been such marvellous power and confidence in that man's voice when he
said: "I pledge you my word." Madeleine Lannoy lived now in hope and a
sweet sense of perfect mental and bodily security. Around her there was
an influence, too, a presence which she did not often see, but always
felt to be there: a woman, tall and graceful and sympathetic, who was
always ready to cheer, to comfort, and to help. Her name was Marguerite.
Madame Lannoy never knew her by any other. The man had spoken of her as
being as like an angel as could be met on this earth, and poor Madeleine
Lannoy fully agreed with him.

III

Even that bloodthirsty tiger, Jean Paul Marat, has had his apologists.
His friends have called him a martyr, a selfless and incorruptible
exponent of social and political ideals. We may take it that Simonne
Evrard loved him, for a more impassioned obituary speech was, mayhap,
never spoken than the one which she delivered before the National
Assembly in honour of that sinister demagogue, whose writings and
activities will for ever sully some of the really fine pages of that
revolutionary era.

But with those apologists we have naught to do. History has talked its
fill of the inhuman monster. With the more intimate biographists alone
has this true chronicle any concern. It is one of these who tells us
that on or about the eighteenth day of Messidor, in the year I of the
Republic (a date which corresponds with the sixth of July, 1793, of our
own calendar), Jean Paul Marat took an additional man into his service,
at the instance of Jeannette Marechal, his cook and maid-of-all-work.
Marat was at this time a martyr to an unpleasant form of skin disease,
brought on by the terrible privations which he had endured during the