Early in April Paine was made aware of Marat's hostility to him. General Thomas Ward reported to him a conversation in which Marat had said: "Frenchmen are mad to allow foreigners to live among them. They should cut off their ears, let them bleed a few days, and then cut off their heads." "But you yourself are a foreigner," Ward had replied, in allusion to Marat's Swiss birth.* The answer is not reported. At length a tragical incident occurred, just before the trial of Marat (April 13th), which brought Paine face to face with this enemy. A wealthy young Englishman, named Johnson, with whom Paine had been intimate in London, had followed him to Paris, where he lived in the same house with his friend. His love of Paine amounted to worship. Having heard of Marat's intention to have Paine's life taken, such was the young enthusiast's despair, and so terrible the wreck of his republican dreams, that he resolved on suicide. He made a will bequeathing his property to Paine, and stabbed himself. Fortunately he was saved by some one who entered just as he was about to give himself the third blow. It may have been Paine himself who then saved his friend's life; at any rate, he did so eventually. * "Englishmen in the French Revolution." By John G. Alger. London, 1889, p. 176. (A book of many blunders.) The decree for Marat's trial was made amid galleries crowded with his adherents, male and female ("Dames de la Fraternité"), who hurled cries of wrath on every one who said a word against him. All were armed, the women ostentatious of their poignards. The trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal was already going in Marat's favor, when it was determined by the Girondins to bring forward this affair of Johnson. Paine was not, apparently, a party to this move, though he had enjoined no secrecy in telling his friend Brissot of the incident, which occurred before Marat was accused. On April 16th there appeared in Bris-sot's journal _Le Patriote Français_, the following paragraph: "A sad incident has occurred to apprise the anarchists of the mournful fruits of their frightful teaching. An Englishman, whose name I reserve, had abjured his country because of his detestation of kings; he came to France hoping to find there liberty; he saw only its mask on the hideous visage of anarchy. Heart-broken by this spectacle, he determined on self-destruction. Before dying, he wrote the following words, which we have read, as written by his own trembling hand, on a paper which is in the possession of a distinguished foreigner:--'I had come to France to enjoy Liberty, but Marat has assassinated it. Anarchy is even more cruel than despotism. I am unable to endure this grievous sight, of the triumph of imbecility and inhumanity over talent and virtue.'"