"I thought of it, mamma!" she said.
The chicken, nicely cooked to a golden brown, swimming in gravy, was ready to be served.
"Now then! Let us make haste!" said Madame Duplay, highly amused at being caught by her daughter. "Strain the soup while I prepare the salad. Oh, Victoire, we haven't laid the cloth yet!"
With the Duplays, it was a long-established custom that everything connected with the kitchen or the table should be entrusted only to the family; the maid washed up when the meal was over. Perhaps this was an excess of prudence, or a fear of poison. Whatever the motive was, Robespierre highly approved the practice.
"It is well to know what one is eating," he would often say.
The two girls and Madame Lebas took it in turns to wait at table, and so they could all speak freely, without being restrained by the presence of the servant.
The soup was now served up, steaming hot, and Madame Lebas was ladling it out in equal portions, reserving the last, as the hottest, for Robespierre.
"To table! To table!" she cried, placing chairs for every one.
But Robespierre and Duplay did not move. They were deeply interested in something Lebas was telling them. Duplay's son-in-law had just returned from the Tuileries, where he had gone "to feel the pulse of the Convention," as he expressed it. The National Assembly, although undermined by some evil-minded members, would be excellently represented at the fête on the morrow. The abominable rogues who had charged Robespierre with intending to turn this popular manifestation to his own profit had been disappointed—an appropriate reward for their drivelling calumny! No one attached the slightest importance to their scandalous reports. The Convention, as well as the people, were with Robespierre. Only the Committee of Public Safety...
"But, I say, children, the soup will be cold," Madame Duplay called out in desperation.