably send me a note.’

Madeleine surveyed her eldest child. She put a piece of brioche into her mouth. To her surprise, it stuck there, like a lump of ash. ‘What has happened to us?’ she said. Tears welled into her eyes. ‘What has happened to you?’ She could have put her head down on the table, and howled.

Presently word came that Jean-Nicolas was unwell. He had a pain, he said. The doctor arrived, and confined him to bed. Messages were sent to the mayor’s house.

‘Is it my heart?’ Desmoulins inquired weakly. If it is, he was about to say, I blame Camille.

The doctor said, ‘I’ve told you often enough where your heart is, and where your kidneys are, and what is the state of each; and while your heart is perfectly sound, to set out for Versailles with kidneys like those is mere folly. You will be sixty in two years – if, and only if, you take life quietly. Moreover –’

‘Yes? While you’re about it?’

‘Events in Versailles are more likely to give you a heart attack than anything your son has ever done.’

Jean-Nicolas dropped his head back against the pillows. His face was yellow with pain and disappointment. The de Viefvilles gathered in the drawing room below, and the Godards, and all the electoral officials. Camille followed the doctor in. ‘Tell him it’s his duty to go to Versailles,’ he said. ‘Even if it kills him.’

‘You always were a heartless boy,’ said M. Saulce.

Camille turned to break into a clique of de Viefvilles. ‘Send me,’ he said.

Jean-Louis de Viefville des Essarts, advocate, Parlementaire, surveyed him through his pince-nez. ‘Camille,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t send you down to the market to fetch a lettuce.’

ARTOIS: the three Estates met separately, and the assemblies of the clergy and the nobility each indicated that in this time of national crisis they would be prepared to sacrifice some of their ancient privileges. The Third Estate began to propose an effusive vote of thanks.

A young man from Arras took the floor. He was short and slightly built, with a conspicuously well-cut coat and immaculate linen. His face was intelligent and earnest, with a narrow chin and wide blue eyes masked behind spectacles. His voice was unimpressive, and half-way through his speech it died momentarily in his throat; people had to lean forward and nudge their neighbours to know what he said. But it was not the manner of his delivery that caused them consternation. He said that the clergy and the nobility had done nothing praiseworthy, but had merely promised to amend where they had abused. Therefore, there was no need to thank them at all.

Among people who were not from Arras, and did not know him, there was some surprise when he was elected one of the eight deputies for the Third Estate of Artois. He seems locked into himself, somehow not amenable; and he has no orator’s tricks, no style, nothing about him at all.

‘I NOTICE you’ve paid off your tailor,’ his sister Charlotte said. ‘And your glove-maker. And you said he was such a good glove-maker too. I wish you wouldn’t go around town as if you’ve decided to leave for good.’

‘Would you prefer it if I climbed through the window one night with all my possessions done up in a spotted handkerchief? You could tell them I’d run away to sea.’

But Charlotte was not to be mollified: Charlotte, the family knife. ‘They’ll want you to settle things before you go.’

‘You mean about Anaïs?’ He looked up from the letter he was writing to an old schoolfriend. ‘She’s said she’s happy to wait.’

‘She’ll not wait. I know what girls are like. My advice to you is to forget her.’

‘I am always glad of your advice.’

She threw her head up and glared, suspecting sarcasm. But his face expressed only concern for her. He turned back to his letter:

Dearest Camille,

I flatter myself you won’t be very surprised to learn I’m on my way to Versailles. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward …

MAXIMILIEN de Robespierre, 1789, in the case of Dupond:

The reward of the virtuous man is his confidence that he has willed the good of his fellow man: after that comes the recognition of the nations, which surrounds his memory, and the honours given him by contemporaries … I should like to buy these rewards, at the price of a laborious life, even at the price of a premature death.

PARIS: on 1 April, d’Anton went out to vote at the church of the Franciscans, whom the Parisians called the Cordeliers. Legendre the master butcher walked down with him – a big, raw, self-educated man who was in the habit of agreeing with anything d’Anton said.

‘Now a man like you …’ Fréron had said, with careful flattery.

‘A man like me can’t afford to stand for election,’ d’Anton said. ‘They’re giving the deputies, what, an eighteen-franc allowance per session? And I’d have to live in Versailles. I’ve a family to support, I can’t let my practice lie fallow.’

