In such matters, the part of a prophet is tolerably hazardous; yet I do not hesitate to predict, that a minute study of the conduct and of the discourses of Marat, would lead the mind more and more to those chapters in a treatise on the chase, wherein we see depicted bad species of falcons and hawks, at first only pursuing the game by a sign from the master, and for his advantage; but by degrees taking pleasure in these bloody struggles, and entering on the sport at last with passion and for their own profit. Marat took good care not to forget that during a revolution, men, naturally suspicious, act in their more immediate affairs so as to render those persons suspected whose duty it is to watch over them. The Mayor of Paris, the General Commandant of the National Guard, were the first objects, therefore, at which the pamphleteer aimed. As an academician, Bailly had an extra claim to his hate. Among men of Marat's disposition, the wounds of self-love never heal. Without the hateful passions derived from this source, who would believe that an individual, whose time was divided between the superintendence of a daily journal, the drawing up of innumerable placards with which he covered the walls of Paris, together with the struggles of the Convention, the disputes not less fierce of the clubs; that an individual who, besides, had given himself the task of imposing an Agrarian law on the country, could find time to write the very long letters against the old official adversaries of his bad experiments, his absurd theories, his lucubrations devoid both of erudition and of talent; letters in which the Monges, the Laplaces, the Lavoisiers are treated with such an entire neglect of justice and of truth, and with such a cynical spirit, that my respect for this assembly prevents my quoting a single expression. It was not then only the Mayor of Paris whom the pretended friend of the people persecuted; it was also the Academician Bailly. But the illustrious philosopher, the virtuous magistrate, gave no hold for positive and decided criminations. The hideous pamphleteer understood this well; and therefore he adopted vague insinuations, that allowed of no possible refutation, a method which, we may remark by the way, has not been without imitators. Marat exclaimed every day: "Let Bailly send in his accounts!" and the most powerful figure of rhetoric, as Napoleon said, repetition, finally inspires doubts in a stupid portion of the public, in some feeble, ignorant, and credulous minds in the Council of the Commune; and the scrupulous magistrate wished, in fact, to send in his accounts. Here they are in two lines: Bailly never had the handling of any public funds. He left the Hotel de Ville, after having spent there two thirds of his patrimony. If his functions had been long protracted, he would have retired completely ruined. Before the Commune assigned him any salary, the expenses of our colleague in charities already exceeded 30,000 livres.