tirelessly wielding a vitriolic pen, skilled in the art of
inflaming the passions of the mob.

That man was Jean Paul Marat, sometime medical practitioner,
sometime professor of literature, a graduate of the Scottish
University of St. Andrews, author of some scientific and many
sociological works, inveterate pamphleteer and revolutionary
journalist, proprietor and editor of L'Ami du Peuple, and idol of
the Parisian rabble, who had bestowed upon him the name borne by
his gazette, so that he was known as The People's Friend.

Such was the foe of the Girondins, and of the pure, altruistic,
Utopian Republicanism for which they stood; and whilst he lived
and laboured, their own endeavours to influence the people were
all in vain. From his vile lodging in the Rue de l'Ecole de
Medecine in Paris he span with his clever, wicked pen a web that
paralysed their high endeavours and threatened finally to choke
them.

He was not alone, of course. He was one of the dread triumvirate
in which Danton and Robespierre were his associates. But to the
Girondins he appeared by far the most formidable and ruthless and
implacable of the three, whilst to Charlotte Corday--the friend
and associate now of the proscribed Girondins who had sought
refuge in Caen--he loomed so vast and terrible as to eclipse his
associates entirely. To her young mind, inflamed with enthusiasm
for the religion of Liberty as preached by the Girondins, Marat
was a loathly, dangerous heresiarch, threatening to corrupt that
sublime new faith with false, anarchical doctrine, and to replace
the tyranny that had been overthrown by a tyranny more odious