Facing him, Danton immediately sprang to his feet and shot back, “What you want, in reality, is simply for France to continue under a military dictatorship led by you. As for what I wish, it is merely to replace a rotten, incompetent monarchy—and any future Reign of Terror—with a civil administration where powers restrain one another.”

  Lafayette shrugged, unconcerned. He began by sneering that this Paris Commune member before him—soon to become the chief administrator of the Paris provincial government—had been pocketing bribes on a grand scale from every sort of municipal works and living a life of corruption he did not deserve. In the end, Lafayette asked with open contempt how a mere son of a Champagne farmer could have accumulated a fortune worth two million livres in less than two years.

  At these words, Danton was enraged. He leapt from his chair, the Titan swinging his fists, ready to pummel the arrogant nobleman. Lafayette, a soldier hardened by gunfire and battle, did not retreat in the slightest. He stared straight into Danton’s furious eyes and stepped forward to meet him.

  On the bed, Mirabeau shook with anger. He wanted to raise his hand and deliver each of these self-serving bastards a resounding slap, but his strength failed him. The ageing lion could only rasp out a hoarse, feeble curse: “Damn you both—look at your stupid, ridiculous quarrel. I did not invite you here to torture me!”

  Hearing this, André could only shake his head helplessly. He rose from the bench and pushed the door open, stepping between Danton and Lafayette and physically separating the two men, who looked about to fight like a pair of gamecocks.

  At Mirabeau’s repeated command to be gone, Danton and Lafayette left the bedroom, both of them sullen. Danton deliberately lingered behind; as he passed, he gave André a quick look, signalling that they should meet downstairs later. André acknowledged this with the slightest nod and closed the bedroom door behind them.

  Mirabeau looked still more aged as he lay there. His pitiful cheeks had flushed with a morbid red from the excitement. The Comte’s vision was so blurred that his clouded pupils could no longer focus. André stepped forward, intending to help him into a more comfortable half-reclining position, but Mirabeau brusquely waved him off.

  “Do not trouble yourself, my friend. The lion’s time is all but spent. I am now nothing more than a dying old dog. I have no need of pity. All I require is to lie here all day and grow used in advance to life in the grave.” Mirabeau spoke in a tone of self-mockery, but a sudden gleam flashed in his eyes and his lids filled with tears.

  André found no words. At a loss, he could only offer the sick man platitudes he did not believe himself. But Mirabeau was a lion to the last. Even in extremis, he had no use for anyone’s sympathy or sighs.

  “Your lies are far too fragile,” Mirabeau said, resting one hand on André’s arm, “but I choose to forgive you. Now I only want someone to talk to. You know this, André: Mirabeau would dearly like to live another year or two, so that the great ship of the French kingdom does not run aground and sink. But I also know that Danton, Robespierre, Marat, you—and many, many others—have no desire to see that happen. You shameless fellows treat the Revolution as a ladder to wealth and power, while the people you inflame become your accomplices without even realising it. I hate this, but I am powerless to change it. So perhaps an early death will spare me from being hated, dug up from my grave, and dragged out of the tomb.”

  In all honesty, if Mirabeau had not been on his deathbed, André would never have come to call at the Comte’s residence again. Such “last words” might have moved André of 1789, but they would never persuade the André of today to change course. From his later vantage point, he thought: Why should Mirabeau and Lafayette be able to accomplish everything with a wave of the hand, while I, having worked several times harder than they, am not allowed to succeed? Simply because they were born nobles, with all the advantages that implies?

  As someone who comes from the future, André knew exactly how to accumulate political and economic capital swiftly amid the confusion and fog of this Revolutionary era. He might never become a new noble himself, but he was fully capable of dragging former nobles down among commoners. Now that Mirabeau was close to death, André’s purpose in coming was clear: to “seek out” his political mentor’s legacy.

  He told Mirabeau bluntly, “No one knows better than you how cruel and unjust this world truly is, filled at every moment with competition and elimination. When we first arrived in Paris—Danton, Marat, even Robespierre and I—we were nobodies, penniless victims-in-waiting, lambs to the slaughter. However brilliant, however dazzling, however popular our efforts may have been compared with most people, in the eyes of the powerful we remained lambs whose only talent was bleating. If we do not wish to be devoured, we have only one choice: to become wolves ourselves—wolves that not only eat lambs, but devour other wolves as well.”

