'If you ask who should mourn this man, the answer is, His own order; and it is they, and they alone, who sorrow over the lost leader. Not you, nor I, nor that youth yonder, whom you pretend to arraign; but whom you should honour with words of praise and encouragement. Is it not brave of him, in this hour of bastard grief, that he should stand forth to tell you how mean and dastardly ye are! I tell you, once more, that he who dares to stem the false sentiments of misguided enthusiasm has a courage grander than his who storms a breach. My friendship is his own from this hour,' and as he said, he descended from the bench, and flung his arms around Fitzgerald.
Shouts of 'Well done, Marat, bravely spoken!' rent the air, and a hundred voices told how the current of public favour had changed its course.
'Let us not tarry here, young man,' said Marat. 'Come along with me; there is much to be done yet.'
While Gerald was not sorry to be relieved from a position of difficulty and danger, he was also eager to undeceive his new ally, and avow that he had no sympathy with the opinions attributed to him. It was no time, however, for explanations, nor was the temper of the mob to be long trusted. He therefore suffered himself to be led along by the friends of Marat, who, speedily making way for their chief, issued into the open street.
'To the Bureau--to the Bureau!' said another.
'Be it so,' said Marat. 'The _Ami du Peuple_--so was his journal called--' must render an account of this night to its readers. I have addressed seven assemblies since eleven o'clock, and save that one in the Rue de Grenelle, all successfully. By the way, who is our friend? What is he called? Fitzgerald--a foreign name--all the better; we can turn this incident to good account. Are Frenchmen to be taught the path to liberty by a stranger, eh, Favart? That's the keynote for your overture!'
'The article is written--it is half-printed already,' said Favart. 'It begins better--"The impostor is dead: the juggler who gathered your liberties into a bundle and gave them back to you as fetters, is no more! "'
'_Ah, que c'est beau_, that phrase!' cried two or three together.
'I will not have it,' said Marat impetuously; 'these are not moments for grotesque imagery. Open thus: "Who are the men that have constituted themselves the judges of immortality? Who are these, clad in shame and cloaked in ignominy, who assume to dispense the glory of a nation? Are these mean tricksters--these fawners on a corrupted court--these slaves of the basest tyranny that ever defaced a nation's image, to be guardians at the gate of civic honours?"