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a9b0284
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My father doesn't have views. He would like to, but he can't take the risk.
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Hilary Mantel |
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7f7ca6a
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He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
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politics
robespierre
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Hilary Mantel |
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260ed36
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At the front, people die for their mistakes. Why should politicians be more gently treated? They made the war. They deserve a dozen deaths, each of them. What can we try them for, except for treason, and how can you punish treason, except by death?
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treason
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Hilary Mantel |
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6a0e56d
|
The Republic is six months old, and it's flying apart. It has no cohesive force--only a monarchy has that. Surely you can see? We need the monarchy to pull the country together-- then we can win the war." Danton shook his head. "Winners make money," Dumouriez said. "I thought you went where the pickings were richest?" "I shall maintain the Republic," Danton said. "Why?" "Because it is the only honest thing there is." "Honest? With your peop..
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Hilary Mantel |
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05aa57a
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Good morning," she said. "Are you drunk?" She noticed what a split second it took for him to flare into aggression. "Do I look it?" "No. Where is Citizen Danton?" "I've done away with him. I've been busy dismembering him for the last three hours. Would you like to help me carry his remnants down to the concierge? Oh really, Louise! He's in bed and asleep, where do you think he is?" "And is he drunk?" "Very. What is all this harping on intox..
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humour
friendship
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Hilary Mantel |
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fde52ea
|
Who are the Brissotins? A good question. You see, if you accuse people of a crime (for example, and especially, conspiracy) and refuse to sever their trials, then it will at once be seen that they are a group, that they have cohesion. Then if we want to say, you're a Brissotin, you're a Girondist--prove that you're not. Prove that you have a right to be treated separately.
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legal-system
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Hilary Mantel |
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6f406e6
|
In this new hall the factions regroup in their old places. Legendre the butcher bawls out a Brissotin: "I'll slaughter you!" "First," says the deputy, "have a decree passed to say that I am an ox."
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Hilary Mantel |
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4bfda4c
|
You would save them. If you could." "No. There are periods in revolution when to live is a crime, and people must know how to yield their heads if they are demanded. Perhaps mine will be. If that time comes, I won't dispute it."
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Hilary Mantel |
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c33e3c1
|
It's all right for you, you and Danton. I have to go and stutter for two hours at the Jacobins and probably be knocked down again by maddened violin makers and trampled by all sorts of tradesmen. Whilst Danton spends his evenings feeling up his new girlfriend and you lie around here in a nice fever, not too high. If you're an instrument of destiny, and anyone would do instead, why don't you take a holiday?
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Hilary Mantel |
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23cf1a0
|
A generation back, his family were called Writh, but they thought an elegant extension would give them consequence;" Cromwell of Wriothesley"
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Hilary Mantel |
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31520d8
|
I resent you--" Robespierre said. His words were lost. "The People," he shouted, "are everywhere good, and if they obstruct the Revolution--even, for example, at Toulon--we must blame their leaders." "What are you going on about this for?" Danton asked him. Fabre launched himself from the wall. "He is trying to enunciate a doctrine," he shrieked. "He thinks the time has come for a bloody sermon." "If only," Robespierre yelled, "there were..
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Hilary Mantel |
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5867a30
|
Law of Suspects. Suspects are those: who have in any way aided tyranny (royal tyranny, Brissotin tyranny...); who cannot show that they have performed their civic duties; who do not starve, and yet have no visible means of support; who have been refused certificates of citizenship by their Sections; who have been removed from public office by the Convention or its representatives; who belong to an aristocratic family, and have not given pro..
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law
terror
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Hilary Mantel |
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c9449fa
|
People said-- though this felt like a heresy-- that they had seen Camille make Robespierre laugh.
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humour
|
Hilary Mantel |
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520570d
|
As the year goes on, certain deputies--and others, high in public life--will appear unshaven, without coat or cravat; or they will jettison these marks of the polite man, when the temperature rises. They affect the style of men who begin their mornings with a splash under a backyard pump, and who stop off at their street-corner bar for a nip of spirits on their way to ten hours' manual labor. Citizen Robespierre, however, is a breathing reb..
