But meanwhile Fouché signed to Vadier, Amar, and Voullaud to remain. They looked at him in surprise. Fouché waited for the noise to subside, then assuring himself that no one could overhear him, he confided his fears to them. It was not everything to drown Robespierre's voice. Even arrested, condemned, and on the death-tumbril, his hands bound, Robespierre would still be dangerous; a sudden rush and riot could deliver him, and crush them all! Then lowering his voice, he continued-- "The young madman of whom Billaud spoke just now...." "Well?" "Where is he?" Amar pointed to a door on the left. "Let him come in!" said Fouché; "I will speak to him in the name of the Committee." They did not yet quite grasp his meaning, but Voullaud went all the same and opened the door. "Hush!" said Fouché, "here is the young man!" Olivier entered, followed by a gendarme, who, on seeing Fouché and the other members, stopped on the threshold. Olivier looked at them indifferently, expecting to be again cross-examined about the Englishman. Fouché had taken his hat and put it on, as if going out. "Young man, you were the first to charge the despot, whom we are about to fight, with his crimes! This is sufficient to recommend you to the indulgence of the Committee." As Olivier advanced in astonishment, he continued-- "You may go if you like!" Fouché turned to the gendarme-- "The citoyen is free!" The gendarme retired. Vadier now understood Fouché's idea. Taking up his hat also, he remarked-- "And if our enemy is victorious, take care not to fall again into his clutches!" Olivier who was preparing to go, stopped suddenly. Unhappily, he said, he had not only himself to tremble for. His mother and _fiancée_ were in prison and Robespierre would revenge himself on them. "Most probably!" replied Fouché. "Then the Committee ought to release them also, and with even more reason!" Fouché shrugged his shoulders regretfully. It had been the intention of the Committee, but the two prisoners were beyond their reach. "How?" asked Olivier anxiously. Simply because they were no longer at the prison of La Bourbe. Olivier gasped-- "Condemned?" "Not yet! But Lebas had taken them away with an order from Robespierre." Here Fouché, picking up the order left on the table by Billaud-Varennes, showed it to Olivier, who read it in horrified amazement. "Where are they then," he cried. "At the Conciergerie, where they would be judged within twenty-four hours." "The wretch! the wretch!" He implored them that they might be released. The Committee were all-powerful!--They, powerful, indeed? They looked at him pityingly. He believed that? What simplicity! How could they release the two women when they were on the point of being sacrificed themselves? They would have difficulty enough to save their own heads! "To-morrow," continued Fouché, "we shall most likely be with your mother, at the foot of the scaffold."