APOGS #20: The shadow-play world
Part Five, Chapter XIII. Conditional Absolution
There is the world and there is the shadow-play world; there is the world of freedom and illusion, and then there is the real world, in which we watch, year by year, the people we love hammer on their chains. Rising from the floor, she feels the fetters bite in her flesh. I'm bound to you, she thinks: bound to you.
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Hello and welcome to this slow read of A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. To get these posts in your inbox, turn on notifications for ‘2025 A Place of Greater Safety’ in your subscription settings.
This week, we complete A Place of Greater Safety by reading Part Five, Chapter XIII. Conditional Absolution.
Once you have read this week’s reading, you can explore this post and discuss in the comments. The reading schedule, cast of characters and further resources can be found here.
I start each post with a summary of the week’s story, followed by some background, footnotes and tangents.
And then it is over to you. In the comments, let us know what caught your eye and ask the group any questions you may have. And if you’ve tumbled down a rabbit hole or taken your reading off on a tangent, please share where you have been and what you have found.
This week’s story
31 March, Danton returns to Paris. Marat’s sister is waiting for him, advising Danton to strike now before it is too late. At the Duplays, Robespierre agrees to the arrest of Philippeaux and Lacroix, but no one else. The youngest Duplay daughter testifies that Danton raped her and slandered Eléonore.
At the Tuileries, Vadier tells Robespierre that he has no choice: if they arrest Danton, they must also bring Camille in. The committee threatens to end Max’s career, and so the warrants are signed and the guardsmen sent.
9.00 p.m. A friend tips off Danton that Saint-Just plans to denounce him at the National Convention. Danton is delighted. Around the corner, Camille is absorbing news of his mother’s death and remembers his father’s pride at the Old Cordelier. Deputy Panis informs Danton that they are coming to arrest him and Camille. At 2 a.m., Robert Lindet finds the patriots still at home. At dawn, the guard arrests them.
8 a.m. at the Tuileries. Saint-Just explains the facts to the President of the Tribunal and the Public Prosecutor. He makes clear that they will be next if there are any complications. At the Convention, Saint-Just reads out his report against Danton, while Lucile begins her one-woman campaign to free them.
At the Luxembourg, Hérault welcomes the new inmates. Everyone gets acquainted with each other. Max refuses to see Lucile, and Camille writes to her from prison. Max visits him there, though no one will quite believe it.
On 3 April, the trial begins. Fouquier fixes the jury. When Danton speaks, the crowd roars; the court is adjourned. Day two: A witness is accidentally thrown in with the prisoners, along with General Westermann. Saint-Just’s report is read out, and then Danton makes a speech. He goes on and on.
Day three. Restless crowds, and prisoners demanding their rights. Fouquier turns to the Convention for guidance. Saint-Just convinces Robespierre of a conspiracy between Lucile and General Dillon to free the prisoners. The Convention suspends all the prisoners’ rights, and when Camille is prevented from speaking, he throws his notes at his cousin. The trial is over. The guilty are read their sentence as Sanson’s men cut their hair.
Three tumbrils take them to the Place de la Révolution. Hérault and Camille are guillotined first. Danton watches before stepping up.
‘Hey, Sanson?’
’Citizen Danton?’
’Show my head to the people. It’s worth the trouble.’
Background
If you are listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, then I recommend listening to:
36. The Liquidation Process (Second half from around 20 minutes in)
At this late stage, we probably don’t need much background. There is an excellent summary of the last days of Danton here, including a discussion of his legacy and his double image as revolutionary orator and corrupt demagogue.
Footnotes
1. Marat’s Ghost
He moved the chair, unable to drag his eyes from the scrap of humanity that was the Citizeness Albertine. Her garments were funereal layers, an array of wraps and shawls, belonging to no style or fashion that had ever existed or ever could. She spoke with a foreign accent, but it was not the accent of any country to be found on a map.
The final chapter of A Place of Greater Safety opens with a ghost. Kind of. For a moment, Danton mistakes Marat’s sister, Albertine, for the man himself. “In a sense,” she replies, “you are not mistaken … I carry my brother here … We are never separated now.”
