"Everything there belongs to me!" he said.
And as they seemed still to doubt, he repeated in a loud voice—
"Everything belongs to me! And, since you seem so anxious about it, know that I am an aristocrat, a royalist, and a chouan!"
The men cried out almost with one voice—
"At last! He owns it!"
Olivier took up the word at once.
"Very well! Since I have owned it, why don't you get quit of me, and send me forthwith to the scaffold? I am weary of it all!"
But Robespierre calmly told him not to be in such a hurry, for he wished to know his name. As the young man defied him, saying he would have to ask elsewhere, for he should never learn it from him, Robespierre grew furious. He must have his name, and the names of his accomplices as well, for he was not single-handed; that was certain!
"And if I have no accomplice, you will find some, I'll be bound!" cried Olivier ironically. "But you shall not have my name!"
Lebas, having finished the letters, came forward, and Robespierre gave him a questioning glance. The letters, he said, revealed nothing in particular. They had been written two or three years ago, and bore no address or signatures of importance. Two signed Marie Thérèse were apparently from a young girl, the prisoner's sister or fiancée.