"What is your interest in this man ?" he demanded, and the question was so fiercely put as to suggest that it would be well for La Boulaye that he should prove that interest slight indeed.
But whatever feelings may have been swaying Caron at the moment, fear was not one of them.
"My interest in him is sufficiently great to cause me to seek his freedom at your hands," he answered, with composure.
Robespierre eyed him narrowly for a moment, peering at him over his spectacles which he had drawn down on to his tip-tilted nose.

Then the fierceness died out of his mien and manner as suddenly as it had sprung up.

He became once more the weak-looking, ineffectual man that had first greeted La Boulaye: urbane and quiet, but cold-cold as ice.
"I am desolated, my dear Caron, but you have asked me for the one man in the prisons of France whose life I cannot yield you.

He is from Artois, and there is an old score 'twixt him and me, 'twixt his family and mine.
They were the grands seigneurs of the land on which we were born, these Ombrevals, and I could tell you of wrongs committed by them which would make you shudder in horror.

This one shall atone in the small measure we can enforce from him.