Hilary Mantel - A Place of Greater Safety

THEY SENT CAMILLE to Cateau-Cambrésis in October. Just before Christmas they received an effusive letter from the principal describing the astonishing progress that Camille had made. Jean-Nicolas waved it at his wife. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he said. ‘I knew it was the right thing to do.’

But Madeleine was disturbed by the letter. ‘It is as if,’ she said, ‘they are saying, “How attractive and intelligent your child is, even though he has only one leg.”’

Jean-Nicolas took this to be a witticism. Only the day before Madeleine had told him that he had no imagination and no sense of humour.

A little later the child arrived home. He had developed an appalling speech impediment, and could hardly be persuaded to say anything at all. Madeleine locked herself in her room and had her meals sent up. Camille said that the Fathers had been very kind to him and opined that it was his own fault. His father said, to cheer him, that it was not a fault but an inconvenience. Camille insisted that he was obscurely blameworthy, and asked coldly on what date it would be possible to return to school, since at school they did not worry about it and did not discuss it all the time. Jean-Nicolas contacted Cateau-Cambrésis in a belligerent mood to ask why his son had developed a stutter. The priests said he came with it, and Jean-Nicolas said he assuredly did not leave home with it; and it was concluded that Camille’s fluency of speech lay discarded along the coach-route, like a valise or a pair of gloves that has gone astray. No one was to blame; it was one of those things that happen.

In the year 1770, when Camille was ten years old, the priests advised his father to remove him from the school, since they were unable to give him the attention his progress merited. Madeleine said, ‘Perhaps we could get him a private tutor. Someone really first-class.’

‘Are you mad?’ her husband shouted at her. ‘Do you think I’m a duke? Do you think I’m an English cotton baron? Do you think I have a coal mine? Do you think I have serfs?’

‘No,’ his wife said. ‘I know what you are. I’ve no illusions left.’

It was a de Viefville who provided the solution. ‘To be sure,’ he said, ‘it would be a pity to let your clever little boy come to nothing for the want of a little cash. After all,’ he said rudely, ‘you yourself are never going to set the world ablaze.’ He ruminated. ‘He’s a charming child. We suppose he’ll grow out of the stutter. We must think of scholarships. If we could get him into Louis-le-Grand the expense to the family would be trifling.’

‘They’d take him, would they?’

‘From what I hear, he’s extraordinarily bright. When he is called to the Bar, he will be quite an ornament to the family. Look, next time my brother’s in Paris, I’ll get him to exert himself on your behalf. Can I say more?’

LIFE EXPECTANCY in France has now increased to almost twenty-nine years.

THE COLLÈGE Louis-le-Grand was an old foundation. It had once been run by Jesuits, but when they were expelled from France it was taken over by the Oratorians, a more enlightened order. Its alumni were celebrated if diverse; Voltaire, now in honoured exile, had studied there and Monsieur the Marquis de Sade, now holed up in one of his châteaux while his wife worked for the commutation of a sentence passed on him recently for poisoning and buggery.

The Collège stood on the rue Saint-Jacques, cut off from the city by high solid walls and iron gates. It was not the custom to heat the place, unless ice formed on the holy water in the chapel font; so in winter it was usual to go out early to harvest some icicles and drop them in, and hope that the principal would stretch a point. The rooms were swept by piercing draughts, and by gusts of subdued chatter in dead languages.

Maximilien de Robespierre had been there for a year now.

When he had first arrived he had been told that he would want to work hard, for the Abbot’s sake, since it was to the Abbot he owed this great opportunity. He had been told that if he were homesick, it would pass. Upon his arrival he sat down to make a note of everything he had seen on the journey, because then he would have done his duty to it, and need not carry it around in his head. Verbs conjugated in Paris just as they did in Artois. If you kept your mind on the verbs, everything would fall into place around them. He followed every lesson with close attention. His teachers were quite kind to him. He made no friends.

One day a senior pupil approached him, propelling in front of him a small child. ‘Here, Thing,’ the boy said. (They had this affectation of forgetting his name.)

Maximilien stopped dead. He didn’t immediately turn around. ‘You want me?’ he said. Quite pleasant-offensive; he knew how to do that.

‘I want you to keep your eye on this infant they have unaccountably sent. He is from your part of the country – Guise, I believe.’

Maximilien thought: these ignorant Parisians think it is all the same. Quietly, he said, ‘Guise is in PICARDY. I come from ARRAS. ARRAS is in ARTOIS.’

‘Well, it’s of no consequence, is it? I hope you can take time from your reputedly very advanced studies to help him find his way about.’

‘All right,’ Maximilien said. He swung around to look at the so-called infant. He was a very pretty child, very dark.

‘Where is it you want to find your way to?’ he asked.

Just then Father Herivaux came shivering along the corridor. He stopped. ‘Ah, you have arrived, Camille Desmoulins,’ he said.

Father Herivaux was a distinguished classicist. He made a point of knowing everything. Scholarship didn’t keep the autumn chills out; and there was so much worse to come.

‘And I believe that you are only ten years old,’ Father said.

The child looked up at him and nodded.

‘And that altogether you are very advanced for your years?’

‘Yes,’ said the child. ‘That’s right.’

Father Herivaux bit his lip. He scurried on. Maximilien removed the spectacles he was obliged to wear, and rubbed the corners of his eyes. ‘Try “Yes, Father,”’ he suggested. ‘They expect it. Don’t nod at them, they tend to resent it. Also, when he asked you if you were clever, you should have been more modest about it. You know – “I try my best, Father.” That sort of thing.’

‘Groveller, are you, Thing?’ the little boy said.

‘Look, it’s just an idea. I’m only giving you the benefit of my experience.’ He put his glasses back on. The child’s large dark eyes swam into his. For a moment he thought of the dove, trapped in its cage. He had the feel of the feathers on his hands, soft and dead: the little bones without pulse. He brushed his hand down his coat.

The child had a stutter. It made him uneasy. In fact there was something about the whole situation that upset him. He felt that the modus vivendi he had achieved was under threat; that life would become more complicated, and that his affairs had taken a turn for the worse.

WHEN HE RETURNED to Arras for the summer holiday, Charlotte said, ‘You don’t grow much, do you?’

Same thing she said, year after year.

His teachers held him in esteem. No flair , they said; but he always tells the truth.

He was not quite sure what his fellow pupils thought of him. If you asked him what sort of a person he thought he was, he would tell you he was able, sensitive, patient and deficient in charm. But as for how this estimate might have differed from that of the people around him – well, how can you be sure that the thoughts in your head have ever been thought by anyone else?

He did not have many letters from home. Charlotte sent quite often a neat childish record of small concerns. He kept her letters for a day or two, read them twice; then, not knowing what to do with them, threw them away.