Los Angeles herald., 1891-05-05

oES, PlutOnlan DaunCS, QdrkntsSS, SStlO-
peter and death. But life is there with
death-a kind of life-and the two some
times conspire. Then comes fermenta-
ton, sort of horrid foaming, and the
underground sea spumes up through the
cellars, floods the streets and the whole
world Strange that the cellars of Paris
should hold not only the soil but the seed
germs of civilization!
In the broad country side of the nations
the under man lives in hut or cabin. A
bird sits on the roof comb and sunlight
creeps through the chinks. But in Paris
the under man lives in vault. This is
true also in London and New York, and in
all your great massed populations. The
under man, the bottom man, the real earth
man, lives in a cellar; his wife also, and
his children. 1t is not good place to live.
The French Revolution began above
ground, in the kingdom of thought, but
the drippings of it fell into the Partisan
cellars. Within year from the beginning
the very sewers were full of foam. With
this subterranean effervescence all shapes
and forms were cast to the surface. 1t was
as if the sea had vomited Unknown
creatures came up from the pit of that
horrid stomach and began to swim and
shrek and fight. Among the rest there
was spewed forth doctor-Dr. Marat,
DIR. Jean Paul Marat, or Mara, as his
father spelled it-a sort of spectral pygmy,
not five feet high, but bearing monstrous
head and hideous face. He was DIR. Marat;
his enemies said a horse doctor. But that
was SANDER. True, he had been veteri-
nary surgeon to the Comte d'Artois, des-
tined after thirty-four years to be King
Charles X of France. But Jean Paul was
also doctor of men, a good one, too, who
had spent many years in London, where
he wrote essays and books and learned to
hate the British aristocracy. The Comte
d'Artois made him physician of the guards,
as well as of his horses-this in 1777, for
his hour was not yet come.
Marat had for his mother Louise Cahrol,
a Genevese Calvinist, which accounts for
one part of him, but he had for his father
Jean Paul Mara, of Cagliari, on the south
ern coast of Sardinia, and this accounts for
another part. He was cross between
Italian and Calvinist-a sort of hybrid of
assassin and fatalist. He was born May
"a, 1744, being five years older than Mira
beau and fourteen years older than Robes
pierre In his youth he studied medicine
for two years at Bordeaux, and presently
became an oculist of no mean skill.
AO 1ulo PCIlO0 VI lllo 11lC uC 1DSOIDCo Ills
social and philosophical opinions, which he
carried with him, first to Paris, then into
Holland and afterward to London. In his
thirtieth year he began as an author, and
in IA published his first political treatise,
under the significant name of the "Chains
of Slavery" He remained in London
three years longer, writing on medical and
social questions and was then recalled to
France to prescribe for the guards (and stud
also) of the Comte dArtois, who gave him
an annual salary of 1900 livres for his SER
vices. A promising man already was DR..
Jean Paul.
But we must pass over much. After ten
years the call was issued for the assem-
bling of the states general. Now it was
that Marat plunged into the swim and be-
gan to trouble the already troubled waters.
With the opening of the states general
many patriot Frenchmen were disposed to
take the English constitution as the model
for new France But Marat had seen enough
of the British system, and in September of
'S9 he published powerful monograph en-
titled ga View of the Vices of the Consti-
tuition of England" Already the pygmy
with the monstrous head had become
democrat and revolutionist-accordin to
the gospel of Rousseau.
With the beginning of the conflict proper
behold Marat in Paris! He has become
journalist, the most audacious that has
ever yet appeared among men. First he
founded The Moniteur Patriote, then The
Publiciste Parisien, and then, on the 10Th
of September, 1889, The Ami du Peuple, or
Friend of the People, a journal which from
that day became the vent of the Faubourgs,
the very mouth and soul of the sanscu-
lottes.
In this paper Marat began to pour out
without measure the very essence of radi-
calism and audacity. His attack was on
everything-on the monarchy, on the king,
on the royal family, on the aristocracy, on
feudal France, on everything that was
above the earth. Whatever was in power
it was his lifelong policy to oppose. Now
it was man, now an institution, and now
q principle at which he spat his venom.
The Ami du Peuple became the mouth
piece Of all discomfort, vomiting floods of
invective, acrid as vitriol, fierce as fire.
1t was not lonS until the authorities
pounced upon Marat and his dangerous
engine, but he dived and fled to London.
The pygmy with the monstrous head had
now become an unquenchablG volcano.
His fires had caught behind him, and he
was soon able to return to Paris and re-
issue his paper. Nevertheless he had to
dive and duck out of sight. He disap-
peared from the kingdom of daylight and
became the god of the neither world. Sub
terranean Paris received him. Hades gave
a loving gulp and he was safe. Dark, un-
discoverable vaults opened for his print
ing press and editorial stool. Ami du
Peuple, from being the mouthpiece of the
Faubourgs became the mouthpiece of hell.
Once and again the specter was routed
from his hiding place, and in the close of
1791 he escaped to London. There he wrote
his ''Ecole du Citoyen," or "School for the
Citizen" a sansculotic text book of insur-
rection and blood.
In four months, however, the Club of
the Cordeliers called him back to Paris
The war with Austria famed up on the
horizon, and tbe revolutionary party in the
capital needed every auxiliary-even the
pen of Marat The Ami du Peuple burst
cut more furiously than ever. 1t is prob
able that the atrocious scheme for themas-
sacre of the loyalist prisoners was Matched
in the brain of Marat, and that he inocu-
lated the giant Danton with his malign
purpose. At all events, the September
massacre was the glory of Ami du Peuple
and its editor. The five foot goblin rose in
the bloody arena, and was chosen one of
the representatives to the national conven-
ton from the commune of Paris.
But his work in that body by no means