  There was no doubt that these words would prove a true picture of the Revolution’s development over the next several years. As he spoke, André gave Mirabeau a cold look. For all his brilliance and lack of scruple, this political genius was not strong enough. He was no invincible hero from legend. Even if God granted him another two years, he would not have the power to halt the surging tide of the Revolution—he would only be shattered by it and die disgraced.

  Mirabeau could not help but sigh. He knew that this blurred figure before him—the scoundrel he had taken under his wing—had finally spoken a plain truth. At the same time, Mirabeau let go of his last hopes, especially after his failed attempt to persuade Danton and Lafayette to set aside their enmity and join hands to preserve the monarchy.

  André went on, “That said, I once made you a promise in the club, and that promise still stands. In the next two years, I will help Lafayette once—only once.” Lafayette might be a proud nobleman to the core, but he was no petty villain. For André to sacrifice himself for another and exhaust all his strength was out of the question. To lend a hand in passing, however, he could consider.

  Mirabeau nodded. If André was willing to make such a pledge, he would not join with Danton to harm Lafayette. For all his own debauchery and lies, Mirabeau remained convinced that only a man like Lafayette—honest, upright, compassionate, and brave—could save France and keep the country stable.

  Although Mirabeau had actively taken part in and even led the process of sweeping away the Estates-General and creating the National Assembly, deep down this unruly Comte still cherished the France of May 1789, which the British MP Edmund Burke had once praised: “a kingdom governed by the mildest of European monarchs and the most beautiful of queens, under whom a lively, noble, and cultivated aristocracy flourished alongside a respectable clergy and an independent judiciary.” In his eyes this monarchy was “despotic only in appearance, not in practice.” With a few small adjustments, the Estates-General could have become a body like the British Parliament, truly representing the interests of the nation.

  Sadly, anarchist tendencies and long-nursed resentments had rendered human nature complex and politics cruel. The more firmly one clung to honourable qualities, the more likely one was to be betrayed and cut down early. Strip away the gentle mask of politics, and all that remains is endless flesh and piled bones. Those with a moral fastidiousness rarely survive such a game.

  The somewhat na?ve Lafayette was never suited to the sacred mission that this great age tried to thrust upon him. It was fortunate that history ultimately drove him to choose self-imposed exile and thereby survive.

  “Thank you for your promise,” Mirabeau murmured. He pointed to the wardrobe on his right and muttered, “In the third drawer from the top you will find a stack of letters. Take them and keep them safe. And damn it—do not open them in front of me.”

  André did as he was told. He found the bulging bundle of correspondence and stuffed it into his waistband. As for their contents, he could guess seven or eight parts out of ten. He thought to himself that the trip had not been in vain—his harvest was substantial.

  When Doctor Cabanis came in to urge the visitors to leave, Mirabeau called André back just as he reached the door and asked, “I would like to know how history will judge Mirabeau. And I have no wish to hear the insincere flattery of those rabble outside.”

  André stopped, thought for a moment, then turned and said, “You mercilessly shook the foundations of the old order, yet childishly tried to prop it up with your other hand. In the end, you made yourself the hero of a Don Quixote-like tragedy.”

  “And what will become of France?” the patient asked, unwilling to let the matter drop.

  This time, André did not hesitate or hold anything back. He quoted directly from a famous political prophecy in Edmund Burke’s :

  “The destructive fury of the French Revolution will in the end give rise to a new form of despotism, and only such a power will be capable of saving society from complete chaos and collapse.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Mirabeau burst out laughing at this and waved for his guest, who championed strong authority, to get out as quickly as possible. Then he lifted his head and said to his friend, the doctor:

  “As every Parisian expects, the great Mirabeau will not live to see tomorrow’s sun. There is, therefore, only one thing left to do. Have the room perfumed, cover my bed with fresh flowers, and ensure that sweet music surrounds me at every moment, so that I may pass peacefully into eternal sleep…”

  When André went down to the carriage stand, he saw Danton beckoning to him from another carriage. After murmuring a quick instruction to Second Lieutenant Dumas, he headed straight for Danton’s coach.

  As soon as André climbed aboard, Danton banged hard on the carriage wall, signalling the driver to move off at once. He casually handed André an opened bottle of champagne, and the two natives of Champagne took turns drinking straight from it. Behind them, acting as escort, Second Lieutenant Dumas told his driver to follow at an easy pace.

  When the bottle was empty, Danton tossed it out of the window. The sound of shattering glass pleased him greatly. Raising his voice, he shouted, “Mirabeau is at death’s door and still clings to his illusions. I suppose he tried to persuade you as well to help Lafayette save that ridiculous monarchy. That relic deserves to be buried and sealed in a tomb.”

