tide my shallow places appear, at high tide my billows are seen."
"Your froth," said Marat.
"My tempest," said Danton.
Marat had arisen at the same time as Danton. He too burst forth. The adder suddenly became a dragon.
"Ah!" he cried, "ah, Robespierre! ah, Danton! You are now willing to listen to me! Well, I tell you, you are lost. Your policy results in the impossibility to go any farther; there is no exit for you; and you have managed to close all the doors before you, except that of the grave."
"That is our greatness," said Danton.
And he shrugged his shoulders.
Marat continued,—
"Danton, take care. Vergniaud, too, has a large mouth, thick lips, and an angry frown; Vergniaud, too, is pock-marked like Mirabeau and like you; that did not prevent the thirty-first of May. Ah! you shrug your shoulders. Sometimes shrugging the shoulders shakes off one's head. Danton, I tell you, your harsh voice, your loose necktie, your Hessian boots, your little suppers, your big pockets, all look to Louisette."
Louisette was the pet name Marat gave to the guillotine.
He continued,—
"And as for you, Robespierre, you are a Modérée, but that will not do you any good. Go, powder yourself, dress your hair, play the coxcomb, wear fine linen, prink, and be curled and painted, but you will go to Place-de-Grève, all the same; read Brunswick's declaration; still you will be treated like the regicide Damiens, and you will look as fine as a new pin while waiting to be quartered alive."
"Echo of Coblentz," said Robespierre between his teeth.
"Robespierre, I am not an echo of anything, I am the outcry of all. Ah! you are young. How old are you, Danton? Thirty-four years. How old are you, Robespierre? Thirty-three. Well, as for me, I have always been alive; I am suffering humanity, I am six thousand years old."
"That is true," replied Danton, "for six thousand years, Cain has been preserved in hatred like a toad in a stone. The rock is broken, and Cain leaps forth among men, and that is Marat."
