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sciences. His polemic genius, which had not succeeded against Voltaire and the philosophers, now attacked Newton. He attempted no less than to overthrow that god from his altar, and rushed into a number of hasty, feverish, and trivial experiments, expecting to destroy Newton's theory of optics, which he did not even understand. Trusting little to scientific Frenchmen, he invited Franklin to behold his experiments. The latter admired his dexterity, but gave no opinion on the subject itself; and Marat, little satisfied, immediately set about working against Franklin. He wanted to upset his theory on electricity; and, in order to have the support of the opinion of an illustrious man, he had invited Volta to come and judge for himself. He did not receive his approbation.

Charles, the natural philosopher, celebrated for his improvement of aerostation, has often related to one of our friends, a very illustrious scholar, that he one day surprised Marat in the very act of quackery. Marat pretended he had discovered a resin that was a perfect conductor of electricity. Charles handled it and felt a needle concealed in the resin, which accounted for the whole mystery. Marat flew into a passion, and drew his sword. Charles seized it, broke it, and threw Marat down. This duel, which has been sometimes related in a different manner, was a fight with fists; and neither party was wounded.

The Revolution found Marat in the house of the Count d'Artois,† in the focus of abuses and prodigality, amidst young insolent noblemen, that is to say, in the very place where one could the best learn to know and detest the ancient system. He found himself, from the very first, and without any transition, hurried away into popular movement. He had just arrived from a journey from England when the explosion took place on the 14th of July. His imagination was seized by that unprecedented spectacle which filled his brain with a frenzy from which he never recovered. His vanity likewise had been flattered by an accident that caused him to perform a part on that glorious day. If we may believe a note that he sent to the journalists, three months after the 14th of July, Marat happening to be, that very day, in the crowd which

*If we relied on the continuator of Montucla (t. iii., p. 595), we might believe that Marat was ignorant, in optics, of what was known before Newton, of the best things that had been said by Descartes. But this continuator is Lalande, a man cruelly persecuted by Marat, and consequently to be suspected in his testimony concerning him. I have thought it my duty to inquire what the most illustrious natural philosophers of our age, quite disinterested in this old question of history, thought on this subject. They have assured me that, in fact, Marat had not well comprehended Newton's experiments, that he had judged them improperly by reproducing them in totally different circumstances, and that, of all Marat's experiments, only one deserved attention,—that of the rings of colour traced by the light diffused around the point of contact of a glass lens and a metal.

Several persons, still living, believed that he belonged to M. de Caloune, and affirm that they have read counter-revolutionary pamphlets by Marat. However, in spite of every inquiry, I have been unable to discover any. Lafayette (Mémoires, ii., 286) assures us that "Two months before the Revolution, Marat had departed for London, howling against democracy."

544

HIS MODELS, AS JOURNALIST.

thronged the Pont-Neuf, and a detachment of hussars having penetrated to that point, he became the spokesman of the crowd, and commanded the soldiers to lay down their arms, which they did not think proper to do. Nevertheless Marat modestly compares himself to Horatius Cocles, who alone, on a bridge, stopped an army.

Dissatisfied with the journalists who had not praised him worthily, Marat (as he assures us) sold the sheets of his bed in order to begin a journal. He tried several titles, and found one excellent: "The Friend of the People, or the Parisian publicist, a political and impartial journal." In spite of this style, occasionally burlesque, as we see, and always weak and declamatory, Marat was successful. The secret of his success was his assuming, not the habitual tone of the French pamphlets and journals, but of the gazettes which our refugee libelists made in England and Holland, in the style of Morand's Gazétier cuirassé, and other furious publications. Like them, Marat furnished all sorts of news, scandal, and personalities; he refrained from those abstract theories unintelligible to the people, which all the other journalists were simple enough to oblige them to read; he spoke but little of foreign affairs, and little of the departments which then entirely filled the journal of the Jacobins. He confined himself to Paris, to the movement in Paris, and especially to persons, whom he accused and denounced with the terrible levity of the libelists whom he imitated: with this great difference, however; Morand's scandal resulted only in the ransom of the persons denounced,-in putting money into Morand's pocket; whereas Marat's, more disinterested, sent people to death; many a one, named by him in the morning, might be assassinated in the evening.

One is surprised that this uniform violence, ever and ever the same,— this monotony of fury, which renders the reading of Marat's journal so fatiguing, had always an influence,-did not satiate the public. For there is no variety; everything is in the extreme and carried to an excess, the same words, infamous, infernal, wretch, ever recurring, with the everlasting chorus, death! and no other change than the number of the heads to be cut off, first 600, next 10,000, then again 20,000; in this manner he goes on, if I remember rightly, to the singularly precise number of 270,000 heads!

