Robespierre entered the Palace alone, Lebas and the two Duplays having gone back to the Rue Saint-Honoré to fetch the family. Beaming with expectation, the Incorruptible looked about in search of some familiar faces, but he found none. He crossed the Convention Chamber to the offices of the Committee of Public Safety, and questioned the men in charge, who told him that only the members Barère, Collot d'Herbois, Prieur, and Carnot had put in an appearance for a moment, and then had gone to breakfast at a restaurant. As he crossed the Hall of Liberty he met Vilate, a fellow-juryman of Duplay's on the Revolutionary Tribunal. Vilate was under an obligation to Robespierre, who, in conjunction with Barère, had procured for him a residence in the Palace at the Flora Pavilion. It was the surest way of having a spy ready at hand, a reliable and silent witness of every act and move of the Committee of Public Safety. Vilate, at once insinuating and deferential, invited him to breakfast. "It would be so convenient," he suggested, for he could breakfast, and yet not lose the splendid spectacle of the crowd as seen from the first story. Robespierre accepted the invitation, and remained for two hours there. Even after Vilate had left him he stayed on, looking down on all the preparations, lost in a day-dream of anticipated joy. He was nearing the supreme moment, the popular moment, which would raise him so high above his colleagues that henceforth any steps taken against him would be considered as directed against the nation itself. He smiled. His dictatorship? Was it not imposed on him by the French people? Was it not the outcome of the public will? It would be presently called for by a hundred thousand voices in these very gardens, in presence of all France, represented by the three hundred deputies of the Convention. He remained in meditation, smiling still, his forehead pressed against a pane of the window, his looks plunged in that living sea swaying at his feet. If ever Robespierre was happy, it was at this supreme moment. Some one knocked. "Come in!" he said, as if awakened from a dream. It was Lebas, who, all out of breath, came to tell him that the Convention was assembled, and only awaited his arrival. "Vilate sent me here. I was wondering where to find you." Robespierre looked up in astonishment. "It can't be very late," he said. "Why, it is half-past twelve!" "Half-past twelve?" The _fête_ had been fixed for noon. He was then half an hour behind time! And the ironical smiles of some of his colleagues when he appeared in the tribune were not the least bitter consequences of his unpunctuality. A voice was heard saying-- "He has at last decided to put in an appearance!" And then another-- "He hasn't even the courtesy of kings, yet he has enough of their insolence!" Robespierre recognised the voice.