"Once more I tell you it is madness," Robespierre groaned in despair. Would she not understand, it was his death she was crying out for, her own death too, and the death of her niece? He had only to attempt to save those unhappy victims, and the crowd would at once turn upon him with the fury of wild beasts! He would be accused of treason by the _sans-culottes_, and the fishwives dancing yonder under the windows and howling the _Carmagnole_! He would be cut to pieces by the swords of the prison escort, crushed under the cartwheels, and cast into the gutter by the rabble for having dared to arrest the reign of Terror! Was that what Clarisse wanted? Or would she perhaps allow him to live still to be able to save her, to save her niece and her son? The entrance door was pushed open. Robespierre turned, and seeing Urbain understood that Lebas had at last arrived with Olivier. He did not, however, wish to be seen by his son. "Let Citoyen Lebas and his companion wait outside till I have gone," he said. Urbain looked astonished. "But there is no one with Citoyen Lebas," he replied. Clarisse started up. "What! no one?" asked Robespierre. "And Olivier?" Clarisse said in a low voice, trembling with suspense. Robespierre moved towards the door and called anxiously to Lebas. The day was fast closing, the setting sun, peering in through the half-open shutters, shed a crimson light in the apartment, staining here and there in patches and streaks the furniture and curtains with the hue of blood. Lebas came in alone. Olivier was no longer at the prison of La Force! "Escaped?" asked Robespierre breathlessly. "Unfortunately not!" said Lebas, "but taken by Coulongeon, the police-agent, by order of the Committee of Public Safety, to ... Where? No one could tell! To the Conciergerie perhaps?" "Before the Tribunal!" Clarisse almost screamed. Robespierre was stunned. The wretched members of the Committee had placed Olivier on trial! He had been, perhaps, condemned, and might even now be on the road to the scaffold, in one of those approaching tumbrils. He cried breathlessly to Lebas-- "Oh, quick! Go down and see!" Lebas rushed off, and Robespierre ran to the window, Clarisse in mad despair following him. "If he is ... you will, you must, cry out to the people that he is your son!" Alas! Could he? The populace would answer that his son was a _Chouan_! that he might thank the Tribunal for freeing him from such disgrace. Thérèse, drawn from the bedroom by the deafening cries of the crowd, now entered, trembling with fear. The carts were there... She could hear them! "Mamma! mamma! do you hear?" She stopped at sight of Robespierre. "The friend who saved us," said Clarisse, answering her look of surprise. Thérèse went straight to the window, but Clarisse barred the way.