Perhaps to keep me from dwelling on the extreme nastiness of this chapter, I found myself drawn to how Hilary describes Camille, and how she keeps us if not precisely on his side (where no-one of good sense would want to be, surely?), but at least wanting to hear from him again, see him again. He brightens the room. There’s the “Here comes hell” passage that Simon quotes at the start of his piece today—I don’t suppose Lucile actually said this (in French, I mean), but it’s so like her, and we know what she means. To be clear, I’m very far from being a romantic, and Camille is really not my type, but I know what Lucile means and I, we, know why she went for it, for him, the whole exciting and silly mess. I also like Danton picking up on Robespierre’s recommendation of Camille to do the government’s PR. Danton agrees: “Camille is good at versions.” Camille is so good at all sorts of things, except actually being good. (Doesn’t he say as much early on?)
And that extraordinary description of the Sea-Green Incorruptible: “Here Robespierre sat, very new, as if he had been taken out of a box and placed unruffled in a velvet armchair in Danton’s apartment.” It makes me think of a new toy, so precious that the child is not allowed to play with it: R’s honor is so precious, his conscience so tender, that he does not allow himself to do anything. Yet somehow he knows when anything happens, and always either has precise ideas as to what should happen next, or has made himself scarce. While it’s part of their attraction that neither Camille nor Lucile make excuses for themselves, Maximilian doesn’t *need* to make excuses for himself (not yet, anyway): he is careful to do nothing that needs to be excused.
Excellent summary, Susan, of why we like Camille, despite himself, and why Max gives us the creeps! It's Danton I think who accuses Robespierre of being made for opposition and not government - and what is fascinating is that all three are responsible for what is happening, but they wear that responsibility very differently.
My inner historian wants to know how close these wonderful portraits are to the real men, R, D and C (it’s telling that we’re on first name terms with Desmoulins in a way that we are not with the other two)—this at the same time as not wanting to give up any of what Hilary has imagined for us…. I so want it to be true that Lucile said “It doesn’t become me to start squealing now. Gabrielle married a nice young lawyer. I didn’t.”
Camille is like a rock star. I think one of the Louis le Grand profs refers to this affectation of using first names right at the beginning of the novel.
I'm always ambivalent about that question of historical accuracy. Like, I know that Mantel does her research, and it matters to her that she gets it right - and I'm interested to compare fact and fiction. But at the same time, none of that detracts from the work of fiction: they are wonderful portraits like you say.
Mantel and other writers talk about the artifice of dialogue in novels. People don't really talk like this, but we buy into the fiction: dialogue condenses character. So we can suppose the real Lucile may have said something like this to Gabrielle, in more or fewer words.
Squealing though... like a pig to the slaughterhouse. So many aptly chosen words.
I’ve found all the killing hard to read and kept looking for something to lighten the mood. I found it on pg 502 where the ‘cap of liberty’ is mentioned - “Why liberty is thought to require headgear is a mystery.” Made me smile😊 Thanks, Simon!
Claude with the best remark, in my opinion, this chapter: "He has arrived now, he is the Establishment. Anyone who wants to make a revolution has to make it against him."
This recognition of the paradoxical nature of revolution—that in toppling the status quo you then inevitably become the status quo—is prescient in so many ways. There is inherent self-centeredness and hypocrisy already on full display, but this quote made me pause for quite a bit. It is a timeless observation.
(My runner-up quote: "For the rich and powerful, the aim is to be accepted as sansculotte in spirit, without assuming the ridiculous uniform." Another note that echoes to today, with many "elite" wanting to be defined "anti-elite" while still enjoying the benefits of...elitism.)
This chapter was almost too good - I failed in multiple attempts to notice the key points in it because I kept getting drawn in to the details...
Eventually I concluded that the main theme this week for me was how far the characters do or don't face up to the violent consequences of their choices - as Simon said in an earlier comment here, "all three are responsible for what is happening, but they wear that responsibility very differently". I thought that the self-awareness of Lucile's "It doesn't become me to start squealing now" & Marat's "Murder made you" (both brilliant passages!) contrasted nicely with Camille's "No one who is innocent will be touched", Danton's "If only you knew how many people I've saved", & Robespierre the "earnest schoolboy" denouncing conspiracies & advocating for dictatorship in an abstract legalistic way.
