He seemed to have lost consciousness, for the eyes were closed, only the hands, which were tied securely to his body, had a spasmodic, nervous twitch in them.
With a good-natured shrug of the shoulders the imperturbable Sir Percy turned to go, but just before he did so, he took a scrap of paper from his waistcoat pocket, and slipped it between Chauvelin's trembling fingers.

On the paper were scribbled the four lines of verse which in the next four and twenty hours Robespierre himself and his colleagues would read.
Then Blakeney finally went out of the room..