LITMIR.BIZ

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lightning that has struck. Look now! How she writhes here, how passing cross her face Are lights of ghastly fields of fire and clouds When hurricanes descend.

      Charlotte

      You beast! You beast!

      Fouquer-Tinville

      I am a beast, eh? You are what? I’ll tell. From Caen, as ’tis known. She’s being sketched, I’ll sketch her too. You see, she’s strongly built, Large eyes of blue, large features, handsome though; Nose shapely, and good teeth; equipped to play In dramas of Corneille, her ancestor. She needs a man. A husband would have drawn Innocuously the electric passion, which Collected in a bolt to loose and lurch Against Marat. All women should be farmed. She has her schooling in a convent, reads; Lives with her thoughts and dreams. I’ll sketch her soul: Has not enough of living to consume The forces of her dreams. She reads Rousseau, And Plutarch’s heroes, Brutus most of all. Thrills at the words “Republic,” “Liberty.” Thinks the Girondists only can set up A real republic. Ideas are the stuff Of history. Kill ideas or be killed By ideas is the fate of man. Republic, Liberty, Brutus are ideas. Ideas Are dangerous, being truths, more so as lies. And lies destroyed Marat.

      Who was Marat?

       A man of study, learning. Physicist,

       Admired of Franklin, Göethe for his works

       On heat and light; a doctor, having won

       An honorary title at St. Andrew’s

       In England. Linguist, speaking Spanish, German,

       Italian, English. Versed in Governments:—

       You know his work on England’s constitution

       Whereby he sought to clear the mind of France—

       This Charlotte Corday’s with the rest—that England

       Is free, her systems free; stop the Girondists

       From that re-iterated lie; stop France

       From taking on the English system.

      So

       True ideas of Marat, evolved from life,

       Living and study must combat, destroy

       False ideas of Girondists, will succeed;

       But cannot bar the door to the idea

       That enters at his bathroom with a knife.

       How was it that no valet and no guard

       Preserved him? Why? Lovers of liberty

       Starve in her service!

      But there was a time

       When he knew elegance and privacy.

       But Liberty and Wisdom would be served.

       He went to rags, was hunted, had to hide

       In sewers for the cause of Liberty;

       And there took loathsome trouble, eased at times

       By steam, hot tubs. And thus our people’s friend

       Is found accessible to this female lie,

       Girondist lie, possessing her, and stabbed.

       Or at the best ideas of Liberty

       Conduct her to his bath-room, where Marat

       Is tubbed in sequence and in punishment

       Of his idea of Liberty. Gods can laugh,

       But men must weep. O worthless, rotten world!

       It is most pitiful, most tragic, lifts

       Man’s heart to spit at heaven, that these friends

       Of peoples must be slain, starved, hunted first,

       Then butchered for their service and their love.

       Saved not by truth; destroyed by lies, a lie

       That he was evil, by the maniac lie

       Of her mad vision that she knew what Freedom,

       Liberty, Republic mean. Slain by the lie

       Of this Girondist dream, this milk and water,

       Emasculated, luke-warm craft of states:

       Girondists: patches on the robes of kings;

       Girondists: autogamists; mating sisters,

       The past, and in the mating without child

       Of truth or progress. Neither hot nor cold,

       Spewed, therefore, from the mouth of Time. Betrayers,

       Waylayers of the brave, the clear of eye;

       Girondists: ’twixt republicans and kings,

       And holding hands of each to make them friends.

       Workers and owners of the new foaled mule

       Bred of the royal stallion and an ass.

       Girondists! loving wealth and ease, the church

       Which loves them too. Girondists picking steps

       Of moderate reform. Girondists hating

       The Revolution, which must kill the foes

       Of Liberty, as criminals are killed

       For robbery, yet rejoice to see the blood

       Of dead Marat. They’re lofty! They are pure!

       They love the laws, love peace! Yes, as this woman

       Loves law and peace.

      What is it like? A play

       Where all is mimicked. Do we talk of facts?

       Are these not fautocinni? Where’s the hand

       That plays this coarse and bloody joke to eyes

       Of men that crave reality? I mean this:

       A woman with lovers who suggest, abet;

       A woman with no man, who dreams and reads,

       Lives in the stench of these Girondist lies;

       Ghosts float on fogs of her miasmic soul.

       She hears Marat’s a monster, dabbling blood,

       A rabid ignoramus running foul

       Of liberty and order, nihilist,

       And sanguinary madman, dragon slimed

       In back-wash of all hatred, envy, lust

       Of the dispossessed, malformed, misborn; and then

       She dreams of Brutus, who struck down—there now

       I nail a lie that will be always truth

       To Charlotte Cordays. Cæsar? Tyrant? No.

       No man is tyrant who sees truth and rules

       For truth’s sake. For the ruled must share the truth

       Where Cæsars rule.

      So much for her. She stands

       Watchful and envious in the wings, and sees

       Marat, not as we see him; not as Time

       Will see Marat. L’Ami du Peuple to her

       Is enemy of France, of Liberty.

       This man most rare, most pure of soul, most clear

       Of vision that the contest lies between

       The rich and poor, has always lain between

       The rich and poor, and not between the people

       And kings; that poverty’s the thing, is seen

       By Charlotte Corday from the wings, as nothing

       But hatred, murder.

      Well, my girl, you’ll get

       Your picture in the galleries of history.

       You’ll get it; and to choke you with your words:

      

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