"Escaped?" asked Robespierre breathlessly.
"Unfortunately not!" said Lebas, "but taken by Coulongeon, the police-agent, by order of the Committee of Public Safety, to ... Where? No one could tell! To the Conciergerie perhaps?"
"Before the Tribunal!" Clarisse almost screamed.
Robespierre was stunned. The wretched members of the Committee had placed Olivier on trial! He had been, perhaps, condemned, and might even now be on the road to the scaffold, in one of those approaching tumbrils. He cried breathlessly to Lebas—
"Oh, quick! Go down and see!"
Lebas rushed off, and Robespierre ran to the window, Clarisse in mad despair following him.
"If he is ... you will, you must, cry out to the people that he is your son!"
Alas! Could he? The populace would answer that his son was a Chouan! that he might thank the Tribunal for freeing him from such disgrace.
Thérèse, drawn from the bedroom by the deafening cries of the crowd, now entered, trembling with fear. The carts were there... She could hear them!
"Mamma! mamma! do you hear?"