"Danton would be like a wild beast in a snare. He would rage with fury, but I do not think that he would be intimidated into signing what we require, not do I think would Robespierre. Marat is a different creature altogether. He is simply venomous. He hates the world, and would absolutely rejoice in slaughter. So loathsome is he in appearance that even his colleagues shrink from him. He is a venomous reptile whom it would be a pleasure to slay, as it would be to put one's heel upon a rattlesnake. Whether he is a coward or not I do not know, but I should think so. Men of his type are seldom brave. I think if we had him in our hands we might frighten him into doing what we want." "Then Marat it shall be," Harry said; "that much is settled. Tomorrow we will find out something about his habits. Till we know about that we cannot form any plan whatever. Let us meet at dinner-time at our usual place. Then we will go outside the Assembly and wait till he comes out. Fortunately we both know him well by sight. He will be sure to go, surrounded, as usual, by a mob of his admirers, to the Jacobin Club. From there we can trace him to his home. No doubt anyone could tell us where he lives, but it would be dangerous to ask. When we have found that out we can decide upon our next step." They were, however, saved the trouble they contemplated, for they learned from the conversation of two men among the mob, who cheered Marat as he entered the Assembly, what they wanted to know. "Marat is the man for me," one of them said. "He hates the aristocracy; he would bathe in their blood. I never miss reading his articles in the Friend of the People. His cry is always 'Blood! Blood!' He does not ape the manner of the bourgeois. He does not wash his face and put on clean linen. He is a great man, but he is as dirty as the best of us. He still lives in his old lodgings, though he could move if he liked into any of the fine houses whose owners are in the prisons. He wants no servants, but lives just as we do. Vive Marat!" "Where does the great citizen live?" Victor asked the men in a tone of earnest entreaty. On learning the address they took their way to the dirty and disreputable street where Marat lodged. "The citizen Marat lives in this street, does he not?" Victor asked a man lounging at the door of a cabaret. "Yes, in that house opposite. Do you want him?" "No; only I was curious to see the house where the friend of the people lives, and as I was passing the end of the street turned down. Will you drink a glass?" "I am always ready for that," the man said, "but in these hard times one cannot do it as often as one would like." "That is true enough," Victor said as they took their seats at a table. "And so Marat lives over there; it's not much of a place for a great man."