One night, André said to Marat, who had come to visit again, “If we are to win, we must not confine the battlefield to the courtroom. We must take it beyond the court’s doors. So my defence of Babeuf will no longer speak only to the twelve gentlemen of the jury — it must be heard by the 600,000 people of Paris in its forty-eight districts, by twenty-five million French across eighty-three provinces. Let them be the true jurors of this case.”

  He poured the words out like a torrent. For a moment even André felt swept up in his own rhetoric, nearly ready to belt out a war cry: his blood was boiling for truth; he would smash the old world to pieces…

  “Stop! Stop! Damn it, you’re overacting!” André told himself inwardly and pulled on the reins.

  He caught himself in time, but Marat at his side brightened; the man clapped his hands with excitement. Unrestrained exhortations to justice and hysterical appeals to public feeling were exactly the sort of thing the madman Marat lived to perform.

  When the Revolution broke in 1789, he had optimistically estimated that removing 8,000 counter-revolutionary heads would build the new France; by 1790 the figure rose to 20,000, in 1791 to 50,000, 1792 to 100,000, and 1793 to 300,000. Fortunately for Marat, there was no 1794 in his reckoning.

  High with excitement, Marat rubbed his hands and paced the attic, then turned and asked again, “What further support do you need? Hurry and make a detailed plan. Come to the Cordeliers Club tomorrow at noon — I will mobilize every resource to back you. Livres, manpower, even weapons — they are not a problem!”

  André started, alarmed. “This time it’s for the public. No revolutionary violence is required!”

  What a joke — to launch a violent revolution in 1790, when the classes were at peace and the nation appeared reconciled! Even if the bourgeoisie had inherent weakness, organizing and inciting a violent uprising in Paris would be enough to hang both Marat and himself.

  Besides, Paris at this moment lacked the conditions for another revolution.

  In short, the capital’s food supply had been secured. The price of a pound of brown bread had fallen from its peak of 10 sous down to 2 or 3 — within reach for most Parisians. Work was hard for the sans-culottes, but labour still fed a family.

  There were no foreign blockades or military pressures; Parisians’ daily lives were little disrupted. The romantic bourgeois could still pay a quarter-livre for a cup of Dominican coffee and send a sprig of English roses to a lover. Life remained sweet; why spill blood and offer heads?

  The city’s wealthy urban class and the liberal nobles — whose interests were still well represented in the Constituent Assembly — could strike down the extreme left’s proposals and continue their comfortable lives.

  The conservative royalists raged, but timid Louis XVI did not dare support any rash action; they were left with exile or hiding.

  Worst of all were the clergy. Once the First Estate, they now found themselves assailed by every quarter; even the two notorious defectors who had dared to resist the secular appropriation of church property — Talleyrand and Sieyès — could not openly champion the clerical cause. They had no voice.

  As for André, befriending Marat was a convenience — useful social capital for the future. Helping with a legal defence was one thing; throwing himself into Marat’s impractical, radical insurrections was another. André would not be a fool or cannon fodder: even a lucky victory would bring him no benefit; it would only clothe someone else in triumph.

  “So we must not let madman Marat wreck this fragile unity and order. He must be removed from this game,” André decided to himself.

  After seeing Marat off, André climbed into a four-wheeled carriage bound for ?le Saint-Louis.

  By dusk, he was back at 156 Rue Saint-Jacques. He found Meldar pressed against the third-floor window rail, eagerly watching a group of blue-uniformed privates drill on a vacant lot in a back alley. André called the boy in to study and set himself at the large map of Paris that hung on the wall to plan his campaign.

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  “What are your ambitions?” André asked the sullen Meldar as he turned.

  “I want a musket,” the boy cried, eyes bright. “Next year I’ll join the National Guard and be a proud Colonel, killing Russians!” Meldar was a Polish immigrant; the housekeeper said the boy’s father had died in 1779 resisting a Russian invasion.

  André held a finger to his lips to demand quiet. Then he glanced at the French words the boy had been copying. He grabbed a sheaf of notes, smacked the youth lightly, and scolded: “Stupid! War kills people. I don’t want to lose you — your aunt doesn’t need to bury you. Damn it, copy ‘roi’, ‘dieu’, and ‘loi’ ten times each. How many times have I told you? The king is not God. The king is not the law.”

