"Then, what are we to do? Where shall we go?" asks Clarisse wearily.
"We can only go to the Rue du Rocher, to Leonard's landlady. She will receive me with open arms, you will see, now she has no longer Robespierre to fear."
It is five o'clock, and day has just dawned. The air is soft and fresh, the sky above of sapphire blue; the trees, the streets, the very houses, seem smiling with renewed life, after the refreshing shower.
In this brightening dawn Robespierre is being taken to the Conciergerie, for the Committee of Public Safety have altered their decision. Robespierre and his accomplices, now found and arrested, are to be confined in the Conciergerie in order to undergo the formality of identification. From thence they are to be taken to the scaffold without trial or judgment, as outlaws.
So Robespierre is replaced on the litter, followed by the gaping crowd. He sleeps the whole way, lulled by the measured tread of the men who carry him, and only awakes to find himself in a narrow cell, in charge of a gendarme.
"Can I write?" he asks.
"No!"
"Where am I?"
"At the Conciergerie."
His eyes flash for a second. He looks round uneasily and repeats—"At the Conciergerie! In what part of the Conciergerie?"