“You are accused, Robespierre, of having been present at a secret conference, held some time since at the Princesse de Lamballe’s, at which the queen Marie Antoinette was present.  No mention is made of the terms of the bargain between you and these two women, who would corrupt you.  Since then some changes have been seen in your domestic arrangements, and you have had the money requisite to start a newspaper.  Could there have been such injurious suspicions against you in July, 1791?  We believe nothing of these infamies:  we do not think you the accomplice of Marat, who offers you the dictatorship.  We do not accuse you of imitating Caesar when Anthony presented to him the diadem.  No:  but be on your guard!  Speak of yourself with less egotism.  We have in our time warned both La Fayette and Mirabeau, and pointed out the Tarpeian rock for citizens who think themselves greater than their country.”

III.

“The wretches,” replied Marat, who was then sheltered beneath the patronage of Robespierre, “they cast a shade upon the purest virtues!  His genius is offensive to them.  They punish him for his sacrifices.  His inclinations lead him to retirement.  He only remained in the tumult of the Jacobins from devotion to his country; but men of mediocre understanding are not accustomed to the eulogiums of another, and the mob likes to change its hero.

“The faction of the La Fayettes, Guadets, Brissots circumvent him.  They call him the leader of a party!  Robespierre chief of a party!  They show his hand in the disgraceful columns of the Civil List.  They make the people’s confidence in him a crime, as if a simple citizen without fortune and power had any other means of acquiring the love of his fellow-countrymen but from his deserts! as if a man who has only his isolated voice in the midst of a society of intrigants, hypocrites, and knaves, could ever be feared!  But this incorruptible censor annoys them.  They say he has an understanding with me to offer him the dictatorship.  This is my affair, and I declare that Robespierre is so far from controlling my pen, that I never had the slightest connection with him.  I have seen him but once, and the sole conversation has convinced me that he was not the man whom I sought for the supreme and energetic power demanded by the Revolution.

“The first word he addressed to me was a reproach for having dipped my pen in the blood of the enemies of liberty,—­for always speaking of the cord, the axe, and the poignard; cruel words, which unquestionably my heart would disavow, and my principles discredit.  I undeceived him.  ‘Learn,’ I replied to him, ’that my credit with the people does not depend on my ideas, but on my audacity, the daring impetuosity of my mind, my cries of rage, despair, and fury against the wretches who impede the action of the Revolution.  I know the anger, the just anger, of the people, and that is why it listens to,