As a public figure, Doctor Marat possessed at least one civic virtue: punctuality. A little after one o'clock, Paul Marat entered 156 Rue Saint-Jacques, accompanied by two sans-culottes bodyguards in their small red caps.
The man before André matched the portraits and pamphlets precisely—the gaunt face, the unkempt hair, the stubble, the stained and ill-fitting clothes; everything spoke of neglect save for the eyes, which were bright as blade-tips and searched a man down to his marrow.
André had not yet crossed the hall to greet him when a sharp smell reached him—vinegar. Not wine gone sour, but acetic acid, Marat's chosen remedy for his stubborn skin disease. André did not flinch. In his former life, his father had owned a thriving vinegar works; he had grown up among those fumes and found them almost homely.
"An honour to meet you, brave Friend of the People," André said at once, offering his right hand with a smile and ushering Marat up to the attic room, whose privacy made conversation easier.
The bodyguards were left to the care of the housekeeper and her young nephew, Meldar, who would see to their food and drink.
An old writing-desk, pressed into service as a dining table, stood laden with dishes and sweets, with two bottles of champagne beside the plates. After the briefest courtesies, the lawyer invited the doctor to sit. He filled their glasses and set to with an appetite that surprised even himself.
The lamb bled warmly upon the dish; the neat slices of turbot breathed laurel and thyme; the aubergines, black-purple and blistered, split at a touch and bled a flesh as soft as cream.
Since his crossing into this age, André had hovered near poverty and rarely seen such a table; the pleasure of it held him so that he failed to notice Marat's expression—severe, silent, unmoved—and the untouched knife and fork before him.
André raised his glass again. Before he could speak, Marat lifted his champagne and gave the toast himself:
"To Monsieur Paulze and Madame Lavoisier, for their generosity."
André flushed, coughed twice, set his glass down and dabbed at his mouth, then managed a rueful smile. "Your information travels quickly. Have your Friends of the People overrun the whole Left Bank?"
From the first days of the Revolution, Marat and his paper, L'Ami du peuple, had drawn judgments as divided as the city itself.
To his enemies, he was a monster and a madman.
To the dispossessed, he was a prophet and a defender of the poor.
To the Mountain, he was a warrior of the Revolution and, in time, a martyr.
That the sans-culottes followed his movements was therefore no mystery.
Marat emptied the glass at a draught, set it down, and said gravely, "Not only the Left Bank. The North Bank, Picardy—wherever there is oppression, wherever there is exploitation, there will be Paul Marat's unending cry."
André nodded. Marat might be unbalanced at times, extravagant in speech, merciless toward his foes; but he rarely strayed from the oath he had made to himself. And one other thing could be said for the People's Friend: until the day he died, he never struck his comrades from behind.
He knew Danton had taken heavy "contributions" from the Duke of Orléans, had pushed quietly to see him made regent, and had, for the price of a political bargain with the Girondins, let Marat be sacrificed to the Revolutionary Tribunal.
He knew Camille Desmoulins mocked him in private—ugly as a fiend, savage as a demon of the pit; more butcher than healer.
He knew Hébert's fingers were not clean, that money from the Cordeliers' common purse too often ended in his own, leaving Marat to make up the shortfall from his pocket.
For such friends and comrades, Marat complained—but he did not hate, and he did not avenge himself in secret.
It was this, as much as anything, that made André willing to treat with him. An enemy across the table is not the danger; the deadliest shot is fired from behind.
"If you need my help," André said simply, "you shall have it."
Marat drew a crumpled scrap of paper from his coat and handed it across. "A copy of the letter you delivered today to the farmer-general's daughter."
André skimmed the lines. They ran:
"The murder suspect Gracchus Babeuf was examined yesterday morning by the Chambre criminelle of the Châtelet. Judge Faria has designated one reputable active citizen as a member of the jury."
(Active citizens, as opposed to passive, were adult men whose direct taxes for the month equalled or exceeded the local daily wage. They could vote and serve in the National Guard. French women, of course, would not gain suffrage for another century and a half.)
Babeuf? The name stirred something in André's memory, but it did not come at once. As Marat spoke on, the outline took shape.
Gracchus Babeuf, born to a poor peasant family in Picardy, had lost his father at sixteen and left school to live by his pen and wits—copyist, clerk, keeper of land-title records. In his hours he studied law and opened a small country practice.
In July 1789, hearing of revolution in Paris, he came to the capital, met the People's Friend, and then returned home aflame—using his modest practice to rally the peasants against the farmers-general of salt and wine, and to resist the payment of feudal dues.
"Late last year," Marat continued, "Babeuf was arrested by the Picardy tribunal for incitement to riot. The protests of the people and the pressure of the Constituent Assembly forced his release."