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humour
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Hilary Mantel |
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287ef01
|
Georges told me he would be back, and I have no reason to disbelieve him--but perhaps you'd like to sit down here and write him a letter? Tell him you can't manage the thing without him, which is true. Tell him Robespierre says he can't get along without him. And when you're done, you might go and find Robespierre and ask him to call. He is such a steadying influence when Camille is killing himself.
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humour
|
Hilary Mantel |
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3fcac24
|
Messengers wait outside the door, to carry urgent orders for release. It is difficult, when the pen skips over a name, to associate it with the corpse it might belong to, tomorrow or the day after that. There is no sense of evil in the room, just tiredness and the aftertaste of petty squabbling. Camille drinks quite a lot of Fabre's brandy. Towards daybreak, a kind of dismal camaraderie sets in.
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Hilary Mantel |
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6566e34
|
I can't divide Camille's loyalties. Who knows? He might make the wrong choice.
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friendship
|
Hilary Mantel |
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aaaaecf
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Suppose he found that persistent unsparing voice at his elbow one day, claiming that Danton lacked probity; he had an answer, pat, not a logical one, but one sufficiently chilling to put logic in abeyance. To question Danton's patriotism was to cast in doubt the whole Revolution. A tree is known by its fruits, and Danton made August 10. First he made the republic of the Cordeliers, then he made the Republic of France. If Danton is not a pat..
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Hilary Mantel |
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408b73a
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Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d'Anton's temples. "Put your fingers here," he said. "Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here." He jabbed at d'Anton's face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. "I'll teach you like an actor," he said. "This city is our stage." Camille said: "Book of Ezekiel. 'This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh' ..." Fabre turned. "This stutter," he said. "You don't have to do it." Camille p..
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public-speaking
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Hilary Mantel |
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3efb0aa
|
1776: A declaration of the Parlement of Paris: The first rule of justice is to conserve for each individual that which belongs to him. This is a fundamental rule of natural law, human rights and civil government; a rule which consists not only in maintaining the rights of property, but also those rights vested in the individual and derived from prerogatives of birth and social position.
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politics
rights
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Hilary Mantel |
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47cbc99
|
And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city's uncounted population of stone men and women and beasts, and things that are neither human nor beasts, fanged rabbits and flying hares, four-legged birds and pinioned snakes, imps with bulging eyes and duck's bills, men who are wreathed in leaves or have the heads of goats or rams; creatures with knotted coils and leather wings, with hairy ears and ..
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sculpture
grotesque
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Hilary Mantel |
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fad9c42
|
This is Maximilien de Robespierre, barrister-at-law: unmarried, personable, a young man with all his life before him. Today against his most deeply held convictions he has followed the course of the law and sentenced a criminal to death. And now he is going to pay for it.
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Hilary Mantel |
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f367e07
|
Mirabeau: "If you have been told to clear us from this hall, you must ask for orders to use force. We shall leave our seats only at bayonet point. The King can cause us to be killed; tell him we all await death; but he need not hope that we shall separate until we have made the constitution." Audible only to his neighbor, he adds, "If they come, we bugger off, quick."
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humour
|
Hilary Mantel |
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527fa86
|
Inside his copy of The Social Contract he keeps a letter from a young Picard, an enthusiast called Antoine Saint-Just: "I know you, Robespierre, as I know God, by your works." When he suffers, as he does increasingly, from a distressing tightness of the chest and shortness of breath, and when his eyes seem too tired to focus on the printed page, the thought of the letter urges the weak flesh to more Works."
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Hilary Mantel |
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67ea2b1
|
He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the impact of the axe. The cardinal when he fell had no persecutor more relentless than Thomas More. Yet, he thinks, I did not hate him. I exercised my skills to the utmost to persuade him to reconcile with the king. And I thought I would win him, ..
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reflection
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Hilary Mantel |
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bb64067
|
He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expectant. He shouts for the waiters. The doors burst open. Sweating men heave the platters to the table. It seems the meat is fresh, in fact not slaughtered yet. It is just a minor breach of etiquette. The company must sit and salivate. The Boleyns ..
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Hilary Mantel |
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367b9e4
|
To his inner ear, the cardinal speaks. He says, I saw you, Crumb, when you were at Elvetham: scratching your balls in the dawn and wondering at the violence of the king's whims. If he wants a new wife, fix him one. I didn't, and I am dead.
