LUCILE. Now what does that mean? Something naughty, I know.
PHILIPPEAUX. Something sad, and only too true.
LUCILE. Hush, you gloomy men! Fabre will be released, I tell you. Are we not here to help him?
HÉRAULT. Danton himself could do nothing to save him.
LUCILE. Danton, perhaps. But when Camille takes his pen in hand, and writes all he thinks, you'll see the jail gates open of their own accord!
HÉRAULT. For whom?
LUCILE. For the tyrants!
HÉRAULT. Imprudent shepherdess, you had better keep an eye on your sheep! "Bring them back safe to the sheepfold again!" Remember your song. [A servant enters and takes the baby from LUCILE; then carries him out. LUCILE whispers to her, leaves the room, and returns a moment later. During the entire scene she walks about, busied with various domestic duties, and only occasionally catches the drift of the following conversation.]
CAMILLE. Lucile is right: we must make the effort. It is our business to direct the Revolution which we have started. This voice of mine has not yet lost its power over the crowd. It has sent fanatics to the guillotine. We were never so strong as today; let us follow up our success: the Luxembourg is no more difficult to take than the Bastille. We laid low nine centuries of monarchy, and we can easily deal with a handful of vagabonds, who derive their power from us, and who use it in order to run the Convention and France in their own way.
PHILIPPEAUX [walking about agitatedly]. The rascals! If they only confined themselves to murder! But no, they had to implicate Fabre in the Compagnie des Indes business; invented that impossible yarn: Jews and German bankers bribing our friend in order to corrupt the Assembly! They know they are lying, but they cannot satisfy their consciences until they vilify their enemy before they kill him.