He paused, then added, "While I hid in England, word reached me that a certain Monsieur Paulze, a farmer-general, had conspired with elements in the Palais de Justice to frame Babeuf for murder. By the time I returned, I was too late. Babeuf had been brought to Paris. The proceedings had begun.
"The villains know his strength in self-defence. They used poison to destroy his voice, so he could not plead his own cause. Yesterday's hearing made it clear: the defence counsel is a traitor, bought by the farmers.
"So I ask you, André Franck, to take the brief."
André had been ready for the invitation from the moment he saw the note.
By rights, Danton—the most famous advocate in Paris—should have stood for the defence. For years the "Mirabeau of the People" had dominated the courts with rigorous argument, a ringing voice, and gestures that struck like hammers; judges and prosecutors alike had learned to fear him.
But André needed only a moment's thought to see why Danton could not appear at the Châtelet: at Mayor Bailly's urging, that court had issued, earlier in the month, a warrant for Danton's arrest—on the charge that he had sheltered the fugitive Marat.
Happily for Danton, Robespierre had spoken in the Assembly, condemning the City's persecution of the former president of the Cordeliers. (Early in 1790 the Cordeliers district had been merged with the Théâtre-Français, and Paris reduced its sections from sixty to forty-eight.) Meanwhile Desmoulins, their comrade-in-arms, raged in print against the Châtelet's judicial abuses, and public opinion boiled so hot that the warrant lay unexecuted. But had Danton set foot in the Châtelet, matters would have taken a different turn.
"Why me?" André asked. "I have not yet joined a firm; I have only once spoken in open court." He did not believe the People's Friend cared for the sentimental title of "People's Lawyer."
"Danton proposed twelve names," Marat said with disarming candour. "The first eleven refused me. You are the last."
The confession was almost endearing; it also pricked André's pride. So he was a stopgap—a spare wheel. But then, to be the twelfth upon Danton's list was no disgrace. It meant at least that Danton had seen him.
André did not dither. "I will take the case," he said. "On one condition. You and your friends must forget whatever part Judge Vinault has, unhappily, been made to play."
At some point between the first greeting and this condition, "Monsieur" and "Vous" had fallen away; they had come, as comrades do, to you.
Gratitude was among André's virtues. Without Vinault's guidance, he would never have set his feet in the Parisian courts. He would not see the judge dragged one day to the scaffold for a stain upon a page of history.
Marat inclined his head. He understood. Vinault was Danton's old patron; when Danton first came up to Paris, Vinault—then a provincial prosecutor—had given him employment.
"Thank you," Marat said. "Whatever the verdict, you shall have the People's Friend for a friend." He held out his hand. The People's Friend and the People's Lawyer gripped one another firmly.
When Marat was gone, André returned to the attic and sat a while in quiet thought.
His plan, till now, had been to use Vinault's influence to secure a post as an assistant prosecutor, to win a foothold in the capital's legal world, and to lay foundations for next year's elections to the Legislative Assembly. But plans are delicate things, and history has heavy hands.
He was not sorry. To win Marat's friendship and Danton's notice was no small harvest; of Hugo's later "three giants," two had acknowledged him already. If he must pay for that favour in present inconvenience, the future would repay him with interest. Come the year of Ninety-Three, there would be two stout thighs to cling to, if clinging proved wise.
The thought cleared him. As for whether poor Babeuf had killed or not—well, a lawyer takes his fee and renders his service.
"Speaking of which—who pays my fee?" André murmured, suddenly struck by a practical concern.
…
Two hours later the worry was resolved. The same bookseller André had met on Rue Dauphine arrived at the house, claiming to act on Marat's instructions, and handed over a large sealed packet.
Inside lay eight assignats—small as visiting cards, with numbered filigree for security, the embryo of a modern banknote. Issued by the Ministry of Finance under a fresh decree of the Assembly, the assignat was a bearer paper backed by Church lands—already, in 1790, being seized in steady tranches.
Of the eight, five were for 200 livres, three for 400—1,700 livres in all. However they had begun to slip in value from the first, the Caisse d'escompte would still advance nearly 1,400 livres upon them—more than a year's income at André's present rate. (Before August 1790, depreciation had not exceeded ten percent; after 1793 it would plunge by half and, by 1798, trail the worth of waste paper.)
André could not help a low whistle. "So," he thought, "revolutionary leaders are rarely paupers."
And why should they be? Since the Estates-General had become the Assembly, Marat's incendiary rhetoric had earned him nine police closures of his press; the presses themselves and their fittings had cost over ten thousand livres. Not even the best physician could conjure such sums from fees alone. As for the money's source—well, it would not be the pockets of the sans-culottes, which rang as hollow as their bellies.