She rose with difficulty, every limb trembling, and escaped from the crowd with Thérèse and Olivier through an open door. Some men advanced to carry Robespierre away, who looked already like a corpse, with his eyes closed, and the blood gushing through his lips. One man held his head, another his legs, and thus the ghastly burden was carried through the crowd of assailants, who stood aside to make way for it. Clarisse, standing in one of the doorways as the gloomy procession passed, clung to her son, imploring his pity. "Oh! pardon him! Do you too pardon him! I beg you, pardon him!" "Make room for the Incorruptible!" shouted a voice in ribald mockery. They shrunk back, but Clarisse all the while passionately entreated her son to pardon Robespierre. "Oh, hear me, my son, I implore you! Say that you forgive him!" "Yes, mother, I forgive him, and may God have mercy on him!" Olivier murmured, casting a long look after the grim procession till it was lost to sight. Olivier then turned to his mother and his fiancée. "Now, let us get away from here!" he says. "Is it really true? Are you free?" asked Clarisse. "Yes, quite free! I will tell you all about it presently. But we must secure a passport if we want to leave Paris.... Let us make haste!" The two women passed out under Olivier's protection, and descended the Hôtel de Ville's grand staircase through the crowd, which followed fallen Robespierre with cries of "Victory! Victory!" CHAPTER XV DEATH'S KINDLY VEIL Robespierre has thus been vanquished for the second time! Where will they take him? To the Tuileries, to the Convention, into the very midst of the victorious National Assembly, where the dying despot is to be exposed to the raillery of the populace, before being carried to the scaffold. Robespierre is laid down in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville, and placed with infinite care on a litter. They lift his head and bind up his wound, for he must live long enough to receive the final retribution. The bullet has but half robbed the scaffold of its prey. Artillerymen now come forward, and take him up again, but Robespierre, still unconscious, knows nothing of what is passing round him. They lift the wreck of what was once the Incorruptible and continue their way. Saint-Just walks in the rear between two gendarmes, his hands bound behind him, very pale, with head erect, and perfectly indifferent to the insults hurled at him--the only one of his allies who is with Robespierre in the hour of defeat. The others are either dead, hidden or fled. But their turn will come, for hot search is afoot for the cowards and fugitives.