Page:Rolland - Two Plays of the French Revolution.djvu/214

208 where they are going. Why talk so much about them? Your play is execrable, Fouquier. You had much better chop off my head at once: I have the tooth-ache.

[to , your name and occupation?

Hérault-Séchelles. Former Attorney-general at the Châtelet: I once sat in the present room. Former President of the Convention: in its name I inaugurated the Republican Constitution. Former member of the Committee of Public Safety; once the friend of Saint-Just and of Couthon, who are now murdering me.

are an aristocrat. Your fortune dates from your relations with the Court, and from the time you were presented to the Capet woman by the Polignac woman. You have been in constant communication with the émigrés; you were the friend of Proly the Austrian, the bastard son of the Prince of Kaunitz, who was sent to the guillotine last month. You have divulged the secrets of the Committee of Public Safety, and sent important papers to foreign courts; you sheltered under your roof, in direct violation of the law, the former war commissioner Catus, who was wanted on the charge of being an émigré and a conspirator. You were even so audacious as to follow him and defend him in the Lepelletier section where he was arrested.

deny one thing: I never divulged state secrets, and I defy you to prove the accusation. The rest is true, I am proud to confess.

you any explanation to make?