At nine o'clock Harry presented himself in readiness for work, and found that his post would be no sinecure. The correspondence which he had to go through was enormous. Requests for favours, letters of congratulation on Robespierre's speeches and motions in the Assembly, reports of scores of provincial committees, denunciations of aristocrats, letters of blame because the work of rooting out the suspects did not proceed faster, entreaties from friends of prisoners. All these had to be sorted, read, and answered. Robespierre was, Harry soon found, methodical in the extreme. He read every letter himself, and not only gave directions how they were to be answered, but read through the answers when written, and was most careful before he affixed his signature to any paper whatever. When it was time for him to leave for the Assembly he made a note in pencil on each letter how it should be answered, and directed Harry when he had finished them to leave them on the table for him on his return. "I foresee that you will be of great value to me, Monsieur Sandwith," he said, "and I shall be able to recommend you for any office that may be vacant with a feeling of confidence that you will do justice to my recommendation; or if you would rather, as time goes on, attach your fortunes to mine, be assured that if I should rise to power your fortune will be made. When you have done these letters your time will be your own for the rest of the day. You know our meal hours, and I can only say that we are punctual to a second." When Harry had finished he strolled out. He saw that the task of getting an order for Marie's release would be more difficult than he had anticipated. He had hoped that by placing it with a batch of papers before Robespierre he would get him to sign it among others without reading it, but he now saw that this would be next to impossible. One thing afforded him grounds for satisfaction. Among the papers was a list of the prisoners to be brought up on the following day for trial. To this Robespierre added two names, and then signed it and sent it back to the prison. There was another list with the names of the prisoners to be executed on the following day, and this, Harry learned, was not sent in to the prison authorities until late in the evening, so that even they were ignorant until the last moment which of the prisoners were to be called for by the tumbrils next morning. Thus he would know when Marie was to go through the mockery of a trial, and would also know when her name was put on the fatal list for the guillotine. The first fact he might have been able to learn from his ally in the prison, but the second and most important he could not have obtained in any other way.