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156 whom she had never seen, she long held to be a kind of myth or popular scarecrow; but Danton was a solid fact, thrown much into her presence, and whom she was obliged to reckon with. "I never," says she, "beheld so repulsive and atrocious a countenance; and, although I argued that I knew nothing against him, and that the most honest men necessarily have two kinds of reputation when party strife runs high—in fact, that we should not go by appearances—I could not reconcile that face with a well-meaning man. I never saw anything so characteristic of brutal passions, of the most astounding daring, half-veiled under an assumption of jovial good-nature."

This Commune—destined to take so leading and sanguinary a part in the subsequent events of the Revolution—counted among its members the fierce and fickle Tallien, the medical student Chaumette, a vampire-like creature who seemed to batten on blood, and Hébert, destined to infamous notoriety as the Père Duchesne. A significant addition was made, without any official election whatever, to this ominous corporation, for between the 11th of August and the 2nd of September, Marat stole forth from the holes and cellars where he lay habitually hidden, and took his seat in the Commune. The "friend of the people" emerged into the light to preach the extermination of the great of the land. In Marat—who cultivated hatred as a fine art and celebrated the praise of murder, who even made Robespierre quail with his threats of burning tyrants alive in their palaces, and of impalling senators on their benches in the Assembly—we recognise not so much a man as the dreadful summing up of centuries of wrong. To understand, nay, to absolve this man, who had "made himself Anathema," because hate