Before six months were up another assassination, this time of one of the leaders of the revolution--Marat--roused the members of the Convention and the populace to the utmost. Hardly had the news spread abroad before one of the members of the Convention arose crying: “Where art thou, David? You made a portrait of Le Pelletier for posterity when he died for his country, now the occasion has arisen for another work.” “This too I will do,” David answered, and produced one of his most moving compositions (Figs. 16 and 20). It is planned with great power and simplicity, and filled with deep and tragic feeling, for Marat was his friend. Nothing has aroused more astonishment than this friendship of David’s for Marat who has been regarded as the bloodthirsty instigator of the horrors and deviltries of the revolution. If we look into the matter more closely, however, we must recognize in Marat qualities which explain the esteem of men like David. He had remarkable philosophic and scientific gifts. While his enemies described him as a quack doctor, or, as Carlisle erroneously states, a veterinary, as a matter of fact his professional contributions as an oculist were so remarkable that some of his writings have been reprinted even of late years. Before the revolution he was the most celebrated oculist of the aristocracy, and the Comte d’Artois, later Charles X, had appointed him as his personal physician at a salary of two thousand pounds. His philosophical writings, such as the three volume _Essays on Man_ which appeared in English and French, achieved a reputation for him abroad. Although he did not become a member of the French Academy, on account of his disagreement with Voltaire and his attack on Newton, no less a person than Goethe expressed himself concerning this injustice. Benjamin Franklin, too, was among those who visited Marat and were interested in his experiments in physics. On the outbreak of the revolution he abandoned his career as doctor and scholar to develop an astonishing public zeal founded on his passion for the new ideas. He influenced the development of the new forms of government in no small measure, advised against copying the English constitution with which he had familiarized himself during a stay in England, and opposed all who attempted to assume Dictatorship, even Mirabeau, then Lafayette and later General Dumouriez, whose treason he foresaw before Dumouriez went over to the Austrians and the Girondists. He voted for the condemnation of the King, whom he accused of treason to his country, but advised against his condemnation for events which happened prior to the revolution. That he was not so bloodthirsty as his opponents would have us believe is proved by his insistence that Malesherbes, the king’s advisor, should not be condemned with him as he was “a wise and venerable old man.”