The other thing that struck me about this chapter was that it felt like a major turning point - as heralded by Claude's perceptive comment about Camille now being the Establishment - as survival replaces ambition as a major motivator:
Robespierre: "Justice was the servant of policy now; no other position was compatible with survival."
Danton: "But there is a knife. And I'm not going to put my neck under it."
Fabre to Danton: "To survive at all will be the thing now."
I think my heart rate is still recovering from this chapter. Mantel creates such a strong sense of a trap closing and the various players being set on train tracks leading to an increasingly inevitable end. It’s also the chapter where I finally warmed to Camille, and felt genuinely frightened of Robespierre. Danton remains my slightly (very?) problematic favourite - he feels more honest that the other two, even when he’s scheming.
“Here comes hell” is an apt title for Simon’s comments on this week’s rereading. I’ve really loved the last two weeks of readings—this section has been my favorite of APOGS so far. It’s where the story of the Reign of Terror truly begins, and much of the drama unfolds in the realm of behind-the-scenes intrigue—something Mantel handles brilliantly.
The scene where Marat with his foul odors leans in toward Camille, sharing his plan to massacre imprisoned aristocrats as a way to terrorize the populace, all while old portraits of ministers look down on them—it’s chilling and masterfully staged. Mantel is at her best here: using private, charged conversations to reveal character and motivation. But she also delivers the large-scale set pieces—August 10, the September Massacres—with clarity and force.
In my view, the Reign of Terror begins with the assassination of Mandat, and Mantel’s depiction is striking: “[Danton] nodded to Rossignol. Rossignol leaned out of the window and shot Mandat dead.”
One small quibble: there’s no historical record that Danton directly ordered Mandat’s murder. That said, I’m not bothered—he might have, and this is historical fiction after all. Danton was leading the uprising and effectively running the Paris Commune at the time. Still, I wonder if Mantel might have made his complicity in the violence feel more gradual, more internally conflicted. From what we know, Danton was never entirely at peace with political killing—he famously called for the end of the Terror before it claimed him.
I especially enjoy this passage:
“Listen.” Robespierre eased out of a pocket his little volume of The Social Contract. “Oh good, story time,” Danton said. Robespierre opened it at a marked page. “Listen to this. ‘The inflexibility of the laws can in some circumstances make them dangerous and cause the ruin of a state in a crisis … if the danger is such that the machinery of the laws is an obstacle, then a dictator is appointed, who silences the laws.’” He closed the book, raised his eyes questioningly. “Is that a statement of fact,” Danton inquired, “or is it prescriptive?” Robespierre said nothing. “I am afraid I am not impressed by that, just because you have read it out of a book. Even out of Jean-Jacques.” “I want to prepare you for the arguments that people will throw at you.” “You had the passage marked, I see. In future, don’t bother to draw the conversation round. Just ask me straight off what you want to know.”
Something I think Mantel does brilliantly throughout the book is show the ambiguous relationship of all three of our main protagonists to violence and murder. They all find themselves complicit, but to varying degrees excuse or deny their involvement. All of this contrasts with Marat, who horrifies each of them. Danton's role in Mandat's murder seems to fit into that development: Danton excepts some of the logic of an armed insurrection, but not all of it.
I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again: demagogues win power and then act like those they claim to despise. I think we can recognise that on both sides of the Atlantic.
I'm finding my sympathies lying with Gabrielle - she really didn't sign up for this. Lucile is, at this point, more problematic - she just seems to accept things (apart from Danton).
I've often made a comment along the lines 'how you get something is how you'll lose it" (basically, if you're sneaky, someone sneakier will come along. Our 'heroes' (plus Marat) are using unfettered violence - and we now what's coming up...
The apparent complete lack of knowledge of how things work is interesting - you'd think lawyers would understand that. In this chaos, you can see how easy it would be to 'lose' an order, some money or a warrant.
