"Look at it with Lebas," he said.
Lebas took the letter, and going to the mantel-piece, commenced to read it by the light of a candle. Duplay, in the act of filling his pipe, looked over his shoulder.
It was Clarisse's letter to Robespierre, and read thus—
"I should not write to you if I had only my own life to plead for. But I have to protect that of two children, my niece imprisoned here with me and a son of nineteen years, who may be arrested at any moment and sent to the scaffold, and good God, by whom! CLARISSE."
Robespierre had now finished his letter to Saint-Just, and whilst closing it, asked—
"Well, and the letter?"
"It is a woman who supplicates you for her niece imprisoned with her," answered Lebas.
Robespierre, annoyed, stopped him, saying curtly that he received twenty such letters every day.
"She also supplicates you for her son," added Lebas, still perusing the note.
Robespierre simply shrugged his shoulders and sealed his letter to Saint-Just.