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

Marat dipped his hand back into the water, and the other stood beside him, silent and stolid, his broad shoulders bent, his face naught but a mask, void and expressionless beneath its coating of grime.

One or two seconds went by. The air was heavy with steam and a medley of evil-smelling fumes, which hung in the close atmosphere of the narrow room. The sick man appeared to be drowsy, his head rolled over to one side, his eyes closed. He had evidently forgotten all about the ring.

A woman’s voice, shrill and peremptory, broke the silence which had become oppressive:

“Here, citizen Molé, I want you! There’s not a bit of wood chopped up for my fire, and how am I to make the coffee without firing, I should like to know?”

“The ring, citizen,” Molé urged gruffly.

Marat had been roused by the woman’s sharp voice. He cursed her for a noisy harridan; then he said fretfully:

“It will do presently⁠—when you are ready to start. I said nine o’clock⁠ ⁠… it is only four now. I am tired. Tell citizeness Evrard to bring me some hot coffee in an hour’s time.⁠ ⁠… You can go and fetch me the Moniteur now, and take back these proofs to citizen Dufour. You will find him at the Cordeliers, or else at the printing works.⁠ ⁠… Come back at nine o’clock.⁠ ⁠… I am tired now⁠ ⁠… too tired to tell you where to find the house which is off the Chemin de Pantin. Presently will do.⁠ ⁠…”

Even while he spoke he appeared to drop into a fitful sleep. His two hands were hidden under the sheet which covered the bath. Molé watched him in silence for a moment or two, then he turned on his heel and shuffled off through the anteroom into the kitchen beyond, where presently he sat down, squatting in an angle by the stove, and started with his usual stolidness to chop wood for the citizeness’ fire.

When this task was done, and he had received a chunk of sour bread for his reward from Jeannette Maréchal, the cook, he shuffled out of the place and into the street, to do his employer’s errands.

Paul Molé had been to the offices of the Moniteur and to the printing works of L’Ami du Peuple. He had seen the citizen Dufour at the Club and, presumably, had spent the rest of his time wandering idly about the streets of the quartier, for he did not return to the Rue des Cordeliers until nearly nine o’clock.

As soon as he came to the top of the street, he fell in with the crowd which had collected outside No. 30. With his habitual slouchy gait and the steady pressure of his powerful elbows, he pushed his way to the door, whilst gleaning whisperings and rumours on his way.

“The citizen Marat has been assassinated.”

“By a woman.”

“A mere girl.”

“A wench from Caen. Her name is Corday.”

“The people nearly tore her to pieces awhile ago.”

“She is as much as guillotined already.”

The latter remark went off with a loud guffaw and many a ribald joke.

Molé, despite his great height, succeeded in getting through unperceived. He was of no account, and he knew his way inside the house. It was full of people: journalists, gaffers, women and men⁠—the usual crowd that come to gape. The citizen Marat was a great personage. The Friend of the People. An Incorruptible, if ever there was one. Just look at the simplicity, almost the poverty, in which he lived! Only the aristos hated him, and the fat bourgeois who battened on the people. Citizen Marat had sent hundreds of them to the guillotine with a stroke of his pen or a denunciation from his fearless tongue.

Molé did not pause to listen to these comments. He pushed his way through the throng up the stairs, to his late employer’s lodgings on the first floor.

The anteroom was crowded, so were the other rooms; but the greatest pressure was around the door immediately facing him, the one which gave on the bathroom. In the kitchen on his right, where awhile ago he had been chopping wood under a flood of abuse from Jeannette Maréchal, he caught sight of this woman, cowering by the hearth, her filthy apron thrown over her head, and crying⁠—yes! crying for the loathsome creature, who had expiated some of his abominable crimes at the hands of a poor, misguided girl, whom an infuriated mob was even now threatening to tear to pieces in its rage.

The parlour and even Simonne’s room were also filled with people: men, most of whom Molé knew by sight; friends or enemies of the ranting demagogue who lay murdered in the very bath which his casual servant had prepared for him. Everyone was discussing the details of the murder, the punishment of the youthful assassin. Simonne Evrard was being loudly blamed for having admitted the girl into citizen Marat’s room. But the wench had looked so simple, so innocent, and she said she was the bearer of a message from Caen. She had called twice during the day, and in the evening the citizen himself said that he would see her. Simonne had been for sending her away. But the citizen was peremptory. And he was so helpless⁠ ⁠… in his bath⁠ ⁠… name of a name, the pitiable affair!

No one paid much attention to Molé. He listened for a while to Simonne’s impassioned voice, giving her version of the affair; then he worked his way stolidly into the bathroom.

It was some time before he succeeded in reaching the side of that awful bath wherein lay the dead body of Jean Paul Marat. The small room was densely packed⁠—not with friends, for there was not a man or woman living, except Simonne Evrard and her sisters, whom the bloodthirsty demagogue would have called “friend”; but his powerful personality had been a menace to many, and now they came in crowds to see that he was really dead, that a girl’s feeble hand had