The telling part for me was when the sanscullote is pushing for wholesale slaughter. Camille pushes back, but Marat supports it - the faultlines are showing.
Is anybody else wondering who's really in charge? It doesn't feel as if anybody is. There's lots of manoeuvring but it's politicking rather than policy.
It's interesting how many references there are to untimely death in this chapter - "They kill dictators... ...In the end" as well as Marat's comment. It definitely feels as if the pressure is building.
Remember that in the very first scene with Lucile, she is fantasising about Mary Queen of Scots. She's always had a dark self-destructive streak.
And I think no one knows how anything works because the entire system of government and legal process has broken down. The king is locked up, so do the king's ministers have any power? The constitution is worthless, the Legislative Assembly appears to have no power.
As Danton said a long time ago: power is in the hands of those who turn up and say they're in charge.
I have not yet finished this chapter, but this moment felt like a climax to me, of the entire book as I have come to see it so far: “The people who opposed us, this last week—we now define them as criminals…I am not sure what the crime would be…The crime is being left behind by events…I favor a special tribunal.” The whole novel has been building to this, and I have been dreading this moment, and now it is here. And there is that prescient warning in the opening paragraphs of the chapter: “Anyone who wants to make a revolution has to make it against him.” To perpetuate the Revolution, its founders must turn on the French people and on themselves and the useless slaughter to come makes me dread the reading to come.
I agree - I am almost getting the vibe of dread I get from the Cromwell trilogy, as the stars of the show are about to go down one after another. I remember being so excited that Mary Boleyn and Anna of Cleves both somehow survived. The way the mood in the Mantel books changes and the characters start being confined to rooms and smaller spaces more and more is just formidable (is it just my perception, or is it all doors and rooms, not just in Danton’s dreams? )
The breakfast crew with its blood-curdling conversations was so terrifying. To me, it brought up the Shelleys, Byron and their company trapped by the incessant rain of the summer-that-wasn‘t of 1816 and imagining monsters.
Wait, so in the battle of Valmy the Duke of Brunswick was bought off with stolen diamonds? Is there any foundation for that?
It was rumour thrown about by Danton's detractors apparently. Probably baseless, but without hard evidence, Mantel gets to have fun with "what if". No one really knows why Brunswick threw the battle, it appears to be one of those little mysteries.
I think the breakfast scene is the star in this chapter, although there are a lot of other dialogues to love, also the one with Marat - horrifying and too close to the collective reader’s face. No one really knows what to do exactly next, but they all turned up for power. The conspiracy theories are just exactly in line of what we know in communist countries and now, the contemporary world… it is Mantel’s greatest gift to make it all so real and so alive, it is not a costume drama the way a lot of historical “fiction” is - she wrote about people who lived, changed history forever and created modern world, and that writing requires a different kind of detail and urgency, I feel. “Does it ever bother you that … everything is founded on lies?” - “that’s dangerous thing to say. I don’t like that.” On goes the nation making….
I live in Washington D.C. and have seen the Hope Diamond numerous times but, other than hearing it's cursed, I've never paid much attention. I guess it's time to go back and spend a little time with it.
It feels like we’re now well past the point of no return. The theoretical world of journalism and speech-making have morphed into sickening and uncontrolled violence in the real world with very little self-awareness or guilt on the part of the protagonists. Gabrielle and Fabre are the honourable exceptions. I like Fabre’s question to Danton: ‘does it ever bother you that everything is founded on lies?’ Also Louvet to Danton about the infighting among the Jacobins: ‘Either we will kill Robespierre, or he will kill us.’ I must have missed the point at which Robespierre became so dangerous.
