MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE
Robespierre sent Coffinhal, one of his tools, to question her, and she was offered her liberty if she would denounce Tallien, which she indignantly refused to do. Far more than in her former experience at Bordeaux, did she feel that she was already condemned. For then she had only to dread the general cruelty of the Revolutionists, whose rage was certainly excited by the escape of their prey, but who had, beyond doubt, no personal spite against her.
But now she had an enemy, powerful, vindictive, remorseless, and bent upon her destruction. His object was that her trial should take place the next day; but her friends were watching her interests. M. de la Valette and M. Verdun managed to prevent this, and next day a friend of Tallien, meeting him wandering in desperation about the Champs-Elysées, said to him—
“You have nothing to fear for the citoyenne Cabarrus; she will not be brought before the tribunal to-day either.”
To gain time in those days was often to gain everything.
In the horrible dungeon in which Térèzia was shut up, she could receive no communications from without; but after a day or two she was told by the gaoler that she had leave to go down into the courtyard in the evening, after the lights were out. To whom she owed this consolation she was not told, but the first evening as she stood enjoying the fresh air, a stone fell at her feet, and on picking it up she found a paper with writing fastened to it. As she could not see to read it by the light of the moon, she had to wait till after sunrise next morning, and then, although the writing was disguised, she recognised the hand of Tallien as she read these words—
“I am watching over you; every evening at nine you will go down to the courtyard. I shall be near you.”
She tried to question the gaoler when he brought her breakfast of black bread and boiled beans, but he only put his finger on his lips. Every evening she went down to the courtyard and a stone with a note from Tallien was thrown to her. He had hired an attic close by, and his mother had, under another name, gained the gaoler and his wife. But at the end of a week the gaoler was denounced by the spies of Robespierre, and Térèzia transferred to the Carmes.