  André did not deny it. He replied evenly, “We are not like him. Lafayette comes from a great noble house. The fruits of our twenty years of struggle still fall short of what he can obtain with a few casual words.”

  Danton roared with laughter. André’s emphasis on “we” had clearly delighted him. “I cannot stand that posturing fellow,” he said. “He actually denounced me publicly in the Paris Commune, claiming that I, Danton, took a bribe of one hundred thousand livres from a construction contractor. Damn him. Men like us may well be worth one hundred thousand livres to someone—but we are not the sort of men who can be bought for one hundred thousand livres.”

  “Exactly,” André said with some pride. “It would have to be one hundred thousand gold Louis. Gold has no smell at all, and the sound of gold coins is far more pleasing to the ear.”

  In that sense, André and Danton were the true beneficiaries of the Revolution. Without this upheaval, the orphan from Reims and the farmer’s son from Champagne would have remained in the lower ranks of society forever. Having hacked their way through a thousand armies and a forest of gunfire, they felt perfectly entitled to enjoy the happiness and success they had wrested from the struggle.

  Leaning back against the carriage, Danton looked at André and said, “In the Constituent Assembly and in the Jacobin Club, many people are openly accusing you of creating a blood-soaked terror in Reims and trying to establish a dictatorship there.”

  Such accusations were nothing new; André had heard them often. He replied with righteous indignation, “A dictator in a town of 50,000 in Reims—planning to challenge 25 million citizens of France? Am I the madman here, or is someone else stirring up plots in the dark? As for the men executed by the military tribunal, they were agitators who tried to assassinate serving officers.”

  Danton waved this aside. “That is why, a week ago, I denounced such conspirators aloud in three places: the National Constituent Assembly, the Executive Committee of the Paris Commune, and the regular meeting of the Jacobin Club. As a result, no proposal against you has been tabled. On this matter, besides Robespierre and Prieur, Marat and Hébert are on our side as well.”

  At this last remark, André set the bottle down and grew solemn. He understood that Danton was working hard to win over Marat’s faction and shape public opinion for his own entry into the Paris provincial administration.

  “All right—what do you want?” André narrowed his eyes, ready to hear and weigh the terms of a political bargain.

  Danton leaned forward, lowered his voice, and said, “Paul Marat has obtained highly reliable information from an informant at court. He is convinced that the Tuileries, with the help of foreign envoys, is secretly planning a royal escape. There are at least two potential destinations: Brussels in the Netherlands and the Metz camp controlled by Marquis de Bouillé. Judging by distance, the route through the Marne is the most likely. So Marat hopes you can strengthen security in the Marne and the Ardennes forests and cut off the Tuileries’ escape route.”

  André did not hesitate. “Within a radius of thirty kilometres around Reims, there will be no problem,” he said at once. “But I cannot guarantee anything for Chalons-en-Champagne to the east or the Ardennes to the north. The Champagne Composite Regiment and the Reims militia cannot deploy outside their jurisdiction.”

  “That is more than enough. Marat has already ordered Chaumette and his maid-lover at the palace to keep close watch on the royal family, and any sign of movement will be reported to Chief Javert at once.” Danton seemed satisfied with André’s answer.

  “I have a small request of my own,” André said, seizing the moment. “I hope to receive the chairman of the Cordeliers Club’s assistance.” He named his own price.

  After the two men came to an agreement, André politely declined Danton’s invitation to dinner and returned to his own carriage. In Paris he had too many urgent matters to attend to.

  In the 20th century, mention of Rue Saint-Honoré would instantly make people think of the élysée Palace—the residence of the French President—and the flagship stores of luxury brands like Hermès, Chanel, Dior, and Louis Vuitton. For a full century, Rue Saint-Honoré would be hailed as the most fashionable street in the world.

  Two hundred years earlier, however, the street was known for something else. Flanked by luxurious noble townhouses and notorious Irish enforcers lurking under the streetlamps, it was also the heart of the Parisian press. Of the more than 500 newspapers and journals in Paris, nearly half were clustered along this narrow strip.

  At dusk, André’s four-wheeled carriage pulled up smoothly before the offices of a newspaper called Le Figaro. From the outside, it looked like a very ordinary establishment. In fact, until last year, it had been known as the Journal des Affaires Européennes. Mismanaged by its previous owner, it had been on the brink of bankruptcy. Three months earlier, André had quietly sent someone to buy it and rename it after what would one day be one of France’s most famous newspapers, Le Figaro. He then appointed a Jewish acquaintance from his youth, Blanc Deyo, as its manager.