This very uniformity, which seemed likely to tire out and cloy, was serviceable to Marat. He had the effect and influence of the self-same bell tolling a knell for ever. Every morning, before day-break, the streets re-echoed with the shouts of the newspaper-carriers: "Here you have the Friend of the People!" Marat furnished every night eight octavo pages, which were sold the next morning; but every instant the paper is found to be too small, and fills to overflowing; often he adds eight pages more-sixteen pages for one number; yet even this is not sufficient for him; what he had begun in large type he frequently finished in small, in order to include more matter, more insults, and more fury. The other journalists produce their papers at intervals, and relieve one another, or obtain assistance; but Marat never. The Friend of the People is all written by the same hand; it is not simply a newspaper, but a man, a living individual.

How was he able to accomplish this enormous task? One word will

1

HIS MODE OF LIFE.

545

explain everything: he remained ever at his desk, going but very seldom to the Assembly and the clubs. His life was merely and entirely confined to writing, both day and night. The police likewise did him early the good service of forcing him to live concealed, shut up, and entirely devoted to work; it doubled his activity, and, moreover, extremely interested the people in behalf of their friend, a persecuted fugitive, in peril, on their account. In reality, the danger was trifling. Lenoir and Sartine's old police was no more; and the new one, ill-organised, uncertain, and timid, in the hands of Bailly and Lafayette, had no real influence. Save Favras and the murderer of François the baker, there had been no serious punishment either in '90 or '91. Lafayette himself, far from desiring the dictatorship, hastened to induce the Assembly to enforce the new procedure, which completely annulled the judiciary power. The salaried National Guard, which constituted his true power, was partly composed of the ancient French Guards and the conquerors of the Bastille, who regretted to perform the part of police officers.

Marat made much money by his journal, and lived in easy circumstances, from day to day, however, at the hazard of a wandering life. His fantastical dress bespoke his eccentricity; although usually dirty, he would occasionally display a sudden carefulness, a partial luxury,. and a sort of reminiscence of gallantry in his appearance: a white satin waistcoat, for instance, with a greasy collar and dirty linen. This return of good fortune, which usually appeases men, had no effect on him. His nnwholesome, irritating, and imprisoned existence preserved his fury entire. He ever saw the world in the narrow and oblique daylight passing through an air-hole into his cellar, livid and gloomy, like those damp walls, or like his own face which seemed to be assuming their colour. This manner of living at length became agreeable to him; and he enjoyed the fantastical and sinister effect with which it invested his name. He felt he reigned from the bottom of that dark pit; there, he judged without appeal, the world of light, the kingdom of the living, saving one and condemning another. His judgments extended even to private affairs; and those of women seemed to be specially entitled to his consideration. He protects a fugitive nun, and takes a lady's part in her quarrel with her husband, making atrocious threats against the latter. An exceptional life, apart from the world, disabling man from controlling his judgments by those of other men, easily makes one a visionary. Marat was not far from believing himself gifted with second sight. He is ever predicting at random. By so doing, he singularly flattered the disposition of the public mind; for their extreme misery had rendered them credulous and impatient of the future, and they listened with avidity to this Mathew Laensberg. Singular to relate, nobody perceives that he is mistaken every instant. This is nevertheless striking in what concerns foreign affairs: he has no suspicion of the concerted alliance of Europe against France (see August 28th, 1790, No. 204, and others). As for home affairs, seeing everything gloomy, he runs but little risk of making a mistake. Whenever a word of the prophet is fulfilled it is noticed by the people with admiration; and even the journalists, little jealous of one whom they consider a madman of no consequence, fear not to exalt him rapturously, and term him Marat the divine. In reality, his excessive

546

HIS INSANE BOASTINGS.

distrust sometimes serves him for penetration. For instance, the day when Louis XVI. sanctioned the decree requiring the priests to take the oath, Marat appeals to him in powerful and sensible language. He reminds him of his education and his past domestic history, and then asks him by what sublime virtue he has deserved that God should grant him this miracle of emancipating himself from the past and becoming sincere.

These flashes of good sense are uncommon. Among the ventings of his fury, we more frequently discern fits of quackery, or delirious boastings which no one but a madman would venture to utter: "If I were a tribune of the people, and supported by a few thousand determined men, I warrant that, in six weeks, the constitution should be perfect; that the political machine should go on bravely; that no public rogue should venture to derange it; that the nation should be free and happy; that in less than a year it should be flourishing and formidable, and should remain so as long as I live." (July 26th, 1790, No. 173.)

