‘What’s she like?’
‘I don’t know really, our paths so seldom cross. Oh, to look at, you mean? She’s quite pretty.’
‘When you say it doesn’t matter who you marry – don’t you expect to love someone?’
‘Yes, of course. But it would be a vast coincidence to be married to them as well.’
‘What about your parents? What are they like?’
‘Never seem to speak to each other these days. There’s a family tradition of marrying someone you find you can’t stand. My cousin Antoine, one of my Fouquier-Tinville cousins, is supposed to have murdered his first wife.’
‘What, you mean he was actually prosecuted for it?’
‘Only by the gossips at their various assizes. There wasn’t enough evidence to bring it to court. But then Antoine, he’s a lawyer too, so there wouldn’t be. I expect he’s good at fixing evidence. The business rather shook the family, and so I’ve always regarded him as, you know,’ he paused wistfully, ‘a sort of hero. Anyone who can give serious offence to the de Viefvilles is a hero of mine. Another case of that is Antoine Saint-Just, I know we are related but I can’t think how, they live in Noyon. He has recently run off with the family silver, and his mother, who’s a widow, actually got a lettre de cachet and had him shut up. When he gets out – they’ll have to let him out one of these days, I suppose – he’ll be so angry, he’ll never forgive them. He’s one of these boys, sort of big and solid and conceited, incredibly full of himself, he’s probably steaming about at this very minute working out how to get revenge. He’s only nineteen, so perhaps he’ll have a career of crime, and that will take the attention off me.’
‘I can’t think why you don’t write and encourage him.’
‘Yes, perhaps I shall. You see, I do agree that I can’t go on like this. I have had a little verse published – oh, nothing really, just a modest start. I’d rather write than anything – well, as you can imagine, with my disabilities it’s a relief not having to talk. I just want to live very quietly – preferably somewhere warm – and be left alone till I can write something worthwhile.’
Already, d’Anton did not believe this. He recognized it as a disclaimer that Camille would issue from time to time in the hope of disguising the fact that he was an inveterate hell-raiser. ‘Don’t you care for anyone respectable?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes – I care for my friend de Robespierre, but he lives in Arras, I never see him. And Maître Perrin has been kind.’
D’Anton stared at him. He did not see how he could sit there, saying ‘Maître Perrin has been kind.’
‘Don’t you mind?’ he demanded.
‘What people say? Well,’ Camille said softly, ‘I should prefer not to be an object of general odium, but I wouldn’t go so far as to let my preference alter my conduct.’
‘I’d just like to know,’ d’Anton said. ‘I mean, from my point of view. Whether there’s any truth in it.’
‘Oh, you mean, because the sun will be up in an hour, and you think I’ll run down to the Law Courts and tell everybody I spent the night with you?’
‘Somebody told me … that is, amongst other things they told me … that you were involved with a married woman.’
‘Yes: in a way.’
‘You do have an interesting variety of problems.’
Already, by the time the clock struck four, he felt he knew too much about Camille, and more than he was comfortable with. He looked at him through a mist of alcohol and fatigue, the climate of the years ahead.
‘I would tell you about Annette Duplessis,’ Camille said, ‘but life’s too short.’
‘Is it?’ D’Anton has never thought about it before. Creeping towards his future it sometimes seems long, long enough.
IN JULY 1786 a daughter was born to the King and Queen. ‘All well and good,’ said Angélique Charpentier, ‘but I expect she’ll be needing some more diamonds to console her for losing her figure.’
Her husband said, ‘How would we know if she’s losing her figure? We never see her. She never comes. She has something against Paris.’ It was a matter of regret to him. ‘She doesn’t trust us, I think. But of course she is not French. She is far from home.’
‘I am far from home,’ Angélique said heartlessly. ‘But I don’t run the nation into debt because of it.’
The Debt, the Deficit – these were the words on the lips of the café’s customers as they occupied themselves in trying to name a figure. Only a few people had the ability to imagine money on this scale, the café believed; they thought it was a special ability, and that M. Calonne, now the Comptroller-General, had not got it. M. Calonne was a perfect courtier, with his lace cuffs and lavender-water, his gold-topped cane and his well-attested greed for Perigord truffles. Like M. Necker, he was borrowing; the café thought that M. Necker’s borrowing had been considered, but that M. Calonne’s borrowing stemmed from a failure of imagination and a desire to keep up appearances.
In August 1786 the Comptroller-General presented to the King a package of proposed reforms. There was one weighty and pressing reason for action: one half of the next year’s revenues had already been spent. France was a rich country, M. Calonne told its sovereign; it could produce many times more revenue than at present. And could this fail to add to the glory and prestige of the monarchy? Louis seemed dubious. The glory and prestige were all very well, most agreeable, but he was anxious to do only what was right; and to produce this revenue would require substantial changes, would it not?
Indeed, his minister told him, from now on everybody – nobles, clergy, commons – must pay a land tax. The pernicious system of tax exemptions must be ended. There must be free trade, the internal customs dues must be abolished. And there must be some concessions to liberal opinion – the corvée must be done away with completely. The King frowned. He seemed to have been through all this before. It reminded him of M. Necker, he said. If he had thought, it would have reminded him of M. Turgot, but by now he was getting muddled.
The point is, he told his minister, that though he personally might favour such measures, the Parlements would never agree.
That, said M. Calonne, was a most cogent piece of reasoning. With his usual unerring accuracy, His Majesty had pinpointed the problem.
But if His Majesty felt these measures were necessary, should he allow himself to be baulked by the Parlements? Why not seize the initiative?
Mm, the King said. He moved restlessly in his chair, and looked out of the window to see what the weather was doing.
What he should do, Calonne said, was to call an Assembly of Notables. A what? said the King. Calonne pressed on. The Notables would at once be seized by a realization of the country’s economic plight, and throw their weight behind any measures the King deemed necessary. It would be a bold stroke, he assured the King, to create a body that was inherently superior to the Parlements, a body whose lead they would have to follow. It was the sort of thing, he said, that Henri IV would have done.
The King pondered. Henri IV was the most wise and popular of monarchs, and the very one that he, Louis, most desired to emulate.
The King put his head in his hands. It sounded a good idea, the way Calonne put it, but all his ministers were smooth talkers, and it was never quite as simple as they made out. Besides, the Queen and her set … He looked up. The Queen believed, he said, that the next time the Parlements got in his way they should simply be disbanded. The Parlements of Paris, all the provincial Parlements – chop, chop, went the King. All gone.
M. Calonne quaked when he heard this reasoning. What did it offer but a vista of acrimonious dealings, a decade of wrangling,