Perhaps to keep me from dwelling on the extreme nastiness of this chapter, I found myself drawn to how Hilary describes Camille, and how she keeps us if not precisely on his side (where no-one of good sense would want to be, surely?), but at least wanting to hear from him again, see him again. He brightens the room. There’s the “Here comes hell” passage that Simon quotes at the start of his piece today—I don’t suppose Lucile actually said this (in French, I mean), but it’s so like her, and we know what she means. To be clear, I’m very far from being a romantic, and Camille is really not my type, but I know what Lucile means and I, we, know why she went for it, for him, the whole exciting and silly mess. I also like Danton picking up on Robespierre’s recommendation of Camille to do the government’s PR. Danton agrees: “Camille is good at versions.” Camille is so good at all sorts of things, except actually being good. (Doesn’t he say as much early on?)
And that extraordinary description of the Sea-Green Incorruptible: “Here Robespierre sat, very new, as if he had been taken out of a box and placed unruffled in a velvet armchair in Danton’s apartment.” It makes me think of a new toy, so precious that the child is not allowed to play with it: R’s honor is so precious, his conscience so tender, that he does not allow himself to do anything. Yet somehow he knows when anything happens, and always either has precise ideas as to what should happen next, or has made himself scarce. While it’s part of their attraction that neither Camille nor Lucile make excuses for themselves, Maximilian doesn’t *need* to make excuses for himself (not yet, anyway): he is careful to do nothing that needs to be excused.
Excellent summary, Susan, of why we like Camille, despite himself, and why Max gives us the creeps! It's Danton I think who accuses Robespierre of being made for opposition and not government - and what is fascinating is that all three are responsible for what is happening, but they wear that responsibility very differently.
My inner historian wants to know how close these wonderful portraits are to the real men, R, D and C (it’s telling that we’re on first name terms with Desmoulins in a way that we are not with the other two)—this at the same time as not wanting to give up any of what Hilary has imagined for us…. I so want it to be true that Lucile said “It doesn’t become me to start squealing now. Gabrielle married a nice young lawyer. I didn’t.”
Camille is like a rock star. I think one of the Louis le Grand profs refers to this affectation of using first names right at the beginning of the novel.
I'm always ambivalent about that question of historical accuracy. Like, I know that Mantel does her research, and it matters to her that she gets it right - and I'm interested to compare fact and fiction. But at the same time, none of that detracts from the work of fiction: they are wonderful portraits like you say.
Mantel and other writers talk about the artifice of dialogue in novels. People don't really talk like this, but we buy into the fiction: dialogue condenses character. So we can suppose the real Lucile may have said something like this to Gabrielle, in more or fewer words.
Squealing though... like a pig to the slaughterhouse. So many aptly chosen words.
“Camille is good at versions.” I loved that line. It almost sounds honest.
I’ve found all the killing hard to read and kept looking for something to lighten the mood. I found it on pg 502 where the ‘cap of liberty’ is mentioned - “Why liberty is thought to require headgear is a mystery.” Made me smile😊 Thanks, Simon!
Claude with the best remark, in my opinion, this chapter: "He has arrived now, he is the Establishment. Anyone who wants to make a revolution has to make it against him."
This recognition of the paradoxical nature of revolution—that in toppling the status quo you then inevitably become the status quo—is prescient in so many ways. There is inherent self-centeredness and hypocrisy already on full display, but this quote made me pause for quite a bit. It is a timeless observation.
(My runner-up quote: "For the rich and powerful, the aim is to be accepted as sansculotte in spirit, without assuming the ridiculous uniform." Another note that echoes to today, with many "elite" wanting to be defined "anti-elite" while still enjoying the benefits of...elitism.)
I'm not going to pretend that I know exactly what's going on, but I'm still enjoying myself!
This chapter was almost too good - I failed in multiple attempts to notice the key points in it because I kept getting drawn in to the details...
Eventually I concluded that the main theme this week for me was how far the characters do or don't face up to the violent consequences of their choices - as Simon said in an earlier comment here, "all three are responsible for what is happening, but they wear that responsibility very differently". I thought that the self-awareness of Lucile's "It doesn't become me to start squealing now" & Marat's "Murder made you" (both brilliant passages!) contrasted nicely with Camille's "No one who is innocent will be touched", Danton's "If only you knew how many people I've saved", & Robespierre the "earnest schoolboy" denouncing conspiracies & advocating for dictatorship in an abstract legalistic way.