I’m curious about whether this visitation with no human fashion or accent is a specific allusion to something… It suggests at least a nonhuman presence. Albertine is some kind of psychopomp, an angel of death, a signal towards the grave.
Marat has played a spectral role in our story. He has appeared mostly to Camille, always convincing him of the need for more bloodshed. And here he appears through his sister, to press Danton down a similar course: “Strike now.”
Danton doesn’t heed the warning or take the advice. He is invincible. Through Albertine, Marat speaks and all colour drains from our world:
‘Do you know me?’ she asked. ‘Tell me, Citizen, when were we ever wrong?’
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2. Babette’s testimony
Only he, Robespierre, excercised self-control. To resist temptation is important now: temptation to look in like a beggar at the lighted window of emotion. ‘Listen, Babette,’ he said. ‘This is very important. Did anyone suggest to you that you should tell this story to me today?’
Elisabeth (Babette) Duplay makes a peculiar appearance in this chapter. The real Élisabeth Le Bas wrote in her memoirs that Georges Danton tried to kiss her when she was a teenager, which is presumably the basis for this allegation of rape.
In the novel, Babette also forced herself on Camille. The implication might be that we should doubt her testimony against Danton. Except we know Danton, and we can quite imagine she is telling the truth. So Mantel leaves us in the dark and forces us to make up our own minds … just like Robespierre.
Mantel presents Babette’s testimony as decisive in turning Max against Danton. This makes sense because Max has always tried to remain ignorant of the personal immortality of both Danton and Camille. He believes a citizen should strive for complete virtue, but is no longer allowed to stay ignorant.
3. Consulting necromancers
If you proceed against him, you pass into a new phase of history, for which I think you are ill-prepared. I tell you, gentlemen – you will be consulting necromancers.’
Lazare Carnot’s words are prophetic. In May, the provincial tribunals were closed, and all suspects were brought to the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris. In June, the Law of 22 Prairial simplified the judicial process and accelerated the rate of executions. Between 10 June and 27 July, 1,366 were executed in “The Great Terror”. The execution of Robespierre on 28 July brought the Reign of Terror to an end.
What about the two deputies who refused to sign the order of arrest for Danton and Desmoulins?
Philippe Rühl will survive the fall of Robespierre but will commit suicide after his involvement in a failed sans-culotte uprising in 1795 against the Thermidor Reaction.
And Robert Lindet? I quite like this guy. At forty-seven, he’s the oldest member of the Committee of Public Safety, and he’s more interested in governing the National Food Commission than lopping off heads. Mantel gives him a version of his most famous line:
‘I am here to feed patriots, not to murder them.’
In the next few years, Lindet will narrowly escape the guillotine on at least two occasions before serving as Minister of Finance in 1799. He refused to serve Napoleon, and this opposition saved him from exile during the Bourbon Restoration. He died in Paris in 1825. Lucile:
Robert Lindet was fifty years old. His age showed in his dry administrator’s face. She wondered how anyone survived to attain it.
4. Blank warrants
Fouquier looked down. ‘Of course I know. Blank warrants, signed by the Committee. That’s a dangerous practice, if I may say so.’
Very dangerous indeed. These blank arrest warrants are powerfully symbolic as they are reminiscent of the much-hated lettres de cachet of the ancien régime, which allowed anyone to be arrested without charge in the name of the king.
In the end, Fouquier would perform his duties as public prosecutor for the trials of Robespierre and Saint-Just. However, Stanislas (“Rabbit”) Fréron later denounced Fouquier as an accomplice of Robespierre. His trial lasted 41 days, the longest trial of the revolution. 419 witnesses were called, and one of the accusations made against him was providing the tribunal judges with “blank judgements” with a space for the name of the condemned. Saint-Just:
‘Yes, it is dangerous, isn’t it?’
