The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (best historical biographies .txt) 📗

word.” Madeleine Lannoy lived now in hope and a sweet sense of perfect mental and bodily security. Around her there was an influence, too, a presence which she did not often see, but always felt to be there: a woman, tall and graceful and sympathetic, who was always ready to cheer, to comfort, and to help. Her name was Marguerite. Madame Lannoy never knew her by any other. The man had spoken of her as being as like an angel as could be met on this earth, and poor Madeleine Lannoy fully agreed with him. III

Even that bloodthirsty tiger, Jean Paul Marat, has had his apologists. His friends have called him a martyr, a selfless and incorruptible exponent of social and political ideals. We may take it that Simonne Evrard loved him, for a more impassioned obituary speech was, mayhap, never spoken than the one which she delivered before the National Assembly in honour of that sinister demagogue, whose writings and activities will forever sully some of the really fine pages of that revolutionary era.

But with those apologists we have naught to do. History has talked its fill of the inhuman monster. With the more intimate biographists alone has this true chronicle any concern. It is one of these who tells us that on or about the eighteenth day of Messidor, in the year I of the Republic (a date which corresponds with the sixth of July, 1793, of our own calendar), Jean Paul Marat took an additional man into his service, at the instance of Jeannette Maréchal, his cook and maid-of-all-work. Marat was at this time a martyr to an unpleasant form of skin disease, brought on by the terrible privations which he had endured during the few years preceding his association with Simonne Evrard, the faithful friend and housekeeper, whose small fortune subsequently provided him with some degree of comfort.

The man whom Jeannette Maréchal, the cook, introduced into the household of No. 30, Rue des Cordeliers, that worthy woman had literally picked one day out of the gutter where he was grabbing for scraps of food like some wretched starving cur. He appeared to be known to the police of the section, his identity book proclaiming him to be one Paul Molé, who had served his time in gaol for larceny. He professed himself willing to do any work required of him, for the merest pittance and some kind of roof over his head. Simonne Evrard allowed Jeannette to take him in, partly out of compassion and partly with a view to easing the woman’s own burden, the only other domestic in the house⁠—a man named Bas⁠—being more interested in politics and the meetings of the Club des Jacobins than he was in his master’s ailments. The man Molé, moreover, appeared to know something of medicine and of herbs and how to prepare the warm baths which alone eased the unfortunate Marat from pain. He was powerfully built, too, and though he muttered and grumbled a great deal, and indulged in prolonged fits of sulkiness, when he would not open his mouth to anyone, he was, on the whole, helpful and good-tempered.

There must also have been something about his whole wretched personality which made a strong appeal to the “Friend of the People,” for it is quite evident that within a few days Paul Molé had won no small measure of his master’s confidence.

Marat, sick, fretful, and worried, had taken an unreasoning dislike to his servant Bas. He was thankful to have a stranger about him, a man who was as miserable as he himself had been a very little while ago; who, like himself, had lived in cellars and in underground burrows, and lived on the scraps of food which even street-curs had disdained.

On the seventh day following Molé’s entry into the household, and while the latter was preparing his employer’s bath, Marat said abruptly to him:

“You’ll go as far as the Chemin de Pantin today for me, citizen. You know your way?”

“I can find it, what?” muttered Molé, who appeared to be in one of his surly moods.

“You will have to go very circumspectly,” Marat went on, in his cracked and feeble voice. “And see to it that no one spies upon your movements. I have many enemies, citizen⁠ ⁠… one especially⁠ ⁠… a woman.⁠ ⁠… She is always prying and spying on me.⁠ ⁠… So beware of any woman you see lurking about at your heels.”

Molé gave a half-audible grunt in reply.

“You had best go after dark,” the other rejoined after awhile. “Come back to me after nine o’clock. It is not far to the Chemin de Pantin⁠—just where it intersects the Route de Meaux. You can get there and back before midnight. The people will admit you. I will give you a ring⁠—the only thing I possess.⁠ ⁠… It has little or no value,” he added with a harsh, grating laugh. “It will not be worth your while to steal it. You will have to see a brat and report to me on his condition⁠—his appearance, what?⁠ ⁠… Talk to him a bit.⁠ ⁠… See what he says and let me know. It is not difficult.”

“No, citizen.”

Molé helped the suffering wretch into his bath. Not a movement, not a quiver of the eyelid betrayed one single emotion which he may have felt⁠—neither loathing nor sympathy, only placid indifference. He was just a half-starved menial, thankful to accomplish any task for the sake of satisfying a craving stomach. Marat stretched out his shrunken limbs in the herbal water with a sigh of well-being.

“And the ring, citizen?” Molé suggested presently.

The demagogue held up his left hand⁠—it was emaciated and disfigured by disease. A cheap-looking metal ring, set with a false stone, glistened upon the fourth finger.

“Take it off,” he said curtly.

The ring must have all along been too small for the bony hand of the once famous Court physician. Even now it appeared embedded in the flabby skin and refused to slide over the knuckle.

“The water will loosen it,” remarked