or! the Tarpeian rock is near the Capitol!"

The dog Brount ran towards the pair. They said no more and quickened
their pace.

XXVII

Robespierre, awake! The hour is come, time presses,... soon it will be
too late....

At last, on the 8 Thermidor, in the Convention, the Incorruptible rises,
he is going to speak. Sun of the 31st May, is this to be a second
day-spring? Gamelin waits and hopes. His mind is made up then!
Robespierre is to drag from the benches they dishonour these legislators
more guilty than the federalists, more dangerous than Danton.... No! not
yet. "I cannot," he says, "resolve to clear away entirely the veil that
hides this mystery of iniquity."

It is mere summer lightning that flashes harmlessly and without striking
any one of the conspirators, terrifies all. Sixty of them at least for a
fortnight had not dared sleep in their beds. Marat's way was to denounce
traitors by their name, to point the finger of accusation at
conspirators. The Incorruptible hesitates, and from that moment he is
the accused....

That evening at the Jacobins, the hall is filled to suffocation, the
corridors, the courtyard are crowded.

They are all there, loud-voiced friends and silent enemies. Robespierre
reads them the speech the Convention had heard in affrighted silence,
and the Jacobins greet it with excited applause.

"It is my dying testament," declares the orator. "You will see me drain
the hemlock undismayed."

"I will drink it with you," answered David.

"All, we all will!" shout the Jacobins, and separate without deciding
anything.

Evariste, while the death of _The Just_ was preparing, slept the sleep
of the Disciples in the garden of Gethsemane. Next day, he attended the
Tribunal where two sections were sitting. That on which he served was
trying twenty-one persons implicated in the conspiracy of the Lazare
prison. The case was still proceeding when the tidings arrived:

"The Convention, after a six-hours' session, has decreed Maximilien
Robespierre accused,--with him Couthon and Saint-Just; add Augustin
Robespierre, and Lebas, who have demanded to share the lot of the
accused. The five outlaws stand at the bar of the house."

News is brought that the President of the Section sitting in the next
court, the _citoyen_ Dumas, has been arrested on the bench, but that the
case goes on. Drums can be heard beating the alarm, and the tocsin peals
from the churches.

Evariste is still in his pla