WESTERMANN. Send me to the guillotine! That at least is something active--like a saber stroke. I only ask one thing: put me on my back: I want to face the knife. [VADIER _and_ BILLAUD-VARENNE _enter._ FOUQUIER-TINVILLE _rises and shakes hands with them_. _The People are excited.'_] BILLAUD-VARENNE [_in an undertone_]. Scoundrels! We have them now! VADIER [_aside to_ FOUQUIER-TINVILLE]. This will, end matters. FOUQUIER-TINVILLE. It was high time. [_Deep agitation among the People, who become silent._ FOUQUIER-TINVILLE _reads, standing, with the other two at his side._] "The National Convention, after having heard the report of the Committee of Public Safety and Public Security, decrees that the Revolutionary Tribunal shall continue the examination into the conspiracy of Danton and his associates; that the Judge shall use every means accorded him by law to impose respect and to put a stop to every effort on the part of the prisoners to disturb the public dignity and interfere with the course of justice, and that every prisoner accused of conspiracy who shall resist or insult the national justice shall be immediately withdrawn from the trial." [_The People and the others are astonished. All at once the People begin talking, then the prisoners, at first ill at ease, burst out._] CAMILLE. Infamous! They are gagging us! PHILIPPEAUX. They are not judges, but butchers. DANTON [_to_ FOUQUIER-TINVILLE] You have not read it all. There is something else. The answer! The answer to our demand! JUDGE. Silence! FOUQUIER-TINVILLE. The Convention communicates the following letter, received by the Committees from the police department, which shall be read in order that the court may understand the perils besetting the cause of Liberty. [_Reads:_] "Commune of Paris. We, the administrators of the police department, having received a letter from the concierge of the Luxembourg prison, immediately went to the said prison, and brought before us Citizen Laflotte, former minister to the Republic of Florence, who has been confined there for the past six days. He declared to us that last night, between the hours of six and seven, as he WAS in the room of Arthur Dillon, having taken the aforesaid Dillon to one side, told him that it was necessary to resist oppression, that the good men detained in the Luxembourg and other prisons ought to join forces; that Desmoulins' wife had placed a thousand écus at his disposal, in order to arouse the people in the neighborhood of the Revolutionary Tribunal--" CAMILLE [_furiously_]. The scoundrels! They are not satisfied with murdering me! They are trying to murder my wife! DANTON [_shaking his fist at_ FOUQUIER-TINVILLE]. Scoundrels, scoundrels! They've invented this to ruin us! [_The People are in a fury of indignation_.]