rangements, and you have had the money requisite to start a newspaper.
Could there have been such injurious suspicions against you in July,
1791? We believe nothing of these infamies: we do not think you the
accomplice of Marat, who offers you the dictatorship. We do not accuse
you of imitating Caesar when Anthony presented to him the diadem. No: but
be on your guard! Speak of yourself with less egotism. We have in our
time warned both La Fayette and Mirabeau, and pointed out the Tarpeian
rock for citizens who think themselves greater than their country."

III.

"The wretches," replied Marat, who was then sheltered beneath the
patronage of Robespierre, "they cast a shade upon the purest virtues!
His genius is offensive to them. They punish him for his sacrifices. His
inclinations lead him to retirement. He only remained in the tumult of
the Jacobins from devotion to his country; but men of mediocre
understanding are not accustomed to the eulogiums of another, and the
mob likes to change its hero.

"The faction of the La Fayettes, Guadets, Brissots circumvent him. They
call him the leader of a party! Robespierre chief of a party! They show
his hand in the disgraceful columns of the Civil List. They make the
people's confidence in him a crime, as if a simple citizen without
fortune and power had any other means of acquiring the love of his
fellow-countrymen but from his deserts! as if a man who has only his
isolated voice in the midst of a society of _intrigants_, hypocrites,
and knaves, could ever be feared! But this incorruptible censor annoys
them. They say he has an understanding with me to offer him the
dictatorship. This is my affair, and I declare that Robespierre is so
far from controlling my pen, that I never had the slightest connection
with him. I have seen him but once, and the sole conversation has
convinced me that he was not the man whom I sought for the supreme and
energetic power demanded by the Revolution.

"The first word he addressed to me was a reproach for having dipped my
pen in the blood of the enemies of liberty,--for always speaking of the
cord, the axe, and the poignard; cruel words, which unquestionably my
heart would disavow, and my principles discredit. I undeceived him.
'Learn,' I replied to him, 'that my credit with the people does not
depend on my ideas, but on my audacity, the daring impetuosity of my
mind, my cries of rage, despair, and fury against the wretches who
impede the acti