encumbered.

For Marat is an intellect, and nothing more--leastways, nothing more
that matters. What else there is to him of trunk and limbs and organs
he has neglected until it has all fallen into decay. His very lack of
personal cleanliness, the squalor in which he lives, the insufficient
sleep which he allows himself, his habit of careless feeding at
irregular intervals, all have their source in his contempt for
the physical part of him. This talented man of varied attainments,
accomplished linguist, skilled physician, able naturalist and profound
psychologist, lives in his intellect alone, impatient of all physical
interruptions. If he consents to these immersions, if he spends whole
days seated in this medicated bath, it is solely because it quenches or
cools the fires that are devouring him, and thus permits him to bend
his mind to the work that is his life. But his long-suffering body is
avenging upon the mind the neglect to which it has been submitted. The
morbid condition of the former is being communicated to the latter,
whence results that disconcerting admixture of cold, cynical cruelty and
exalted sensibility which marked his nature in the closing years of his
life.

In his bath, then, sat the People's Friend on that July evening,
immersed to the hips, his head swathed in a filthy turban, his emaciated
body cased in a sleeveless waistcoat. He is fifty years of age, dying of
consumption and other things, so that, did Charlotte but know it, there
is no need to murder him. Disease and Death have marked him for their
own, and grow impatient.

A board covering the bath served him for writing-table; an empty wooden
box at his side bore an inkstand, some pens, sheets of paper, and two or
three copies of L'Ami do Peuple. There was no sound in the room but the
scratch and splutter of his quill. He was writing diligently, revising
and editing a proof of the forthcoming issue of his paper.

A noise of voices raised in the outer room invaded the quiet in which he
was at work, and gradually penetrated his absorption, until it disturbed
and irritated him. He moved restlessly in his bath, listened a moment,
then, with intent to make an end of the interruption, he raised a
hoarse, croaking voice to inquire what might be taking place.

The door opened, and Simonne, his mistress and household drudge, entered
the room. She was fully twenty years younger than himself, and under the
slattern appearance which life in that h