| Show JEAN PAUL IARAT Eidpaths Estimate of the Underground Under-ground Revolutionist HIS PRIVATE AND PUBLIC LIFE A Cross Between Fatalist and Assassin Subterranean Sub-terranean Journalism The Knife of Charlotte Corday HERE are two Parisesone aboveground 1 above-ground the other i under Without cci knowing this fact L v no one can understand t F under-stand a French revolution much less the great revolution i J revo-lution which rose and broke a hundred c hun-dred years ago Paris above I J ground has sunshine 1 sun-shine boulevards IrI cafes calons men I women mobility enthusiasm ParIs Par-Is underground has cellars vaults sewers sew-ers Plutonian haunts darkness saltpeter salt-peter and death But life is there with death a kind of life and the two sometimes some-times conspire Then comes fermentation fermenta-tion a sort of horrid foaming and the I underground sea spumes up through the cellars floods the streets and the whole world Strange that the cellars of Paris should hold not only the soil but the seed germs of civilization I In the broad country side of the nations the under man lives in a hut or cabin A bird sits on the roof comb and sunlight creeps through the chinks But in Paris the under man lives in a vault This is true also in London and New York and in all your great massed populations The under man the bottom man the real earthman earth-man lives in a cellar his wife also and his children It i notu good place to live The French Revolution began aboveground above-ground in the kingdom of thought but the drippings of it fell into the Parisian cellars Within a year from the beginning the very sewers were full of foam With this subterranean effervescence all shapes and forms were cast to the surface It was a i the sea had vomitedt Unknown creatures came up from the pit of that horrid stomach and began to swim and shriek and fight Among tho rest there was spewed forth a doctorDr Marat Dr Jean Paul Marat or Mar as his father spelled ita sort of spectral pygmy not five feet high but bearing a monstrous head and hideous face He was Dr Marat his enemies said a horse doctor But that was a slander True he had been veterinary veteri-nary surgeon to the Comte dArtois destined des-tined after thirtyfour years to be King Charles X of France But Jean Paul was also a doctor of men a good one too who had spent many years in London where he wrote essays and books and learned to hate the British aristocracy The Comte dArtois made him physician of the guards as well a of his horses this in 1777 for his hour was not yet come Marat had for his mother Louise Cabrol I Genevese Calvinist which accounts for one part of him but he had for his father Jean Paul Mara of Cagliari on the southern south-ern coast of Sardinia and this accounts for another part He was a cross between Italian and Calvinista sort of hybrid of assassin and fatalist lie was born May S41744 being five years older than Mira I beau and fourteen years older than Robes pierre In his youth he studied medicine for two years at Bordeaux aud presently became an oculist of no mean skill I At this period of his life he absorbed his social and philosophical opinions which ho carried with him first to Paris then into Holland and afterward to London In his I thirtieth year ho began as an author and In 7 published his first political treatise under the significant name of tie Chains of Slavery He remained in London three years longer writing on medical and social questions and was then recalled to France to prescribe for the guards and stud also of the Comte dArtois who gave him an annual salary of 2000 livres for his services ser-vices A promising man already was Dr Jean Paul But we must pass over much After ten years the call was issued for the assem bling of the states general Now it was that Marat plunged into the swim and began be-gan t trouble the already troubled waters With the opening of the states general many patriot Frenchmen were disposed to take the English constitution as the model for new France But Marat had seen enough of the British system and in September of She published a powerful monograph entitled en-titled A View of the Vices of the Const tution of England Already the pygmy with the monstrous head had become a democrat and revolutionist according to the gospel of Rousseau With the beginning of the conflict proper behold Marat in Paris He has become a journalist the most audacious that has ever yet appeared among men First he founded The Moniteur Patriote then The Publiciste Parisien and then on the 16th of September 179 The Ami du Peuple or Friend of the People a journal which from that day became the vent of the Faubourgs the very mouth and soul of the sanscu lottes In this paper Marat began to pour out without measure the very essence of radicalism radi-calism and audacity His attack was on everything the monarchy on the king on the royal family on the aristocracy on feudal France on everything that was above the earth Whatever was in power it was his lifelong policy to oppose Now it was a man now an institution and now a principle at which he spat his venom The Ami du Peuple became the mouthpiece mouth-piece of all discontent vomiting floods of invective acrid a vitriol fierce as fire It was not long until the authorities pounced upon Marat and his dangerous engine but he dived and fled to London The pygmy with the monstrous head had now become an unquenchable volcano His fires had caught behind him and ho was soon able t return to Paris and reissue re-issue his paper Nevertheless ho had to dive and duck out of sight He disappeared disap-peared from the kingdom of daylight and became the god of the nether world hub terranean Paris received him Hades gavo a loving gulp and he was safe Dark undiscoverable un-discoverable vaults opened for his printing print-ing press and editorial stool Ami du Peuple from being the mouthpiece of the Faubourgs became the mouthpiece of hell Once and again the specter was routed from his hiding place and in the close of 1791 he escaped to London There he wrote his Ecole du Citoyen or School for the Citizen a sansculotic text book of insurrection insur-rection and blood I four