  In his younger days, dreaming of life in the capital, Blanc Deyo had shipped large consignments of champagne to Paris to sell, only to have one such shipment looted by vagrants on the road. To pay off his debts and support his family, he had been forced to sell his shop and take a lowly job as an auditor at the Champagne Exchange, doing part-time work for a Reims newspaper in his spare time.

  After André’s return to Reims, he immediately offered Blanc Deyo a chance to start over. In return for André paying off the remaining debts, Deyo was given two choices: one, to receive a shop free of charge on one of Reims’ busiest streets, allowing his family to enjoy a quiet, comfortable life; or two, to try his luck in Paris by taking on a venture full of uncertainties—and dangers.

  Unsurprisingly, Deyo chose the second option. Jews were accustomed to seeking glory and fortune in risk. Serving as the manager of Le Figaro was the entrepreneurial platform André had promised him.

  In the early phase of the Revolution, Paris—newly enamoured of “liberty” and “equality”—had adopted a liberal policy on the press. Even after City Hall enacted a Press Management Law, it was so fiercely attacked by left-wing deputies such as Mirabeau, Prieur, and Robespierre that most journalists and editors in Paris simply ignored it. In truth, the only editor who really paid dearly for his words was the madman Marat.

  André understood all too well how vital it was to harness newspapers to control the flow of information and guide and manipulate public opinion. Once he had secured his position in Reims, he instructed Javert to buy the Journal des Affaires Européennes in secret, rename it Le Figaro, and install Blanc Deyo as editor-in-chief.

  When Deyo accepted the assignment in Reims, André had spelled out the paper’s motto: “If criticism is not free, then praise has no meaning.” It was an ostentatious slogan, but in André’s previous life it was precisely this line on Le Figaro’s front page that had made the paper an overnight sensation.

  More concretely, André wanted Le Figaro to be a sort of “artillery piece,” firing wherever he pointed, yet outwardly always speaking from the standpoint of ordinary people. Again and again he stressed: “There is no such thing as absolutely right or absolutely wrong, no absolute truth or falsehood. Anything our readers enjoy is good enough. Only one exception: do not take the initiative in publishing articles that incite unrest or openly urge the public to oppose the government—unless I give specific instructions.”

  To help Le Figaro seize ground in the Parisian battle for public opinion, André ordered the United Investment Company to give the paper an annual subsidy of no less than two hundred thousand livres. If that proved insufficient, Blanc Deyo was authorised, together with Deputy Chief Javert, to apply to Ouvrard for up to an additional three hundred thousand livres in special funds.

  At first, under Deyo’s leadership, Le Figaro remained a weekly, four pages per issue, printed on small-format sheets. Before long, the deep-pocketed Jewish director turned it into a daily and fixed its orientation: rooted in Parisian culture, aimed at the lower and middle strata of the city’s intellectuals.

  Director Deyo publicly recruited talented editors and launched a series of reforms: establishing regular columns, rebuilding a loyal readership, publishing concise news reports, and adding sections for obituaries and readers’ letters. On André’s advice, Le Figaro also created a column called “Echoes,” devoted to word games, curious anecdotes, and the enjoyment of airing the private scandals of the great and the powerful.

  In the director’s office, Blanc Deyo was giving his distant master a report on the paper’s operations. Editors and reporters had already been given leave, and the outer hall stood empty. In the courtyard behind, however, a makeshift printing shop was still hard at work. The monotonous, rhythmic pounding of the machinery made Deyo frown.

  He rose to shut the window, then returned to his seat and went on:

  “…As of last week’s figures, our new paper has put out thirty-five issues. We currently have more than 2,500 long-term subscribers, and average daily street sales of about 1,800 copies. By the end of the year, I am confident Le Figaro’s subscriptions will rise to 8,000, and daily sales will not be less than 5,000. By early next year, the paper will have completely eliminated its losses and will be making a modest profit.”

  In the 18th century, Europe did not set the bar very high for what counted as an “intellectual”: if you could read, write, and follow the newspapers, you belonged to that class, and most such people were concentrated in big cities.

  Thanks to the powerful gravitational pull of urban economies—and the enormous influence of Shakespeare’s works—the proportion of intellectuals in London reached 48% of the population (according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica), the highest in Europe. Next came Paris, steeped in the Enlightenment, where the figure stood at 30% (though some sources put it as high as 40%).