"To cross-examine him."
"Where is he?"
"That is for you to find out."
"I command you to send him back immediately to La Force!"
"We receive no orders from you!"
"Then it is to be war between us? You shall have it, scoundrels! war to the knife! And to-morrow too!" and turning away abruptly, he went towards the steps, and pushed the door open in a violent rage.
Billaud-Varennes and Collot d'Herbois retraced their steps to apprise their colleagues at the Convention of their stormy interview with Robespierre. But on the threshold of the Assembly-room Billaud stopped his companion.
"Wait a moment," he said, "let me cross-examine the young man first."
So saying, he went upstairs to the attics, where Olivier had been locked up ever since five o'clock under the charge of a gendarme, to whom Coulongeon, the Committee's agent, had confided him, with strict orders that the prisoner was to be kept entirely out of sight until the Committee had decided on his fate.
Coulongeon was one of the sharpest detectives of the Committee. It was he who, disguised as a beggar, had been the object of Blount's sudden barks in the forest of Montmorency, where he had witnessed the interview between Robespierre and Vaughan. Driven away by Robespierre's agents, he had gone immediately to the entrance of the forest, expecting vainly the Englishman's reappearance.