What, in my opinion, does Marat greater wrong than all his furious language, is that he is not so much a madman or a monomaniac, but he remembers wonderfully well his personal enemies, even people of whom he had to complain but in a very indirect manner. Neither can it be said that they were such dangerous persons that he was obliged to silence his generosity and make an effort to proscribe them, though they were his enemies they were inoffensive persons, and, although occupying an honourable position in the world, without any political importance.

If he wished to merit the grand name of Friend of the People, and render sacred the terrible character of national accuser that he had assumed, it was necessary first to be pure and disinterested. To be so from money is not sufficient; it is necessary to be also pure from hatred. He ought to have commenced a noble and entirely new life, to have forgotten that there had been formerly a Doctor Marat, an author ill or well-judged, in open war with the scientific men of the period.

The Academy of Sciences, guilty of having disdained what he names his discoveries, is persecuted and denounced by his newspaper,-and in a pamphlet reprinted expressly,-as aristocratical. Peaceful men, like Laplace and Lalande, and Monge, a true patriot and a man of great character, are denounced to the vengeance of the people. He accuses them not only of want of patriotism, but of robbery. "The money given to the Academy for making experiments, is squandered away by them," says he, "at La Rapée or among harlots."

The principal object of this envious rage is naturally the first man of the day, he who had just effected in science a revolution which vied with the political revolution, he whom Laplace and Lagrange owned for their superior-I mean Lavoisier. It is well known that Lagrange was so struck with the grand aspect of the chemical world which had just been unveiled by Lavoisier, that, for ten years, he laid aside mathematics, unable any longer to support the dry study of abstract calculation, when he beheld the profound secrets of nature displayed before him.

This great revolutionist, Lavoisier, would not have been able to make his revolution, had he not been rich. It was for this purpose that he had desired to be a farmer of the public revenue. Far from assuming

HIS HATRED OF LAVOISIER.

547 in this capacity a fiscal spirit, he advised the lowering of several imposts, maintaining that the revenue, far from diminishing, would increase. When appointed by Turgot director of the powder-magazines,* he abolished the vexatory custom of searching the cellars in quest of saltpetre. One fact will enable us to appreciate the goodness of his heart. Amidst his numerous labours and different functions, he found time to devote himself to a long, laborious, and disgusting research, the study of the gas which escapes from water-closets, without any other hope than that of saving the lives of a few unfortunate creatures.+

Such was the man whom Marat attacked, whom he calls "a chemical apprentice, with an income of one hundred thousand francs a year." His persevering accusations, reiterated in several ways, prepare the scaffold for Lavoisier. The latter, who plainly perceives that having done so much, and so much to do, his life is of inestimable value to the world, never thinks of flying. He could never guess the fatal stupidity that could deprive science and mankind of so precious a life. And yet hatred, fomented by Marat, increases. He had been unable to annihilate Newton; so, to console himself, he is determined to destroy the Newton of chemistry.+

had to

Lavoisier, far more known than the other farmers of the revenue, undergo alone the whole of the too natural animosity of the people against that body, so fatal to the State. He had taken the principal part in a measure necessary for the salubrity of Paris, which then occupied the minds and excited the imaginations of men, the removal by night of the bodies that had been heaped together for so many ages in the cemetery of the Innocents. They also attributed to him, without any proof, the plan of the new wall with which the Ferme-Générale surrounded Paris. Marat reproaches him with having wanted, by that wall, "to deprive the city of air," and stifle it. He also accuses him with having transported the gunpowder from the arsenal to the Bastille on the night of the 12th of July. Now, I believe, the transport took place sooner, (for the Bastille was put in a state of defence as early as the 30th of June), and by order of the minister, to which the director of the gunpowder was unable to offer any opposition.

Whilst writing this, I am reading a very important pamphlet on a class of workmen, perhaps still more unfortunate, the stone quarry-men, who all die of consumption before the age of forty. I intreat our young scientific men, who go to visit the rocks of Fontainebleau, to visit also the men, and to seek a means of rendering this employment less fatal. The work of which I am speaking (Les Carriers de Fontainebleau, par M. V. de Maud'huy, 1846,) may appear absurd in form; but the matter is very curious. And even the form, so strange, fantastical, and barbarous, as to remind one of the energy of the bad authors of the sixteenth century,-or rather the wild chaos of rocks and flint heaped up together, even this form deserves our attention. We laugh at first with surprise, but afterwards we feel the latent heat,-the heat without light but light will come, sooner or later, to a man who is so worthy of it by his charity.

No one will hesitate to give him this name, on reading his biography by Cuvier, (Biographie Universelle), and by M. Dumas (Philosophie Chimique). M. Dumas has shown, in the clearest manner, the perfect originality of

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