And yet he knew that much of their indifference must be assumed. How many thought as he did! How many had the long-awaited cry of deliverance on their lips: "Down with the scaffold!" Only they dared not speak out! If but one had the courage to give utterance to that cry, there would be enough brave men found in the crowd to take it up and re-echo it, carrying the more timid along with them. When once a move is made the multitude will quickly follow. Clarisse looked at him. A new thought had dawned on her mind, a horrible thought! What if Robespierre should have Olivier arrested without knowing who he was? She interrupted him. "Is the house where you lodge quite safe?" As Olivier replied in the affirmative, and was continuing the narrative of his adventures, she took up the thread of his thoughts. Suddenly a gleam of hope shone in her eyes, as if her mental speculations had assured her. "Ah! I did well to write to him!" she thought. To him, to Robespierre! For she had written to the Incorruptible that very morning. She now turned this letter over in her mind, in which she had informed him of her imprisonment, telling him her fears about her son, whose age she particularly mentioned as nineteen years. It was a hint for Robespierre, who would understand, and perhaps be touched to pity, and set her and Marie Thérèse at liberty, and spare the lad who was her son and his own. Clarisse had confided this letter to a prisoner set at liberty, whom she earnestly entreated to see it safely delivered. "It will be the easiest thing in the world," the man had replied; "you can be quite at rest." Clarisse did not suspect the irony of this reply, or that the supposed prisoner was one of the spies to whom she had unwittingly alluded a little while before. Ah, yes; she could be at rest, truly! The letter would reach Robespierre. But under what conditions? He, who received so many! Alas! It is in the wounded heart that most illusions take root! Clarisse did not dream that anything could interfere with her scheme, and began to speculate on the future, counting the hours, and saying to herself that in all probability the letter could reach Robespierre the next day. The best she could do till then, she thought, was to moderate Olivier's zeal, by showing him that their prison-life was not so unbearable; and she imagined it would distract him if she presented him to some of her companions in misfortune. They had just taken away the tables, so making the courtyard appear larger, and leaving more room for the promenade. Olivier was now noticing more clearly the people in this little prison-world taking air and exercise in the open space to which the green acacia-trees gave some semblance of a garden.