"And for the service he now renders the nation, his emigration and the fact of his having been an aristocrat are to be condoned." As he spoke, a grim smile hovered about Robespierre's lips. It faded away instantly, leaving his face as mirthless and forbidding as before. "Shall we ask the Citizen Lacheville to tell us when he last saw you?" he went on sternly. "It is unnecessary. We met last at Falzenberg," said Tournay, eyeing him with disdain. "Where you were on terms of intimacy with Prussian officers," said de Lacheville. "I will not dwell upon the fact of your having assisted an aristocrat to escape from prison; but I will testify to your having come in disguise to the enemies of France and entered into a secret understanding with them. I was serving those same enemies at the time, I will admit," and the marquis shrugged his shoulders, "but as the Citizen Robespierre has said, I have repented of it, and have come here to make atonement by faithful devotion to the nation. One of the greatest of my pleasures is to help unmask a hypocrite." Tournay addressed Robespierre. "Do you believe this man's story?" "You have already admitted having gone over the frontier," was the suave rejoinder. "I did go, yes." "Will you deny having been closeted alone with General von Waldenmeer?" "No, but"-- "Do you suppose any tribunal in the land would hold you guiltless upon such testimony and such admissions?" "Permit me to ask you two questions," said Tournay. Robespierre acquiesced. "Admitting that this--_citizen's_ accusation is true, why did I return to Wissembourg and do my best to defeat the enemy with whom I am accused by him of being on friendly terms?" "There are hundreds of similar precedents--Dumouriez's, for example." "Admitting, then, that I have already been false to one trust, how is it that you are prepared to trust me now to play the spy for your committee?" continued Tournay, with contempt ringing in his voice. Again the peculiar smile flitted across Robespierre's pale features. "All men are to be trusted as far as their self-interest leads them," he answered. "None are to be trusted implicitly. You will be watched closely and will doubtless prove faithful. It will be to your decided advantage to attend to the committee's business efficiently. Your little interview with the Prussian general, from which nothing has resulted, may be forgotten for the time." Tournay's anger during the interview had several times risen to white heat. Not even his sense of danger enabled him longer to repress it.