What! Had Olivier been sent to prison by him? Ah! things had come to a pretty pass. He was then the gaoler of his own son!
Robespierre made a gesture as if to protest. Then, mastering with difficulty his emotion, he explained everything. He had kept Olivier in prison as the only means of saving him. Had the lad been released he would have been reimprisoned by the Committee of Public Safety, who would have sent him to the scaffold, if it were only to show Robespierre that he had no right to grant a pardon! But Olivier would be free now. Lebas was at that very moment at La Force prison, and would soon bring him secretly from thence to them. Olivier should remain with his mother and Thérèse until the day when they could all three leave without danger, and seek safety in the provinces.
Clarisse listened, now calm and reassured. But how had Robespierre known?
"Who he was? Oh, in the most unexpected manner, with the assistance of some letters found in his valise, for he absolutely refused to give me his name."
Clarisse looked at Robespierre with a new fear in her eyes. Then he had seen him? Olivier knew the terrible secret of his birth?
"Oh, no!" replied the Incorruptible sadly, "don't be uneasy about that. I have not said a word, to lessen his love and trust in you, or disarm the bitter hatred he has for me, which avenges you too well..."
But Clarisse interrupted him. Robespierre was mistaking her feelings. She did not ask to be avenged, she did not even think any more of reproaching him with the past which divided them. It was all so far, so far away, that past!
The Incorruptible looked at her with eyes full of sadness and regret. Yes, there she stood, in her faded prison dress, her face lined before its time, a living reproach, a poor pale ghost of bygone days. Those blanched lips, with their melancholy droop, the token of long suffering and resignation, those lips had received his first kiss!
Clarisse would think no more of the past! He thought of it though, thought of it there, looking at her. Had he been so culpable, after all? Why had Monsieur de Pontivy filled his heart with hate and rancour by refusing him her hand and turning him out like a lackey? On account of a difference of caste? Well, from this prejudice had sprung the Revolution which had levelled all under the knife of the guillotine! That sad past, the terrible present, were both due to the pride of Clarisse's father. For he would not have thrown himself madly into the turmoil....
But Clarisse again interrupted him. The past was dead now, quite dead!