The French Revolution was threatening; the coming storm was already thundering, when, in 1788, Marat’s ill-balanced mind led him to abandon medicine and take to politics. He returned to Paris, beginning the newspaper _L’Ami du Peuple_, which he continued to edit till late in 1792. His policy was simple, and touched the great heart of the people. “Whatsoever things were pure, whatsoever things were of good repute, whatsoever things were honest”--so be it that they were not Jean Paul Marat’s, those things he vilified. He suspected everybody, and constantly cried, “Nous sommes trahis”--that battle-cry of Marat which remained the battle-cry of Paris from that day to 1914. By his violent attacks on every one he made Paris too hot to hold him, and once again retired to London. Later he returned to Paris, apparently at the request of men who desired to use his literary skill and violent doctrines; he had to hide in cellars and sewers, where it was said he contracted that loathsome skin disease which was henceforth to make his life intolerable, and to force him to spend much of his time in a hot-water bath, and would have shortly killed him only for the intervention of Charlotte Corday. In these haunts he was attended only by Simonne Everard, whose loyalty goes to show either that there was some good even in Marat, or that there is no man so frightful but that some woman may be found to love him. Finally, he was elected to the Convention, and took his seat. There he continued his violent attacks upon everybody, urging that the “gangrene” of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie should be amputated from the State. His ideas of political economy appear to have foreshadowed those of Karl Marx--that the proletariat should possess everything, and that nobody else should possess anything. Daily increasing numbers of heads should fall in the sacred names of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. At first a mere 600 would have satisfied him, but the number rapidly increased, first to 10,000, then to 260,000. To this number he appeared faithful, for he seldom exceeded it; his most glorious vision was only of killing 300,000 daily.