Olivier looked at them in terror. Was it possible? Was there no one that could be found to kill this dangerous wild beast? Fouché, who had consulted his colleagues in a rapid glance, now felt the moment ripe. "Assassinate him, you mean?" he asked. Olivier lost all self-control. Is a mad dog assassinated? He is killed, that's all! What did it matter if the one who did it were torn to pieces; he would have had his revenge, and would save further victims. "Certainly," said Fouché, "and if Robespierre is victorious, it is the only chance of saving your mother." "But don't rely on that!" Vadier remarked. Amar went even further. "Patriots like Brutus are not often found!" he said. But Olivier cried out in his fury that only one was wanted, and then looked about for the door. "Which is the way out?" Vadier pointed to the exit. "Thank you, citoyens! ... Adieu! au revoir!" The four men silently watched him disappear, and then looked at each other.... Would he do it? It was not impossible! "Meanwhile, let us go and howl!" suggested Fouché. And they rushed into the Convention-room. CHAPTER XIII A BROKEN IDOL Saint-Just is in the tribune. Collot d'Herbois occupies the presidential chair, Collot who, at two in the morning, suspecting Saint-Just's treachery, had openly charged him with it. War is in the air, and every member is at his post. Fouché looks round for Robespierre as he crosses to his seat. There he is; in the semicircle before the bust of Brutus, at the foot of the tribune which he seems to guard like a vigilant sentinel. "He is dressed as he was at the Fête of the Supreme Being," whispers Fouché ironically to his neighbour. Yes, the Incorruptible has on his sky-blue coat, white-silk embroidered waistcoat, and nankeen knee-breeches buttoned over white stockings, nor has he omitted the powder and the curls. What a strange figure, with his dapper daintiness, his old-fashioned attire, in that seething furnace of fifteen hundred people, actors and spectators, so closely packed, and, most of them with bared breasts, suffocating in the awful heat which oppresses them! The _sans-culottes_ up in the gallery have even taken off their traditional red nightcaps, which they hang on the handles of their sword-sticks like bloodstained trophies. It is as they expected. Since five the hall has been taken possession of by Robespierrists. All the worst scum of Paris has gathered there; all the bloodhounds of the Revolution, all the riff-raff who accompany the death-tumbrils to the scaffold to the song of the _Carmagnole_; fish-wives and rowdies, recruited and hired at twenty-four sous apiece to drown with their vociferations every hostile attempt made against the idol of the Commune. This brutish mob, reeking of sausages, pressed meat, gingerbread and beer, eating and drinking, poison the atmosphere of the Hall.