we have found that out we can decide upon our next
step."

They were, however, saved the trouble they contemplated, for they
learned from the conversation of two men among the mob, who cheered
Marat as he entered the Assembly, what they wanted to know.

"Marat is the man for me," one of them said. "He hates the aristocracy;
he would bathe in their blood. I never miss reading his articles
in the Friend of the People. His cry is always 'Blood! Blood!' He
does not ape the manner of the bourgeois. He does not wash his face
and put on clean linen. He is a great man, but he is as dirty as
the best of us. He still lives in his old lodgings, though he could
move if he liked into any of the fine houses whose owners are in
the prisons. He wants no servants, but lives just as we do. Vive
Marat!"

"Where does the great citizen live?" Victor asked the men in a
tone of earnest entreaty. On learning the address they took their
way to the dirty and disreputable street where Marat lodged.

"The citizen Marat lives in this street, does he not?" Victor asked
a man lounging at the door of a cabaret.

"Yes, in that house opposite. Do you want him?"

"No; only I was curious to see the house where the friend of the
people lives, and as I was passing the end of the street turned
down. Will you drink a glass?"

"I am always ready for that," the man said, "but in these hard
times one cannot do it as often as one would like."

"That is true enough," Victor said as they took their seats at
a table. "And so Marat lives over there; it's not much of a place
for a great man."

"It is all he wants," the other said carelessly; "and he is safer
here than he would be in the richer quarters. There would be a plot
against him, and those cursed Royalists would kill him if they had
the chance; but he is always escorted home from the club by a band
of patriots."

In the evening Harry and Victor returned to the street and watched
until Marat returned from the Jacobin Club. His escort of men with
torches and bludgeons left him at the door, but two or three went
upstairs with him, and until far in the night visitors came and
went. Then the light in the upper room was extinguished.

"It is not such an easy affair," Victor said as they moved away;
"and you see, as that man in the wine-shop told us, there is an
old woman who cooks for him, and it is much more difficult to seize
two people without an alarm being given than one."

"That is so," Harr