"We fear neither you nor your accomplices! You are but a child, Couthon a miserable cripple, and as to Robespierre..."
At this moment an usher brought in a letter to Barère. He looked uneasy after he had read it, and signed to his colleagues to follow, leaving Saint-Just free to continue his work. In the lobby Barère told them it was a letter from Lecointre announcing the approaching attack upon the Committee by the troops of the Commune, and offering the battalion of his section for their defence.
"It is exactly as I told you!" cried Elie Lacoste. "The leaders of the Commune must be instantly arrested, and with them Robespierre and his two accomplices!"
"Commencing with Saint-Just and his speech," said Collot.
"Robespierre was here just now," observed Billaud-Varennes, who had followed his colleagues out of the room; "he wanted to know what we had done with the prisoner from La Force. We told him we had not to render account to him, whereupon he went away in a rage, crying out, 'You want war? War you shall have then!' We have been warned by the Incorruptible himself, you see!"
"Yes, but we shall crush him through his Englishman! We have witnesses enough now!"
"Nay, unhappily we have not!" replied Billaud.
"What! we have no witnesses?" exclaimed Barère in surprise. "What do you mean? ... Has not Coulongeon...?"
"Coulongeon arrived too late at La Bourbe Lebas had just taken them off, by Robespierre's orders—no one knows whither."
"Oh! the villain! he suspected something, then, and abducted them to suppress their evidence; but we have at any rate the young man from La Force."