Fouquier was guillotined on 7 May 1795. He wrote down his final words:
I have nothing to reproach myself with; I have always complied with the laws, I have never been a creature of Robespierre or Saint-Just; on the contrary, I have been on the verge of being arrested four times. I die for my country and without reproach. I am satisfied: later, my innocence will be recognized.
6. Lucile’s shadow play
The raw April breeze rips through Lucile’s hair, snaking it away from her head like the hair of a woman drowned. Her head turns; eyes still searching. He can see her; she can’t see him.
At some time in the 1770s, François Dominique Séraphin began entertaining guests at a Versailles inn with “Ombres Chinoises”, Chinese shadow puppetry first seen by Europeans in the Far East. Séraphin popularised the art in France, performing to the royal family before taking his theatre to the Palais-Royal. He continued to perform through the French Revolution and died in 1800.
Séraphin used a type of magic lantern, an image projector, that was an antecedent to the camera obscura and photography. Readers of War and Peace will remember Andre’s comparison of life to a magic lantern show at the Battle of Borodino.
Lucile’s one-woman crusade to save her husband is the final tragic twist in this tale. Her arrest, trial and execution are used as justification to bring an end to Danton and Camille’s own legal process. She is murdered to make it easier to kill her husband.
In an unsent letter to Robespierre, she wrote:
I have not his pen to defend him. But the voice of good citizens, and your heart, if it is sensible, will plead for me. Do you believe that people will gain confidence in you by seeing you immolate your best friends?
She was executed on 13 April. In a final note to her mother, she wrote:
A tear falls from my eyes for you. I shall go to sleep in the calm of innocence. Lucile.
7. The Maltese Orange
‘I just wanted to finished The Maltese Orange, that was all. There were such beautiful verses in it. Now the Committee will get the manuscript, and that bastard Collot will pass it off as his own.’ Danton tips back his head and begins to laugh. ‘They will put it on at the Italiens,’ Fabre says, ‘under that blasted plagiarist’s name.’
There is a story that Fabre, on the scaffold, threw his manuscript to the crowd, crying, “My friends, save my glory!” Fabre’s last play was lost, and despite his fears, Collot did not plagiarise it. However, over the next decade, several plays emerged that are thought to be copies or imitations of Fabre’s play.
There is something double-edged about the way Mantel writes the characters of A Place of Greater Safety. They seem simultaneously objects of pity and scorn, satire and sentimentality. You can scoff at Fabre going to the guillotine thinking about his play, or you can feel peculiarly unsettled. Both truths seem to live in the words.
Alternatively, you might wonder with Mike Duncan of the Revolutions podcast, did Fabre go to the scaffold contemplating the lettuce? He died on 16 Germinal of the Republican Calendar, the day he had designated for the humble salad leaf.
Blood orange or limp lettuce? You decide.
8. Conditional absolution
There is a point beyond which – convention and imagination dictate – we cannot go; perhaps it’s here, when the carts decant on to the scaffold their freight, now living and breathing flesh, soon to be dead meat.
A dying or condemned man may be absolved of their sins through confession to an ordained priest. But if there is doubt about the validity of the sacrament, the priest may offer conditional absolution.
Typically, conditional absolution is given when the person is unconscious or feared to be already dead. Neither is the case here. But there is plenty in doubt: do these condemned men believe in God? Do they consent to be shriven? Does God even hear the prayers of priests in our glorious new republic?
We could ask those atheists, Anacharsis Cloots and Jacques Hébert, but the National Razor already has their heads. We could ask Robespierre, who is about to establish a Cult of the Supreme Being, but he’s not answering our calls.
In their absence, we may ask the writer Hilary Mantel, and we can ask ourselves. I think “conditional absolution” best reflects the novel’s moral orientation: we neither condemn nor condone these characters. We have walked with them and become them. At this point beyond which we cannot pass, we set aside our useless judgment and offer conditional absolution.
I am reminded of the epigraph to The Mirror and the Light, which quotes the French poet François Villon:
Brother men, you who live after us,
Do not harden your hearts against us.
