Olivier smiled in bitter irony. Robespierre need not waste his words. He well knew he had too much pride to allow any such remembrance to incline him to leniency. Ah, there were memories in that sweet past, as he called it, for which his mother would pay with her head! Friendship? _Robespierre's friendship_! Why, it paved the road to the scaffold! All his friends had trodden that deadly path. A cry of indignation escaped Lebas, but Robespierre quieted him in a husky voice, himself a prey to the most feverish agitation. The lad's head had been turned by the _chouans_! He was not responsible for what he said! Then turning to Olivier he tried, with a ring of sadness in his voice, to persuade him that had he been a tyrant he would have punished his insolence, he would not have attempted to reason with him. But Olivier remained unmoved. This kindness was assumed, he told himself, to hide some dastardly plot! Robespierre only wanted to find his mother that he might avenge her son's insult on herself. In vain the Incorruptible protested, deeply grieved and wounded. Olivier stoutly maintained his position, declaring that Robespierre was not a man to pardon any one who had publicly insulted him with such outspoken contempt and hatred. "Wretch!" cried out Lebas. But Robespierre signed to him to stop. Hatred? That word in the young man's mouth sounded like blasphemy. And trying to master himself, that his voice should not tremble, he asked him-- "Then you do hate me very much?" Olivier again furiously asserted his abhorrence, and was met by the question-- "When have I ever wronged you?" At this Olivier, losing self-control, nearly betrayed his secret. "Wronged me! ... When have you wronged me?" the young man repeated. "Wasn't it through you that my mother was..." But recollecting himself he stopped short. "Arrested?" put in Robespierre. "No!" exclaimed Olivier. And then the struggle recommenced. Robespierre was, however, quite sure now of the arrest. What he wanted to know was the name of the prison to which the two women had been taken, and he came near to the chair by which the prisoner was standing. Olivier instinctively recoiled a step, Robespierre, completely exhausted, made one last effort. He implored the young man to lay aside his mistrust and hatred, to help him to save those who were so dear to him. "To help you to kill them, you mean!" Robespierre started from his seat, exasperated beyond measure. This was going too far! Olivier must be mad! Could he not, would he not realise that the very way to kill the two unhappy women was to leave them for the executioner to do his work! Their turn would soon come. "If yours does not come first!" interrupted Olivier.