Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, and wished to speak with you.--Be seated, _mon enfant_. Now what are the Traitors doing at Caen? What Deputies are at Caen?--Charlotte names some Deputies. "Their heads shall fall within a fortnight," croaks the eager People's-friend, clutching his tablets to write: Barbaroux, Pétion, writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath: Pétion, and Louvet, and--Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart. "_À moi, chère amie_ (Help, dear)!" no more could the Death-choked say or shriek. The helpful Washer-woman running in--there is no Friend of the People, or Friend of the Washer-woman, left; but his life with a groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below!
And so Marat, People's-friend, is ended; the lone Stylites has got hurled down suddenly from his pillar--_whitherward_ He that made him knows. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole and wail; re-echoed by patriot France; and the Convention, "Chabot pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated," may decree him Pantheon Honors, Public Funeral, Mirabeau's dust making way for him; and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to One, whom they think it honor to call "the good Sans-culotte,"--whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made, for the urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and new-born children be named Marat; and Lago-di-Como Hawkers bake mountains of stucco into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his Picture, or Death-Scene; and such other Apotheosis take place as the human genius, in these circumstances, can devise: but Marat returns no more to the light of this Sun. One sole circumstance we have read with clear sympathy, in the old Moniteur Newspaper: how Marat's Brother comes from Neuchâtel to ask of the Convention, "that the deceased Jean-Paul Marat's musket be given to him." For Marat too had a brother and natural affections; and was wrapped once in swaddling-clothes, and slept safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of men!--A sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris.