"And the bouquet?" she asked, giving it to him at the same time.
"Ah! yes! I had forgotten it. How kind you are! Au revoir. I shall see you by and by, looking your best, I am sure!"
And Robespierre, spick and span in his new clothes, all curled and perfumed, picked his way daintily across the courtyard.
At the door he found Lebas, Simon the wooden-legged, and the boy Maurice Duplay awaiting him. They wished to escort him to the Tuileries. Didier, the agent, now came up, accompanied by two of his men, and they all started in the direction of the Rue Saint-Honoré, keeping to the right. The Incorruptible conversed with Lebas.
A breeze stirred the flowers that decorated the front of the houses, wafting abroad their perfume. People were filling the streets from all directions, all in festive attire, with palms and ears of corn in their hands. On recognising the Incorruptible, they bowed to him; delighted, he discreetly returned their salutations.
Robespierre had turned into the Passage des Feuillantes, and found himself on the terrace. Here a surprise awaited him. The garden was already, at that early hour, three-quarters full, looking like an immense sea with wave upon wave of tricolour ribbons, plumes, and cockades. He continued his way along the Terrace des Feuillantes, a smile on his lips, returning the greetings as he went, and then joined the stream of people moving towards the Tuileries, happy to lose himself in that crowd flocking to his own apotheosis.
Flowers festooned the front of the Palace from end to end, lending to it the freshness of spring-tide.
When Robespierre arrived he cast a hasty glance at the vast amphitheatre which awaited the National Convention. It was still empty. The amphitheatre extended from the gardens to the balcony of the Horloge, from which projected a tribune, erected above the seats of the deputies—the tribune of the President, his tribune. It was from there that he would speak to the people, assembled to hear and to applaud him.
Robespierre entered the Palace alone, Lebas and the two Duplays having gone back to the Rue Saint-Honoré to fetch the family. Beaming with expectation, the Incorruptible looked about in search of some familiar faces, but he found none. He crossed the Convention Chamber to the offices of the Committee of Public Safety, and questioned the men in charge, who told him that only the members Barère, Collot d'Herbois, Prieur, and Carnot had put in an appearance for a moment, and then had gone to breakfast at a restaurant. As he crossed the Hall of Liberty he met Vilate, a fellow-juryman of Duplay's on the Revolutionary Tribunal. Vilate was under an obligation to Robespierre, who, in conjunction with Barère, had procured for him a residence in the Palace at the Flora Pavilion. It was the surest way of having a spy ready at hand, a reliable and silent witness of every act and move of the Committee of Public Safety. Vilate, at once insinuating and deferential, invited him to breakfast.
"It would be so convenient," he suggested, for he could breakfast, and yet not lose the splendid spectacle of the crowd as seen from the first story. Robespierre accepted the invitation, and remained for two hours there. Even after Vilate had left him he stayed on, looking down on all the preparations, lost in a day-dream of anticipated joy. He was nearing the supreme moment, the popular moment, which would raise him so high above his colleagues that henceforth any steps taken against him would be considered as directed against the nation itself. He smiled. His dictatorship? Was it not imposed on him by the French people? Was it not the outcome of the public will? It would be presently called for by a hundred thousand voices in these very gardens, in presence of all France, represented by the three hundred deputies of the Convention. He remained in meditation, smiling still, his forehead pressed against a pane of the window, his looks plunged in that living sea swaying at his feet. If ever Robespierre was happy, it was at this supreme moment.