Robespierre's anger had all melted before this sudden revelation. He preserved, however, a stern countenance, subduing the almost uncontrollable emotion which threatened to overpower him. He was still struggling with it, trying to regain possession of himself, and, moved by a natural impulse, he told Olivier in a gentle voice to be seated.
The prisoner, however, did not heed him, and when Robespierre repeated his words even more persuasively, and in a trembling voice, Olivier still paid no attention. Seeing Lebas shrug his shoulders, intimating that Robespierre was really very good to insist, the Incorruptible explained—his eyes still fixed on Olivier—that it was but natural for him to show kindness towards the grandchild of a man whose secretary he had been for eighteen months.
The young man stared back in surprise.
"They never told you, then?" said Robespierre. "Of course not.... They loathe my very name, your people, do they not?"
But he immediately added, to Lebas's astonishment, that this was no reason why he should forget his stay in Monsieur de Pontivy's house. He could not help thinking now of the happy evenings he had spent there and the many pleasant meals of which he had partaken, side by side with Olivier's mother. That dim, sweet spirit of the past, which the young man's presence had called from its grave, had softened his heart strangely towards him.
But Olivier interrupted him harshly. Robespierre might harden his heart again, then! His life was in Robespierre's hands! He could take it if it pleased him to do so. All the family had been victims to the Revolution: his grandfather who died of grief, his uncle killed in Vendée, his father mortally wounded defending the cause of the King....
"But your mother? She is alive; you have not the right to sacrifice her life!"
Robespierre went on thus carefully, trying by well-placed insinuations and questions to wring the truth from him. If Olivier had cried "Down with the scaffold!" it was because he trembled for his mother's life? ... because she was arrested?
"Am I not right in this?" he urged, with deep anxiety. "Is she not arrested?"
But he was met by a blunt denial.