HERZEN The mob? Workers marching behind their banners.
TURGENEV Invading the National Assembly to demand the self-abolition of an elected parliament which happens to be not to their taste.
HERZEN Turgenev!—you talk to me of taste? A republic behaving like the monarchy it displaced is not a failure of aesthetics. This is a republic by superstition only, by incantation. Vive la République! But it turns out the Republic makes revolution unnecessary and, in fact, undesirable. Power is not to be shared with the ignoramuses who built the barricades. They’re too poor to have a voice.
TURGENEV It was an insurrection, and order has triumphed.
HERZEN Well, don’t imagine today was the end. When the lid blows off this kettle, it’ll take the kitchen with it. All your civilised pursuits and refinements which you call the triumph of order will be firewood and pisspots once the workers kick down the doors and come into their kingdom. Do I regret it? Yes, I regret it. But we’ve enjoyed the feast, we can’t complain when the waiter says, ‘L’addition, messieurs!’
TURGENEV Goodness me … the sins of the Second Republic won’t bear the weight of this revenge drama of cooks and waiters. The Provisional Government promised elections. Elections took place. Nine million Frenchmen voted for the first time. Well, they voted for royalists, rentiers, lawyers … and a rump of socialists for the rest to kick. You have a complaint? A coup d’état by the organised workers, and a salutary period of Terror, would put that right. You could be Minister of Paradox, with special responsibility for Irony. Herzen … Herzen! For all the venality you see around you, France is still the highest reach of civilisation.
Natalie and Natasha enter with George, who is shorn of his beard, moustache and dignity.
HERZEN (puzzled) Yes …?
TURGENEV It’s Herwegh, back from Germany.
Benoit follows with glasses of wine.
HERZEN Ach, mein armer Freund … [Oh, my dear fellow … ]
NATALIE There was a price on his head!
Herzen embraces George, who bursts into tears.
HERZEN Trink einen Schluck Wein. Du bist ein Held! [Take some wine. You’re a hero!]
Herzen gives a glass to George. Turgenev, Natasha and Natalie take glasses from the salver.
HERZEN (cont.) (toasting) Auf die Revolution in Deutschland! [To the revolution in Germany!]
GEORGE Dankeschoen, danke … [Thank you, thank you … ] (toasting) Auf die Russische Revolution … und auf die Freundschaft! [To the Russian revolution … and to friendship!]
NATALIE To friendship!
NATASHA And love!
TURGENEV (toasting) Vive la République!
HERZEN (toasting) A bas les bourgeois! Vive le prolétariat!
Benoit, leaving, registers pained reproach, just perceptibly.
HERZEN (cont.) Mille pardons, Benoit.
George weeps afresh. Natalie comforts him. There is a transition to a month later.
JUNE 1848
A ‘BLUE BLOUSE,’ an old workman in tattered clothes, stands in the room, a desperate motionless figure, invisible to Natalie and Natasha who, innocently embraced, recline on the couch, with George in attendance moping.
GEORGE Everybody’s being horrible about me. They say I hid in a ditch as soon as the enemy came in sight. You don’t believe it, do you?
NATALIE Of course we don’t.
NATASHA Of course not.
NATALIE Nor does Emma. Well, she was there.
GEORGE She pushed me into it.
NATALIE The ditch?
GEORGE No, the whole business … chairman of the German democrats in exile, and suddenly I was Napoleon at Austerlitz.
NATASHA Waterloo. Oh, sorry … but you looked so defeated.
GEORGE Emma still has faith in me. Perhaps she’ll invade Poland. She was in love with me before she met me. So were half the women in Germany. My book of poems went through six editions. I met the King. Then I met Emma.
NATALIE And she’s the one who got you!
GEORGE I wish I’d listened to Marx.
NATALIE Marx? Why?
GEORGE He tried to talk me out of it.
NATALIE (amazed) Marrying Emma?
GEORGE No, the Legion of German Democrats.
NATALIE Oh … !
GEORGE Now he’s crowing over my humiliation … after all I’ve done for him, taking him to all the best houses, introducing him at Marie d’Agoult’s salon …
NATASHA The countess?
GEORGE Yes, the writer, one of my admirers.
NATALIE And you were one of hers, surely … I admire her, too. When she fell in love with Liszt, she followed her heart. Everything had to give way to love—reputation, society, husband, children … just like George Sand and Chopin! … Do you play?
GEORGE A little. I compose a bit, too. Emma says if I practised, Chopin and Liszt better watch out.
NATASHA Shto praiskhódit? [What’s this?]
NATALIE (to Natasha) George looks like Onegin ought to look, don’t you think? (Natalie jumps up and pulls George by the hand.) Come on, then!
Herzen enters.
NATALIE (cont.) George is going to play for us!
There is a distant sound of riot, and a transition. Herzen and the Blue Blouse remain.
NATASHA (to Natalie, warningly) Natalie.
NATALIE (dissembling) What?
NATASHA You haven’t got a piano.
NATALIE (brazenly) Well?
The two women embrace hilariously and take George out.
Herzen sees the Blue Blouse.
HERZEN What do you want? Bread? I’m afraid bread got left out of the theory. We are bookish people, with bookish solutions. Prose is our strong point, prose and abstraction. But everything is going beautifully. Last time—in 1789—there was a misunderstanding. We thought we had discovered that social progress was a science like everything else. The First Republic was to have been the embodiment of morality and justice as a rational enterprise. The result was, admittedly, a bitter blow. But now there’s a completely new idea. History itself is the main character of the drama, and also its author. We are all in the story, which ends with universal bliss. Perhaps not for you. Perhaps not for your children. But universal bliss, you can put your shirt on it, which, I see, you have. Your personal sacrifice, the sacrifice of countless others on History’s slaughter-bench, all the apparent crimes and lunacies of the hour, which to you may seem irrational, are part of a much much bigger story which you probably aren’t in the mood for—let’s just say that this time, as luck would have it, you’re the zig and they’re the zag.