minal hands that are bent on
our extermination. His death is the signal for the slaughter of all good
patriots."

Different reports were current, as to the circumstances of the tragic
event and the last words of the victim; endless questions were asked
concerning the assassin, all that anyone knew was that it was a young
woman sent by those traitors, the federalists. Baring teeth and nails,
the _citoyennes_ devoted the culprit to condign punishment; deeming the
guillotine too merciful a death, they demanded this monster of iniquity
should be scourged, broken on the wheel, torn limb from limb, and racked
their brains to invent new tortures.

An armed body of National Guards was haling to the Section headquarters
a man of determined mien. His clothes were in tatters, and streams of
blood trickled down his white face. He had been overheard saying that
Marat had earned his fate by his constant incitements to pillage and
massacre, and it was only with great difficulty that the Guards had
saved him from the fury of the populace. A hundred fingers pointed him
out as the accomplice of the assassin, and threats of death followed him
as he was led away.

Gamelin was stunned by the blow. A few hot tears blistered his burning
eyes. With the grief he felt as a disciple mingled solicitude for the
popular idol, and these combined feelings tore at his heart-strings. He
thought to himself:

"After Le Peltier, after Bourdon, Marat!... I foresee the fate of the
patriots; massacred on the Champ de Mars, at Nancy, at Paris, they will
perish one and all." And he thought of Wimpfen, the traitor, who only a
while before was marching on Paris, and who, had he not been stopped at
Vernon, by the gallant patriots, would have devoted the heroic city to
fire and slaughter.

And how many perils still remained, how many criminal designs, how many
treasonable plots, which only Marat's perspicacity and vigilance could
unravel and foil! Now he was dead, who was there to denounce Custine
loitering in idleness in the Camp of Caesar and refusing to relieve
Valenciennes, Biron tarrying inactive in the Lower Vendee letting Saumur
be taken and Nantes blockaded, Dillon betraying the Fatherland in the
Argonne?...

Meantime, all about him, rose momentarily higher the sinister cry:

"Marat is dead; the aristocrats have killed him!"

As he was on his way, his heart bursting with grief and hate and love,
to pay a last mark of respect to the martyr of liber