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9. Endings and afterlives
‘I wrote to Rabbit,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tell you. I asked him to come back, give us his support.’
Camille asks whether people are still wondering why he called Stanislas Fréron by the nickname Rabbit. There is “no reason”, he tells Lucile. That’s curious because one source online suggests that they called him “Lapin” because of his fondness for the pet rabbits of Annette Duplessis. But Mantel has Camille calling him Rabbit in their school days, long before the Duplessis family had appeared on the scene.
Still, I like that “no reason.” Not everything can be explained. Some things in stories and in history have no sense or reason.
Fréron named two of his children after his friends Camille and Lucile. However, he did not respond to Lucile’s plea to return to Paris. In fact, Fréron abandoned the Jacobin cause and joined the Thermidorian Reaction, aiding the arrests of the remaining members of the "Mountain” after the execution of Robespierre.
Readers may wonder why Mantel chose to end the narrative in April with the deaths of Camille and Danton. After all, July 1794 isn’t so far away, with the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror. But the answer seems plain: this is the story of the relationships between these three men. That story ends with the deaths of two of them.
‘When this business is over, and Camille is dead, I shall not want to hear your epitaph for him. No one is ever to speak of him again, I absolutely forbid it. When he is dead, I shall want to think about him myself, alone.’
The remainder of Max’s life (all three months of it) is taken up by the escalation of the Terror, another period of illness and a fight for his life. If the novel had continued, it would have become a book about Robespierre or the Terror. But instead, the book opens with Camille Desmoulins as a boy. It ends with a cutting from The Times, remarking on how Camille has been “crushed” in the clash between “these two famous revolutionists”, Danton and Robespierre.
Mantel interview: Literature of the Revolution
10. Final thoughts: a book one can think and live inside
I am not trying to persuade my reader to view events in a particular way, or to draw any particular lessons from them. I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions, change sympathies: a book that one can think and live inside.
All these slow reads at Footnotes & Tangents are re-reads for me. They are driven by curiosity to learn more about the books I love. I always end with a sense that I have only scratched the surface. We could have spent a year on this book. But I also don’t think I have the stomach to stay with so much dread, terror and death for twelve months.
This is a book one lives inside, but also a novel one is glad to escape. Paris in 1793 and 1794 is no place to be. A Place of Greater Safety is a great book because it makes me feel too much. It induces a sort of literary vertigo; a waking nightmare; reading asphyxiation.
This is not a safe book, and I am glad to be somewhere safer now, reading other stories beyond my friends Robespierre, Danton and Camille.
Thank you
And that’s it. Congratulations on finishing A Place of Greater Safety, and thank you as always for joining me on this slow read.
In the comments, let us know what caught your eye and ask the group any questions you may have. And if you’ve tumbled down a rabbit hole or taken your reading off on a tangent, please share where you have been and what you have found.
The next slow read starts on 29 September when we begin Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. You will find the reading schedule, further resources and weekly posts for that read-along here. I hope you can join us.
This slow read and book guide is free. If you have enjoyed it and found it helpful, please consider a paid subscription or a one-off donation to support Footnotes & Tangents. Thank you!
Until next time, I wish everyone happy and adventurous reading.
Simon
Thank you so much, Simon and all the members of the group. I struggled with this book at times (number of characters, changing viewpoints...), and the notes and comments were so, so helpful. That trial, though... What a travesty... We knew we were in for a sobering conclusion, but Mantel aces it -- there are still the flashes of wit amidst that terrible darkness. Definitely one to return to one day.
Before I say anything about this chapter, I just want to offer huge thanks to you, Simon, for this fantastic readalong. This is such a complex book, I would never have had such a rich and deep experience of it without your guidance. Both the footnotes and the tangents have been essential!
Big gratitude to everyone in the group, too. I don't always have much to add (although sometimes I do, hehe!) but every week I hop on and read all the comments. All of your thoughts and views and sidenotes and passions really enriched my reading and thinking. Thanks so much everyone! This has been great, and I'm as devastated to say goodbye to all of you as I am to our Jacobin friends.