The other thing that struck me about this chapter was that it felt like a major turning point - as heralded by Claude's perceptive comment about Camille now being the Establishment - as survival replaces ambition as a major motivator:
Robespierre: "Justice was the servant of policy now; no other position was compatible with survival."
Danton: "But there is a knife. And I'm not going to put my neck under it."
Fabre to Danton: "To survive at all will be the thing now."
I think my heart rate is still recovering from this chapter. Mantel creates such a strong sense of a trap closing and the various players being set on train tracks leading to an increasingly inevitable end. It’s also the chapter where I finally warmed to Camille, and felt genuinely frightened of Robespierre. Danton remains my slightly (very?) problematic favourite - he feels more honest that the other two, even when he’s scheming.
“Here comes hell” is an apt title for Simon’s comments on this week’s rereading. I’ve really loved the last two weeks of readings—this section has been my favorite of APOGS so far. It’s where the story of the Reign of Terror truly begins, and much of the drama unfolds in the realm of behind-the-scenes intrigue—something Mantel handles brilliantly.
The scene where Marat with his foul odors leans in toward Camille, sharing his plan to massacre imprisoned aristocrats as a way to terrorize the populace, all while old portraits of ministers look down on them—it’s chilling and masterfully staged. Mantel is at her best here: using private, charged conversations to reveal character and motivation. But she also delivers the large-scale set pieces—August 10, the September Massacres—with clarity and force.
In my view, the Reign of Terror begins with the assassination of Mandat, and Mantel’s depiction is striking: “[Danton] nodded to Rossignol. Rossignol leaned out of the window and shot Mandat dead.”
One small quibble: there’s no historical record that Danton directly ordered Mandat’s murder. That said, I’m not bothered—he might have, and this is historical fiction after all. Danton was leading the uprising and effectively running the Paris Commune at the time. Still, I wonder if Mantel might have made his complicity in the violence feel more gradual, more internally conflicted. From what we know, Danton was never entirely at peace with political killing—he famously called for the end of the Terror before it claimed him.
I especially enjoy this passage:
“Listen.” Robespierre eased out of a pocket his little volume of The Social Contract. “Oh good, story time,” Danton said. Robespierre opened it at a marked page. “Listen to this. ‘The inflexibility of the laws can in some circumstances make them dangerous and cause the ruin of a state in a crisis … if the danger is such that the machinery of the laws is an obstacle, then a dictator is appointed, who silences the laws.’” He closed the book, raised his eyes questioningly. “Is that a statement of fact,” Danton inquired, “or is it prescriptive?” Robespierre said nothing. “I am afraid I am not impressed by that, just because you have read it out of a book. Even out of Jean-Jacques.” “I want to prepare you for the arguments that people will throw at you.” “You had the passage marked, I see. In future, don’t bother to draw the conversation round. Just ask me straight off what you want to know.”
Something I think Mantel does brilliantly throughout the book is show the ambiguous relationship of all three of our main protagonists to violence and murder. They all find themselves complicit, but to varying degrees excuse or deny their involvement. All of this contrasts with Marat, who horrifies each of them. Danton's role in Mandat's murder seems to fit into that development: Danton excepts some of the logic of an armed insurrection, but not all of it.
I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again: demagogues win power and then act like those they claim to despise. I think we can recognise that on both sides of the Atlantic.
I'm finding my sympathies lying with Gabrielle - she really didn't sign up for this. Lucile is, at this point, more problematic - she just seems to accept things (apart from Danton).
I've often made a comment along the lines 'how you get something is how you'll lose it" (basically, if you're sneaky, someone sneakier will come along. Our 'heroes' (plus Marat) are using unfettered violence - and we now what's coming up...
The apparent complete lack of knowledge of how things work is interesting - you'd think lawyers would understand that. In this chaos, you can see how easy it would be to 'lose' an order, some money or a warrant.
The telling part for me was when the sanscullote is pushing for wholesale slaughter. Camille pushes back, but Marat supports it - the faultlines are showing.