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Hilary Mantel |
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00d1134
|
If you want to do his soul good, why do you continually obstruct him? It hardly makes him a better man. Do you never think that, if you had bowed to the king's wishes years ago, if you had entered a convent and allowed him to remarry, he would never have broken with Rome? There would have been no need. Sufficient doubt was cast upon your marriage for you to retire with a good grace. You would have been honoured by all. But now the titles yo..
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Hilary Mantel |
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476ff57
|
He is not in the habit of explaining himself. He is not in the habit of discussing his successes. But whenever good fortune has called on him, he has been there, planted on the threshold, ready to fling open the door to her timid scratch on the wood.
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Hilary Mantel |
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a0eeba9
|
They say that at Thomas More's trial, Master Secretary here followed the jury to their deliberations, and when they were seated he closed the door behind him and he laid down the law. "Let me put you out of doubt," he said to the jurymen. "Your task is to find Sir Thomas guilty, and you will have no dinner till you have done it." Then out he went and shut the door again and stood outside it with a hatchet in his hand, in case they broke out..
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Hilary Mantel |
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72cef3c
|
He, Cromwell, says to his visitors, just tell them this, and tell them loud: to each monk, one bed: to each bed, one monk. Is that so hard for them?
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religion
|
Hilary Mantel |
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e527227
|
They say she has all the gentlemen of the king's privy chamber, one after another. She don't like delay so they all stand in a line frigging their members, till she shouts, "Next."
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Hilary Mantel |
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6688640
|
There is no obvious reason for voices and visions. My temperature is near normal and my pain relief is the usual moderate regime. Later the hallies, as I think of them, become less threatening, but more childish and conspiratorial. I close my eyes and they begin to pack my belongings into a pillow case, whispering and grinning. One sharp-faced dwarfish hally pulls at my right arm, and I drive her off with an elbow in her eye. After this the..
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Hilary Mantel |
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9a51060
|
I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter, deceased-- it really is a bad stretch of road. Philippe's heirs and assigns having coincidentally expired, end of the monarchy, reign of M.Danton.
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french-revolution
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Hilary Mantel |
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19fd51e
|
Champs-de-Mars, the day of celebration: a crowd of people in Sunday clothes. Women with parasols, pet dogs on leads. Stickyfingered children pawing at their mothers; people who have bought coconuts and don't know what to make of them. Then the glint of light on bayonets, people clutching hands, whirling children off their feet, pushing and calling out in alarm as they are separated from their families. Some mistake, there must be some mista..
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Hilary Mantel |
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1bf24d7
|
With France as she is, poor and unarmed, war means defeat. Defeat means either a military dictator who will salvage what he can and set up a new tyranny, or it means a total collapse and the return of absolute monarchy. It could mean both, one after the other. After ten years not a single one of our achievements will remain, and to your son liberty will be an old man's daydream. This is what will happen, Danton. No one can sincerely maintai..
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Hilary Mantel |
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868c16e
|
he and the cardinal agree it would be better if Luther had never been born, or better if he had been born more subtle.
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Hilary Mantel |
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be7036a
|
When a man admits guilt we have to believe him. We cannot set ourselves to proving to him that he is wrong. Otherwise the law courts would never function.
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law
guilt
|
Hilary Mantel |
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43b4747
|
his greatest ambition for England is this: the prince and his commonwealth should be in accord. He doesn't want the kingdom to be run like Walter's house in Putney, with fighting all the time and the sound of banging and shrieking day and night. He wants it to be a household where everybody knows what they have to do, and feels safe doing it. He says to Rice, 'Stephen Gardiner says I should write a book.
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Hilary Mantel |
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68f1f23
|
People confuse early rising with moral worth;
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Hilary Mantel |
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52aaa7a
|
He does not even hate Francis Weston, any more than you hate a biting midge; you just wonder why it was created.
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Hilary Mantel |
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b1d1a19
|
Only then, Hans would insist on committing another portrait against me.
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Hilary Mantel |
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e2ef7ef
|
in those days his treason stood still to be proved. This is not Italy, boy. We have courts of law.
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Hilary Mantel |
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9277cf4
|
Let us say, his will is convinced, but not his conscience.
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Hilary Mantel |