,' said Marat savagely. 'Menard is right:
it is not man by man, but in platoons, that our vengeance must be
executed.'

'I have an uncle and five cousins, whom, from motives of delicacy, I
have not denounced. Will any one do me the favour to write the Count de
Rochegarde and his sons?'

'I adopt them with pleasure. I wanted a count or two among my barons.'

'I drink to all patriots,' said Marat, draining his glass, and turning a
full look on Fitzgerald.

'I accept the toast,' said Gerald, drinking.

'And I too,' cried Louvet, 'though I do not understand it.'

'By patriot, I mean one who adores liberty,' said Marat

'And hates the tyrant,' cried another.

'For the liberty to send my enemy to the guillotine, I am ready to fight
to-morrow,' said Guadet.

'For whom, let me ask, are we to make ourselves hangmen and headsmen?'
cried a pale, sickly youth, whose voice trembled as he spoke. 'The
furious populace will not thank you that you have usurped their
hunting-grounds. If you run down _their_ game, they will one day turn
and rend you!'

'Ah, Brissot, are you there, with your bland notions stolen from Plato!'
cried Guadet. 'It is pleasant even to hear your flute-stop in the wild
concert of our hoarse voices!'

'As to liberty, who can define it!' exclaimed Brissot.

'I can,' cried Lescour. 'The right to guillotine one's neighbour!'

'Who ever understood the meaning of equality?' continued Brissot,
unheeding him. 'Procrustes was the inventor of it!'

'And for fraternity: what is it--who has ever practised it?'

'Cain is the only instance that occurs to me,' said Guadet gravely.

'I drink to America,' said Marat. 'May the infant republic live by the
death of the mother that bore her!'

A wild hurrah followed the toast, which was welcomed with mad
enthusiasm.

'The beacon of liberty we are lighting here,' continued he, 'will be
soon answered from every hill-top and mountain throughout Europe--from
the snow-peaks of Norway to the olive-crowned heights of the
Apennines--from the bleak cliffs of Scotland to the rocky summits of the
Carpathians.'

In a strain bombastic and turgid, but marked at times by flashes of real
eloquence, he launched out into one of those rhapsodies which formed the
staple of his popular addresses. The glorious picture of a people free,
happy, and prosperous was so mingled with a scene of vengeance and
retribution, that the work of the guillotine was made to seem the chief
agent of