"We cannot go yet," replies Olivier. "The passport must bear the stamp of the Committee of General Security to be of any use, and I must present myself before the Committee at three o'clock." "Then, what are we to do? Where shall we go?" asks Clarisse wearily. "We can only go to the Rue du Rocher, to Leonard's landlady. She will receive me with open arms, you will see, now she has no longer Robespierre to fear." It is five o'clock, and day has just dawned. The air is soft and fresh, the sky above of sapphire blue; the trees, the streets, the very houses, seem smiling with renewed life, after the refreshing shower. In this brightening dawn Robespierre is being taken to the Conciergerie, for the Committee of Public Safety have altered their decision. Robespierre and his accomplices, now found and arrested, are to be confined in the Conciergerie in order to undergo the formality of identification. From thence they are to be taken to the scaffold without trial or judgment, as outlaws. So Robespierre is replaced on the litter, followed by the gaping crowd. He sleeps the whole way, lulled by the measured tread of the men who carry him, and only awakes to find himself in a narrow cell, in charge of a gendarme. "Can I write?" he asks. "No!" "Where am I?" "At the Conciergerie." His eyes flash for a second. He looks round uneasily and repeats--"At the Conciergerie! In what part of the Conciergerie?" "Between the Queen's cell and the Girondins' Chapel." Between his victims! He is between his victims! The fearful warning on the prison walls passes again before his eyes: "Robespierre, your hour will come!..." The dead were right! If he had done away with the guillotine in time, he would perhaps not be there, himself a victim of the Terror he had let loose! But he could not! No, he could not, it was too soon.... He would have been engulfed in the turmoil, just the same! ... In continuing the Revolutionary Tribunal, in keeping the executioner at his post, he was merely protecting his own head! His mind is flooded with ideas.... He is, dreaming vaguely, his dim eyes fixed on the low ceiling of his cell.... His youth smiles at him through the mist of years, every detail of the past comes back to him in clear and lucid vision. He sees Clarisse seated at her harpsichord, he is turning over the leaves of her music ... but the vision trembles, and then fades away. Fever gradually rises to his brain, takes entire possession of him, and deadens his senses, so that he is completely unconscious, and when Fouquier-Tinville, his creature of the Revolutionary Tribunal, his accomplice in the days of bloodshed, comes forward to identify him, he does not recognise his voice.