‘But you’re disappointed,’ Fréron suggested.

‘Maybe.’

The voters didn’t go home; they stood in groups outside the Cordeliers’ church, gossiping and making predictions. Fabre didn’t have a vote because he didn’t pay enough taxes; the fact was making him spiteful. ‘Why couldn’t we have the same franchise as the provinces?’ he demanded. ‘I’ll tell you what it is, they regard Paris as a dangerous city, they’re afraid of what would happen if we all had votes.’ He engaged in seditious conversation with the truculent Marquis de Saint-Huruge. Louise Robert closed the shop and came out on François’s arm, wearing rouge and a frock left over from better days.

‘Think what would happen if women had votes,’ she said. She looked up at d’Anton. ‘Maître d’Anton believes women have a lot to contribute to political life, don’t you?’

‘I do not,’ he said mildly.

‘The whole district’s out,’ Legendre said. He was pleased. He had spent his youth at sea; now he liked to feel he belonged to a place.

Mid-afternoon, a surprise visitor: Hérault de Séchelles.

‘Thought I’d drop down to see how you Cordeliers wild men were voting,’ he said; but d’Anton had the impression he’d come to look for him. Hérault took a pinch of snuff from a little box with a picture of Voltaire on the lid. He turned the box in his fingers, appreciatively; proffered it to Legendre.

‘This is our butcher,’ d’Anton said, enjoying the effect.

‘Charmed,’ Hérault said, not a flicker of surprise on his amiable features; but afterwards d’Anton caught him surreptitiously checking his cuffs to see if they were free of ox-blood and offal. He turned to d’Anton: ‘Have you been to the Palais-Royal today?’

‘No, I hear there’s some trouble …’

‘That’s right, keep yourself in the clear,’ Louise Robert muttered.

‘So you’ve not seen Camille?’

‘He’s in Guise.’

‘No, he’s back. I saw him yesterday in the company of the ineffably verminous Jean-Paul Marat – oh, you don’t know the doctor? Not such a loss – the man has a criminal record in half the countries in Europe.’

‘Don’t hold that against a man,’ d’Anton said.

‘But he has, you know, a long history of imposing on people. He was physician to the Comte d’Artois’s household troops, and it’s said he was the lover of a marquise.’

‘Naturally, you don’t believe that.’

‘Look, I can’t help my birth,’ Hérault said, with a flash of irritation. ‘I try to atone for it – perhaps you think I should imitate Mlle de Kéralio and open a shop? Or your butcher might take me on to scrub the floors?’ He broke off. ‘Oh, really, one shouldn’t be talking like this, losing one’s temper. It must be the air in this district. Be careful, Marat will be wanting to move in.’

‘But why is this gentleman verminous? You mean it as a figure of speech?’

‘I mean it literally. This man abandoned his life, walked out, chooses to live as some sort of tramp.’ Hérault shuddered; the story had a horrible grip on his imagination.

‘What does he do?’

‘He appears to have dedicated himself to the overthrowing of everything.’

‘Ah, the overthrowing of everything. Lucrative business, that. Business to put your son into.’

‘What I am telling you is perfectly true – but look now, I’m getting diverted. I came to ask you to do something about Camille, as a matter of urgency –’

‘Oh, Camille,’ Legendre said. He added a phrase he had seldom used since his merchant navy days.

‘Well, quite,’ Hérault said. ‘But one doesn’t want to see him taken up by the police. The Palais-Royal is full of people standing on chairs making inflammatory speeches. I don’t know if he is there now, but he was there yesterday, and the day before –’

‘Camille is making a speech?’

This seemed unlikely: and yet, possible. A picture came into d’Anton’s mind. It was some weeks ago, late at night. Fabre had been drinking. They had all been drinking. Fabre said, we are going to be public men. He said, d’Anton, you know what I told you about your voice when we first met, when you were a boy? I told you, you’ve got to be able to speak for hours, you’ve got to fetch up your voice from here, from here – well, you’re good, but you’re not that good yet. Courtrooms are one thing, but we’re growing out of courtrooms.

Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d’Anton’s temples. ‘Put your fingers here,’ he said. ‘Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here.’ He jabbed at d’Anton’s face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. ‘I’ll teach you like an actor,’ he said. ‘This city is our stage.’

Camille said: ‘Book of Ezekiel. “This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh.”’

Fabre turned. ‘This stutter,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to do it.’

Camille put his hands over his eyes. ‘Leave me alone;’ he said.

‘Even you.’ Fabre’s face was incandescent. ‘Even you, I am going to teach.’

He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. ‘You’re going to talk properly,’ Fabre said. ‘Even if it kills one of us.’

Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d’Anton was too tired to intervene.

Now, in bright sunlight, on an April morning, he wondered if this scene could really have occurred. Nevertheless, he began to walk.

THE GARDENS of the Palais-Royal were full to overflowing. It seemed to be hotter here than anywhere else, as if it were high summer. The shops in the arcades were all open, doing brisk business, and people were arguing, laughing, parading; the stockbrokers from the bourse had wrenched their cravats off and were drinking lemonade, and the patrons of the cafés had spilled into the gardens and were fanning themselves with their hats. Young girls had come out to take the air and show off their summer dresses and compare themselves with the prostitutes, who saw chances of midday trade and were out in force. Stray dogs ran about grinning; broadsheet sellers bawled. There was an air of holiday: dangerous holiday, holiday with an edge.

Camille stood on a chair, the light breeze fanning out his hair. He was holding a piece of paper, and was reading from what appeared to be a police file. When he had finished he held the piece of paper at arm’s length between finger and thumb and released it to let it flutter to the ground. The crowd hooted with laughter. Two men exchanged glances and melted away from the back of the crowd. ‘Informers,’ Fréron said. Then Camille spoke of the Queen with cordial contempt, and the crowd hissed and groaned; he spoke of delivering the King from evil advisers, and praised M. Necker, and the crowd clapped its hands. He spoke of Good Duke Philippe and his concern for the people, and the crowd threw its hat into the air and cheered.

‘They’ll arrest him,’ Hérault said.

‘What, in the face of this crowd?’ Fabre said.

‘They’ll pick him up afterwards.’

D’Anton looked very grave. The crowd was increasing. Camille’s voice reached out to them without a trace of hesitation. By accident or design he had developed a marked Parisian accent. People were drifting over from across the gardens. From the upper window of a jeweller’s shop, the Duke’s man Laclos gazed down dispassionately, sipping from time to time from a glass of water and jotting down notes for his files. Hot, getting hotter: Laclos alone was cool. Camille flicked his fingers across his forehead, brushing the sweat away. He launched into grain speculators. Laclos wrote, ‘The best this week.’

‘I’m glad you came to tell us, Hérault,’ d’Anton said. ‘But I don’t see any chance of stopping him now.’

‘It’s all my doing,’ Fabre said. His face shone with pleasure. ‘I told you, you have to take a firm line with Camille. You have to hit him.’

THAT EVENING, as Camille was leaving Fréron’s apartment, two gentlemen intercepted him and asked him politely to accompany them to the Duc de Biron’s house. A carriage was waiting. On the way, no one spoke.

Camille was glad of this. His throat hurt. His stutter had come back. Sometimes in court he had managed to lose it, when he was caught up in the excitement of a case. When he was angry it would go, when he was beside himself, possessed; but it would be back. And now it was back, and he must revert to his old tactics: he couldn’t get through a sentence without the need for his mind to dart ahead, four or five sentences ahead, to see words coming that he wouldn’t be able to pronounce. Then he must think of synonyms – the most bizarre ones, at times – or he must simply alter what he’s going to say … He remembered Fabre, banging his head rather painfully against the arm of a chair.

The Duc de Biron made only the briefest appearance; he accorded Camille a nod, and then he was whisked through a gallery, away, into the interior of the house. The air was close; sconces diffused the light. On walls of muffling tapestry, dim figures of goddesses, horses, men: woollen arms, woollen hooves, draperies exuding the scent of camphor and damp. The topic was the thrill of the chase; he saw hounds and spaniels with dripping jaws, dough-faced huntsmen in costumes antique: a cornered stag foundered in a stream. He stopped suddenly, gripped by panic, by an impulse to cut and run. One of his escorts took him – quite gently – by the arm and steered him on.