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In the evening Harry and Victor returned to the street and watched until Marat returned from the Jacobin Club. His escort of men with torches and bludgeons left him at the door, but two or three went upstairs with him, and until far in the night visitors came and went. Then the light in the upper room was extinguished.
The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease had reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water; and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying in a large tub. A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger from the enemies of the Republic.
The judges are easy, and there is no more pleasure to be derived from the executions." "They must be stirred up," said Tison with a fiendish look; "your husband must speak with his friend, citizen Marat, and tell him that his best friends the knitters, and most of all, Simon's wife, are dissatisfied, and if it goes on so, the women will rise and hurry all the men to the guillotine.
I know not whether these lines are most applicable to the display of Marat's body, or the consecration of his fame, but both will be a lasting stigma on the manners and morals of Paris. If the departments, however, take no interest in the loss of Marat, the young woman who assassinated him has created a very lively one.
So Louis, who helped free the American Colonies, went to the block, and his enemy, Danton, a little later, did the same; Mirabeau, the boaster, had died peacefully in his bed; Robespierre, who signed the death-warrant of Paine, "to save his own head," died the death he had reserved for Paine; Marat, "the terrible dwarf," horribly honest, fearfully sincere, jealous and afraid of Paine, hinting that he was the secret emissary of England, was stabbed to his death by a woman's hand.
There stood the giant Santerre, and not far from him Simon the cobbler, in the midst of a crowd of savage- looking, defiant fellows, who all looked at their leaders, while they, Santerre and Simon, directed their eyes up to the box of Marat. The glance of the chief met that of his two friends.
The clubs, hastily convoked, rang with the most frantic motions; that of the Cordeliers decreed that the National Assembly had devoted France to slavery, by declaring the crown hereditary; they demanded that the name of the king should be for ever abolished, and that the kingdom should be constituted into a republic. Danton gave it its audacity, and Marat its madness.
After the 9th of Thermidor, it had been considered necessary to oppose a great revolutionary reputation to that of Robespierre, and Marat had been selected for this purpose. To him were decreed the honours of the Pantheon, which Robespierre, while in power, had deferred granting him. He, in his turn, was now attacked.
Jeanne said softly. "It is well she never knew about it. The thought he had got safely away kept her up. And now, tell me about your plans. Could I not take Victor's place and help you to seize Marat? I am not strong, you know; but I could hold a knife, and tell him I would kill him if he cried out. I don't think I could, you know, but he wouldn't know that."
The former connection of Marat with M. de Calonne was perfectly well known; they remembered these words of Pitt's: "The French must go through liberty, and then be brought back to their old government by licence;" the avowed adversaries of revolution testified by their conduct, by their votes, and even by their imprudent words, that according to them, the worst was the only means of returning to what they call the good; and yet these instructive comparisons struck only eight or ten members of our great assemblies, so small a share has suspicion in the national character, so painful is distrust to French sincerity.
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