Page:Ninety-three.djvu/126

 Marat emphasized these words, looked at Robespierre and went on to say,—

"I know what is said at your table when Lebas invites David to eat the cooking of his betrothed, Elizabeth Duplay, your future sister-in-law, Robespierre. I am the enormous eye of the people, and from the depths of my cellar, I look on. Yes, I see; yes, I hear; yes, I know. Little things content you. You admire yourself. Robespierre courts the admiration of his Madame de Chalabre, the daughter of the Marquis de Chalabre, who played whist with Louis XV. the evening of Damiens' execution. Yes, people carry their heads high. Saint-Just lives in a cravat. Legendre is proper, new overcoat and white vest, and a shirt frill to make one forget his apron. Robespierre imagines that history will care to know that he had on an olive frock coat at the Constituante, and a sky-blue coat at the Convention. He has his portrait all over the walls of his room"

Robespierre interrupted him in a voice even more calm than Marat's.

"And you, Marat, you have yours in all the sewers."

They continued in a conversational tone, the slowness of which emphasized their replies and repartees, and added a strange irony to the threats.

"Robespierre, you have termed those who desire the overthrow of thrones, the 'Don Quixotes of the human race.'"

"And you, Marat, after the fourth of August, in number 559 of your Ami du Peuple,—Ah, I have kept the number, it will be useful,—you have asked to have the nobles receive their titles back again. You said: 'A duke is always a duke.'"

"Robespierre, in the meeting of the seventh of December, you defended the Roland woman against Viard."

"Just as my brother defended you, Marat, when you were attacked at the Jacobins. What does that prove? Nothing."

"Robespierre, we know the cabinet of the Tuileries, where you said to Garat: 'I am weary of the Revolution.'"

"Marat, it was here in this public-house, that you embraced Barbaroux, the twenty-ninth of October."

"Robespierre, you said to Buzot: 'What is the Republic?'"