  …

  The next afternoon, Marat failed to appear. Instead, it was their landlord, Legendre, who arrived. As vice-chairman of the Cordeliers Club and a returning elector for the Théatres district, Legendre had lately been busy organizing the club and campaigning in the municipal elections; he had not come around for nearly a month.

  (Note: City Hall, the Paris Commune, and the Commune Executive Committee — City Hall is the municipal government; the Paris Commune functions like a city-wide party congress and municipal committee; the Commune Executive Committee is analogous to a standing committee. Electors choose secondary electors, who then select the city and commune officials.)

  “Marat’s in trouble,” Legendre said as soon as he reached the attic. “This morning, two of the mayor’s lackeys were prowling around the club asking after him. At noon, three battalions of the National Guard from five surrounding districts cordoned off the Cordeliers’ street corners, claiming they were about to arrest the ‘Friend of the People’, wanted by the courts.”

  “And the result?” André asked anxiously.

  “How could those fools possibly catch Marat? Two hours ago, I escorted him into a secret drain that leads to the Seine. He should be boarding a merchant ship bound for England now.” Legendre laughed. “The damn Mayor Bailly and that incompetent Lafayette have tried to trap Marat five times and failed each time.”

  Whether those earlier failures were Bailly’s and Lafayette’s incompetence, André could not say, but today they were certainly scapegoated — because the warrant to seize Marat had come from a prosecutor at the Palais de Justice, a trusted confidant of Vinault; the judge’s current wife was the prosecutor’s sister.

  André breathed easier. The situation remained under his control; otherwise, the first party at the Cordeliers’ door would have been not curious municipal officers but blue-coated troops with bayonets.

  “Although the Friend of the People escaped the illegal dragnet by the mayor’s police, he cannot lead our peaceful movement next week,” André said with regret. “However, with the great Danton commanding on the ground, the result should still be very good.”

  Legendre stared at André in surprise. “What — you didn’t know? A few days ago, after failing to be elected to the Commune’s executive, Danton drove back to his hometown of Arcis yesterday morning. I expect his wife will have their child any day now, so the Cordeliers’ affairs have been run by Marat.”

  André was bewildered. He had been occupied with the Chatelet court and had paid little mind to the Commune’s internal elections.

  Originally, André had planned only to neutralize the unruly agitator Marat so that the tolerant Danton could lead a peaceful mobilization and avoid a direct clash with City Hall.

  But he had never guessed that, after his electoral defeat, Danton would storm off home to see his wife give birth. Now, with both the Club’s head (Danton) and his principal deputy (Marat) absent, who would take charge?

  “I will,” Legendre said, poking his large nose and grinning.

  “You — in charge of a peaceful movement?” André trusted the butcher’s honesty, but doubted his leadership.

  Legendre quickly shook his head. “No, no. I only handle internal club business. Danton and Marat told me to back you fully and give every resource we can spare. Money, hands, pikes, javelins, muskets — all of it’s available. Cannons are hard to get, though.”

  “Stop—no. This is not a revolution. This is a peaceful defence of justice. No pikes, muskets, or cannons. Remember that! Remember that!” André corrected the landlord sharply.

  All extreme measures must be tightly controlled — that had been agreed beforehand between André, Judge Vinault, and the senior prosecutor who could call on the Paris police.

  “Fine, that’s not the point,” Legendre shrugged. “In any case, follow your plan — and of course, the entire Cordeliers Club will back you.”

  “Wait — I’m not even a member of the Cordeliers Club.” André protested. He would have been happy to join the Jacobin Club; by now, the Jacobins were the seat of power and prestige, their members drawn from the Constituent Assembly, leading citizens, notable scholars, and prominent professionals. The Cordeliers, by contrast, were mostly stinking sans-culottes.

  “You are already a founding member,” Legendre said, laughing. “I’ve paid your annual dues — only 24 sous. Heh, so your rent will be a bit higher this month. Hurry and put on your coat, grab your things, and come to the meeting. Damn it — I forgot it’s my turn to open the club today, so I can’t wait for you.” With that, he hurried downstairs.

  Note:

  Cordeliers Club — A popular revolutionary club (the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man), influential among working-class Parisians.

  Paris Commune — The municipal government and revolutionary body of Paris (here used in its late-eighteenth-century sense of municipal organization).

  National Guard — The citizen militia formed during the Revolution (commanded at times by Lafayette).