months however the Club of the Cordeliers called him back t Paris The war with Austria flamed up on the horizon and the revolutionary party in the capital needed every auxiliary even the pen of Marat The Ami du Peuple burst out more furiously than ever It is probable prob-able that the atrocious scheme for the ma sacre of the loyalist prisoners was hatched in the brain of Marat and that he inoculated inocu-lated the giant Danton with his malign purpose At all events the September massacre was the glory of Ami du Peuplo and its editor The five foot goblin rose in the bloody arena and was chosen one of the representatives t the national convention conven-tion from the commune of Paris But his work in that body by no means took him from his editorial 8 OOl He had learned that his journal was the real weap Ion I-on of power and though he presently changed the name to Journal of the French I Republic he never relinquished his throne He now came up howevqr from tho subterranean sub-terranean world came up reeking for he had lived in cellars and starved and suffered suf-fered and raved and cursed until horrid diseases had seized him His skin was consumed con-sumed with a sort of scrofulous eczema which burned like lire His cuticle ever afterward was a shirt of Nessus which he must wear a one might wear a blister of sulphuric acid and fire Note well that Marat was never a partisan parti-san His general policy was to oppose power in every form He also croaked and prophesied and caviled He bad in him something of the gifts of Cassandra and all of the malignity of Thersites To quarrel quar-rel was his breath and life Strange that such a vindictive and malevolent soul should be truthful 1 But it was so At the bottom Marat spoke the truth with his lips and from the heart He believed absolutely absolute-ly the things which he said and published He would join himself with nobody He fought the king and he fought the Giron dists and he fought Dumouriez and ho fought everything and everybody which seemed to him to be a relic of the ancient order in France Hard was the struggle between him and the Girondists After the execution of the king that g powerful party succeeded in arresting Mural and he was brought before the revolutionary tribunal but the trial ended in victory for the hateful hate-ful specter and he went on a before only more furiously Marat however was not destined to go much further in this world The summer of 1793 found him in a desperate condition from his diseases He was withered almost Ito I-to a skeleton and the burning of his skin could only be appeased by sitting for tho greater part of the time in a bath of hot water But the energies of his ferocious mind continued to storm and scintillate He had his lodgings the Rue de 1Ecole de Medicine where in a sort of a garret I he had fixed his bath tub and editorial J I stool beside it and where he was attended j by a washerwoman From this place ho wrote his editorials making up proscription proscrip-tion lists while he sat in the bath com put I irig tables in which he thought that by the killing of 270000 additional victims the reign of liberty and equality might be es I tablishedl Soothed by the hot water he would reach out his withered hand and add other names of the Girondists and their abettors to the list of death Thus was the bathing goblin don d-on the evening of the 13th of July 1703 It was on the eve of the fourth anniversary anniver-sary of the storming of the Bastile There is 1 rap at the door outside The sweet voice of a woman is heard evidently the I voice of a maiden who says that she would do France a service But Citizen Marat i is sick and cannot see her So he tells the AlL m1af JEAN PAUL MARAT washerwoman and the message is delivered deliv-ered But the girl persists and is presently pres-ently admitted to the spectacle There is the monstrous head above the bathtub the upper part of the shriveled yellow body and the bony arms like the arms of a skeleton Charlotte Corday and Jean Paul Marat are face tojacel Citizen Marat says she I come from Caen and wish to speak with youJ Sit down my child says he what are the traitors doing down at Caen And who are the deputies from your country Charlotte names Barbaroux Petion and Louvet The skeleton hand reaches out on the right side of the tub to his writing stool He will note these names and their heads shall fall in a fortnight By this movement his chest over the heart revolves re-volves out of the water I is the hour of fate One spring and Charlotte is by his side One plunge and her knife is in his breast to the very hilt It finds the malignant heart and the black blood lignant spurts into the water and over the tub IA moi chere amiel Ah me my friend helpi But horrid death chokes his voice and as I the washerwoman rushes in the dark soul of Marat rushes out forever David the artist shall soon paint the scene for posterity The convention shall rush together and all Paris subterranean Paris shall howl and groan A decree shal be passed by which the body or dust of Mirabeau in the Pantheon shall make room for the ashes of this Marat Funeral eulogies hal be spoken and poems written md dramas enacted to perpetuate the memory of the underground specter of the Revolution But Jean Paul shall hear it 10 more Whither has he gone Heaven knows but not the earth As for Charlotte the beautiful creature is haled to the tribunal Witnesses arc called They are not needed cries she in sublime indignation It is I that kiel Marat I killed one man to save a hundred hun-dred thousand a villain to save innocents a savage wild beast to give repose to my country I was a Republican before the Revolution and I never wanted cncrau She dresses herself beautifully for the scaffold So modest is she in her simple jiiihood that when the executioner removes re-moves the scarf from her neck she blushes scr crimson Oh reader what an age was that a hundred years agol How the story of Itof its men its women and its events seems to us a a tale of fiction the shadowy rollings together and unfoldings of a phantasmagoria streaked with blood bubbling like molten brass and kindled with flames of fire fireJOHN CLARK RIDPATH |
