ident how inferior the
polished eloquence of the other must prove before such an audience to
the stormy passion of this man's speech. Like the voice of a destroying
angel scattering ruin and destruction, he poured out over the memory
of Mirabeau the flood of his invective. He reproduced the vices of his
youth to account for the crimes of his age, and saw the treason to his
party explained in his falsehood to his friends. There was in his words
and in all he said the force of a mad mountain torrent, bounding wildly
from crag to crag, sweeping all before it as it went, and yet ever
pouring its flood deeper, fuller, and stronger. From a narrative of
Riquetti's early life, with every incident of which he was familiar, he
turned suddenly to show how such a man must, in the very nature of his
being, be an enemy to the people. A noble by birth, an aristocrat in all
his instincts, he could never have frankly lent himself to the cause of
liberty. It was only a traitor he was, then, within their camp; he was
there to learn their strength and their weakness, to delude them by
mock concessions. It was, as he expressed it, by the heat of their own
passions that he welded the fetters for their own limbs.

'If you ask who should mourn this man, the answer is, His own order; and
it is they, and they alone, who sorrow over the lost leader. Not you,
nor I, nor that youth yonder, whom you pretend to arraign; but whom you
should honour with words of praise and encouragement. Is it not brave of
him, in this hour of bastard grief, that he should stand forth to tell
you how mean and dastardly ye are! I tell you, once more, that he who
dares to stem the false sentiments of misguided enthusiasm has a courage
grander than his who storms a breach. My friendship is his own from this
hour,' and as he said, he descended from the bench, and flung his arms
around Fitzgerald.

Shouts of 'Well done, Marat, bravely spoken!' rent the air, and a
hundred voices told how the current of public favour had changed its
course.

'Let us not tarry here, young man,' said Marat. 'Come along with me;
there is much to be done yet.'

While Gerald was not sorry to be relieved from a position of difficulty
and danger, he was also eager to undeceive his new ally, and avow that
he had no sympathy with the opinions attributed to him. It was no time,
however, for explanations, nor was the temper of the mob to be long
trusted. He therefore suffered himself to be led along