“The citizen Marat has been assassinated.”

“By a woman.”

“A mere girl.”

“A wench from Caen.  Her name is Corday.”

“The people nearly tore her to pieces awhile ago.”

“She is as much as guillotined already.”

The latter remark went off with a loud guffaw and many a ribald joke.

Mole, despite his great height, succeeded in getting through unperceived.  He was of no account, and he knew his way inside the house.  It was full of people:  journalists, gaffers, women and men—­the usual crowd that come to gape.  The citizen Marat was a great personage.  The Friend of the People.  An Incorruptible, if ever there was one.  Just look at the simplicity, almost the poverty, in which he lived!  Only the aristos hated him, and the fat bourgeois who battened on the people.  Citizen Marat had sent hundreds of them to the guillotine with a stroke of his pen or a denunciation from his fearless tongue.

Mole did not pause to listen to these comments.  He pushed his way through the throng up the stairs, to his late employer’s lodgings on the first floor.

The anteroom was crowded, so were the other rooms; but the greatest pressure was around the door immediately facing him, the one which gave on the bathroom.  In the kitchen on his right, where awhile ago he had been chopping wood under a flood of abuse from Jeannette Marechal, he caught sight of this woman, cowering by the hearth, her filthy apron thrown over her head, and crying—­yes! crying for the loathsome creature, who had expiated some of his abominable crimes at the hands of a poor, misguided girl, whom an infuriated mob was even now threatening to tear to pieces in its rage.

The parlour and even Simonne’s room were also filled with people:  men, most of whom Mole knew by sight; friends or enemies of the ranting demagogue who lay murdered in the very bath which his casual servant had prepared for him.  Every one was discussing the details of the murder, the punishment of the youthful assassin.  Simonne Evrard was being loudly blamed for having admitted the girl into citizen Marat’s room.  But the wench had looked so simple, so innocent, and she said she was the bearer of a message from Caen.  She had called twice during the day, and in the evening the citizen himself said that he would see her.  Simonne had been for sending her away.  But the citizen was peremptory.  And he was so helpless... in his bath ... name of a name, the pitiable affair!

No one paid much attention to Mole.  He listened for a while to Simonne’s impassioned voice, giving her version of the affair; then he worked his way stolidly into the bathroom.

It was some time before he succeeded in reaching the side of that awful bath wherein lay the dead body of Jean Paul Marat.  The small room was densely packed—­not with friends, for there was not a man or woman living, except Simonne Evrard and her sisters, whom the bloodthirsty demagogue would have called “friend”; but his powerful personality had been a menace to many, and now they came in crowds to see that he was really dead, that a girl’s feeble hand had actually done the deed which they themselves had only contemplated.  They stood about whispering, their heads averted from the ghastly spectacle of this miserable creature, to whom even death had failed to lend his usual attribute of tranquil dignity.