A Place of Greater Safety

by Hilary Mantel

But you must state a case, I think, before you can plead against it.

he offers a due deference to the opinions of others, then takes no notice of them at all.

‘I’m good at dumb insolence. I practise: for obvious reasons.’

worrying the situation like a dog with a bone.

Whose thoughts ran to an alien current.

‘Ah, the overthrowing of everything. Lucrative business, that. Business to put your son into.’

sick apprehension running through him like a slow, cold flame.

they’re only human.’ Robespierre flicked a glance up at him. ‘Really, Danton, the times being what they are, I think we could all do with being a bit more than that.’

But – there you are – steady money, easy life – it’s never quite been enough, has it?’

I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there’s nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.

Writing’s like running downhill; can’t stop if you want to.

you don’t work with people, Danton, you work over them. But how could he have known, he asked himself, that people would be so ready to take orders? Earlier in life, he had never suspected it.

We live at a time of great events and little men.”’

He distrusted the commitments he might make on paper, distrusted the permanent snare for his temporary opinions.

Couthon’s spine is diseased, he has constant pain. Robespierre says this does not embitter him. Only Robespierre could believe this.

Perhaps the smile looked sarcastic, or patronizing or disapproving. But it was the only one available to his face.

Marat came. He looked dirtier than ever. As if in sympathy with his work, his skin had taken on the colour of poor-quality newsprint.

We mustn’t be doctrinaire. But then, pragmatism can so easily degenerate into lack of principle.’

On the sansculotte head, the red bonnet, the ‘cap of liberty’. Why liberty is thought to require headgear is a mystery.

celibacy is easy but half-celibacy is very hard,

when pleasures you deny yourself turn out not to be pleasures, you’re doubly destroyed, for not only do you lose an illusion, you also feel futile.

there was no conquering one’s spiritual distaste for the casual encounter.

They fling the word about like largesse to the poor.

Well, you know how it is, some people are born with sour temperaments and they use the misfortunes in their lives as an excuse for them.

Camille, these days, was almost knitting his weaknesses into strengths.

What can we try them for, except for treason, and how can you punish treason, except by death?’

What they will not realize, what they will not accept, is that the poor are going to be driven like pack-animals through this Revolution and every other.

One wonders why there are so many women who follow Robespierre. It is because the French Revolution is a religion, and Robespierre is a priest.

I understand your power.’ ‘But what you don’t understand is the consequence of exercising it.

This was an expression that was coming up in the world; for the last few weeks it had been on everyone’s lips. ‘The public safety. But somehow, whatever measures are taken, one never feels any safer. I wonder why that is?’

I’m quite unused to being the cool voice of reason, so don’t test my abilities in that line.’

like a coffin-worm at a wedding feast,

I’m not the best person at thinking of things to say, and we’ve never been so close that nothing needs to be said. That’s my fault, I suppose. And I regret it.’

‘An air of quiet industry prevails,’ Danton said. ‘That’s what I like to see.’

My father doesn’t have views. He would like to, but he can’t take the risk.’

‘There hasn’t been a pie baked in Europe these last three years that you haven’t had a finger in. How old are you Danton?’

‘We have to discharge our public duties.’ ‘Most of you discharge your public duties by beginning to drink at nine o’clock in the morning and spend your day plotting how you can stab each other in the back and make off with each other’s wives.’

‘You are incredibly vain.’ ‘Yes. There seems no reason why I should learn to be less so.

But be warned – this cityful of ragged illiterates that you pander to is not France.’

He affects a single earring, but he resembles less a corsair than a slightly deranged merchant banker.

She always looked, these days, like a person who could give advice but never did.

‘Oh yes – can we offer you an escort, Citizen Deputy, to a place of greater safety?’ ‘The grave,’ Camille said. ‘The grave.’

‘I THINK we were somewhat – er – infirm of purpose,’

‘When you were a child you were taught to examine your conscience each night. Have you left off that practice?’ ‘A man must sleep.’

I like to see him pulled down by the accumulated weight of his pettiness.’

Pytheus said that in the island of Thule, which Virgil called Ultima Thule, six days’ journey from Great Britain, there was neither earth, nor sea, but a mixture of the three elements, in which it was not possible to walk, or go in a vessel; he spoke of it as a thing which he had seen.

Weariness like a parasite seemed to burst into flower from his bones.

soft-bodied countrywomen, in their strange, dowdy, practical clothes.

‘It sounds as if you only want a God because he fills the gaps in your policies.’

‘Well, I am most people’s moral superior. I know all the theory, and I have all the ethical scruples. It is only in my conduct that there is something wanting.