Where the Light Falls(57)
“Fear?” Jean-Luc responded in a faint voice, almost a whisper.
“Close.” Lazare nodded. “Now you are on the right path. But I’m talking about something even more basic. The most basic of all human needs. The need for which a newborn baby first learns to cry out. It is?”
Jean-Luc thought of Mathieu in his first moments, of Marie tenderly pulling their newborn son to her breast, and he looked down at the table. When he answered, his voice was a whisper. “Hunger.”
“Hunger!” Lazare clapped, and Jean-Luc started in his seat at the sudden, giddy eruption. “There you have it! It is very simple. Hunger will bring a man into contact with his most basic instinct—the will to survive. The masses? Their interest is in their bellies, in the care of their own lands or means of industry—a constant struggle for their very survival. And while that mongrel Capet and his viperous widow dined on truffles and figs brought to them from the farthest Oriental satrapies, the poor citizens outside their gates crawled back to their hovels each night with empty stomachs. And as the days and years crept by, their pain turned to anger, and their anger darkened into hatred.” Lazare raised the apple once more to his colorless lips, taking another bite. “Hunger—it drives us all. I can see that you have it within you. As do I, though perhaps of a slightly different kind.”
The room fell silent as each man mulled over the meaning of this soliloquy, and Jean-Luc swore the others must have heard his heart beating within his chest.
Lazare broke the silence in the shadowed room. “Tell me, if you please, citizen, more about your work?”
Jean-Luc leaned forward, tugging on his suit coat that felt uncomfortably tight. “Of course, Citizen Lazare. I am an attorney for the new government.”
“Yes, Maurice just said as much, but I wish to know what it is that you actually do.” Lazare’s soft voice held no hint of derision, merely a deep and genuine interest.
Jean-Luc cleared his throat. “I catalog and manage the inventory of confiscated goods—the property of the nobility and clergy as it is seized.”
“I might dispute your usage of the term ‘confiscated goods,’ Citizen St. Clair,” Lazare said, arching a pale eyebrow. “By what right did those noblemen come into their plush carpets and glistening porcelain to begin with? That property belongs to the people. It has always belonged to the people, and has finally been returned to them.”
“Of course, I did not mean that the goods were seized unduly, Citizen Lazare, I simply meant to explain—”
“No need, I understand your point well enough.” Lazare waved his pale hand and offered a conciliatory nod, his mind already turned to the next point. “So you are a glorified clerk, it would seem.”
Jean-Luc felt his cheeks redden. He looked around the table and noticed the smirks tugging on several of the Committee members’ lips. “I wished to serve the Revolution, Citizen Lazare. This was the opportunity that arose.”
“Of course.” Now Lazare, too, smiled, his light eyes darting around the table as he held the apple before his lips. “And someone must do that work. But tell me truly…are you an idealist?”
Jean-Luc sat up in his chair, throwing his shoulders back. “I suppose you might say I believe in the ideals of our Revolution, yes. Ideals such as liberty and equality.”
“So we have an idealistic clerk among us,” Lazare said. The men at the table now shared muffled laughter, and Jean-Luc got the distinct sense that few in this company ever indulged in deep, mirthful laughter.
Lazare fixed his gaze directly on Jean-Luc now, a direct, appraising look. And then, exhaling, his voice quiet, he said: “I do apologize. I meant no offense, Citizen St. Clair. I was merely making a poor attempt at humor.” Lazare lifted the apple to his lips and took another bite. He chewed the apple, a series of sharp crunches. “So then, Citizen St. Clair, I suppose, like all idealists, you are acquainted with the philosophies of Monsieur Rousseau? Do you agree with his assertion that ‘we are miserable sinners, born in corruption, inclined to evil, incapable by ourselves of doing good’?”
Jean-Luc tried to spool together his errant thoughts, this latest philosophical question catching him unaware. But before he could reply, Lazare continued: “And what of Rousseau’s pupil, Monsieur Thomas Jefferson? I’m sure you have followed the events of the revolution in the New World?”
Jean-Luc nodded now, eyeing the cup of wine in front of him. He restrained himself from taking a drink, whether out of a habit of work or the vague feeling that he needed his full wits about him to keep up with Citizen Lazare. But then he reminded himself he had no reason to feel inadequate in the task of discussing politics or philosophy, even with a man such as Guillaume Lazare.