Is anybody else wondering who's really in charge? It doesn't feel as if anybody is. There's lots of manoeuvring but it's politicking rather than policy.
It's interesting how many references there are to untimely death in this chapter - "They kill dictators... ...In the end" as well as Marat's comment. It definitely feels as if the pressure is building.
Remember that in the very first scene with Lucile, she is fantasising about Mary Queen of Scots. She's always had a dark self-destructive streak.
And I think no one knows how anything works because the entire system of government and legal process has broken down. The king is locked up, so do the king's ministers have any power? The constitution is worthless, the Legislative Assembly appears to have no power.
As Danton said a long time ago: power is in the hands of those who turn up and say they're in charge.
I have not yet finished this chapter, but this moment felt like a climax to me, of the entire book as I have come to see it so far: “The people who opposed us, this last week—we now define them as criminals…I am not sure what the crime would be…The crime is being left behind by events…I favor a special tribunal.” The whole novel has been building to this, and I have been dreading this moment, and now it is here. And there is that prescient warning in the opening paragraphs of the chapter: “Anyone who wants to make a revolution has to make it against him.” To perpetuate the Revolution, its founders must turn on the French people and on themselves and the useless slaughter to come makes me dread the reading to come.
Dread's the word. The further we get, the smaller that place of safety feels.
I agree - I am almost getting the vibe of dread I get from the Cromwell trilogy, as the stars of the show are about to go down one after another. I remember being so excited that Mary Boleyn and Anna of Cleves both somehow survived. The way the mood in the Mantel books changes and the characters start being confined to rooms and smaller spaces more and more is just formidable (is it just my perception, or is it all doors and rooms, not just in Danton’s dreams? )
The breakfast crew with its blood-curdling conversations was so terrifying. To me, it brought up the Shelleys, Byron and their company trapped by the incessant rain of the summer-that-wasn‘t of 1816 and imagining monsters.
Wait, so in the battle of Valmy the Duke of Brunswick was bought off with stolen diamonds? Is there any foundation for that?
It was rumour thrown about by Danton's detractors apparently. Probably baseless, but without hard evidence, Mantel gets to have fun with "what if". No one really knows why Brunswick threw the battle, it appears to be one of those little mysteries.
And here I thought the revolutionary army had a moment of genius! That said, I have no idea what actually happened in the battle…
Tomorrow I need to write a footnote on the battle for next week. So hopefully I'll have a clearer idea then!
Love the Shelley-Bryon comparison.
All that doing away with the mos maiorum really threw the doors open for pretty terrible, if fascinating, people…
I think the breakfast scene is the star in this chapter, although there are a lot of other dialogues to love, also the one with Marat - horrifying and too close to the collective reader’s face. No one really knows what to do exactly next, but they all turned up for power. The conspiracy theories are just exactly in line of what we know in communist countries and now, the contemporary world… it is Mantel’s greatest gift to make it all so real and so alive, it is not a costume drama the way a lot of historical “fiction” is - she wrote about people who lived, changed history forever and created modern world, and that writing requires a different kind of detail and urgency, I feel. “Does it ever bother you that … everything is founded on lies?” - “that’s dangerous thing to say. I don’t like that.” On goes the nation making….
I know how this ends, but it is the intrigue getting there. Thanks for picking this book.
I live in Washington D.C. and have seen the Hope Diamond numerous times but, other than hearing it's cursed, I've never paid much attention. I guess it's time to go back and spend a little time with it.
It feels like we’re now well past the point of no return. The theoretical world of journalism and speech-making have morphed into sickening and uncontrolled violence in the real world with very little self-awareness or guilt on the part of the protagonists. Gabrielle and Fabre are the honourable exceptions. I like Fabre’s question to Danton: ‘does it ever bother you that everything is founded on lies?’ Also Louvet to Danton about the infighting among the Jacobins: ‘Either we will kill Robespierre, or he will kill us.’ I must have missed the point at which Robespierre became so dangerous.
And the poor Princesse de Lamballe!
This is utterly chilling.