But as in Greece, in her days of glory, the thinkers were few; so in Switzerland, the land of freedom, the many have been, and are, chained to superstition. Jean Paul Marat saw their pride was centered in a silver crucifix, "that keeps a man from harm"; their conscience committed to a priest; their labors for the rich; their days the same, from the rising of the sun to its going down. They did not love, and their hate was but a peevish dislike. They followed their dull routine and died the death, hopeful that they would get the reward in another world which was denied them in this. And Jean Paul Marat grew to scorn the few who would thus enslave the many. For priest and publican he had only aversion. Jean Paul Marat, the bantam, read Voltaire and steeped himself in Rousseau, and the desire grew strong upon him to do, to dare and to become. Tourists had told him of England, and like all hopeful and childlike minds, he imagined the excellent to be far off, and the splendid at a distance: Great Britain was to him the Land of Promise. In the countenance of young Marat was a strange mixture of the ludicrous and the terrible. This, with his insignificant size, and a bodily strength that was a miracle of surprise, won the admiration of an English gentleman; and when the tourist started back for Albion, the lusty dwarf rode on the box, duly articled, without consent of his parents, as a valet. As a servant he was active, alert, intelligent, attentive. He might have held his position indefinitely, and been handed down to the next generation with the family plate, had he kept a civil tongue in his red head and not quoted Descartes and Jean Jacques. He had ideas, and he expressed them. He was the central sun below stairs, and passed judgment upon the social order without stint, even occasionally to argufying economics with his master, the Baron, as he brushed his breech. This Baron is known to history through two facts: first, that Jean Paul Marat brushed his breeches, and second, that he evolved a new breed of fices. Now, the master was rich, with an entail of six thousand acres and an income of five thousand pounds, and very naturally he was surprised--amazed--to hear that any one should question the divine origin of the social order. Religion and government being at that time not merely second cousins, but Siamese twins, Jean Paul had expressed himself on things churchly as well as secular. And now, behold, one fine day he found himself confronted with a charge of blasphemy, not to mention another damning count of contumacy and contravention. In fact, he was commanded not to think, and was cautioned as to the sin of having ideas. The penalties were pointed out to Jean Paul, and in all kindness he was asked to make choice between immediate punishment and future silence. Thus was the wee philosopher raised at once to the dignity of a martyr; and the sweet satisfaction of being persecuted for what he believed, was his.