Marat lived in hiding until August of Seventeen Hundred Ninety-two, when he again publicly appeared and led the riots. The people hailed him as their deliverer. The insignificant size of the man made him conspicuous. His proud defiance, the haughtiness of his countenance, his stinging words, formed a personality that made him the pet of the people.
Danton, the Minister of Justice, dared not kill him, and so he did the next best thing—he took him to his heart and made him his right-hand man. It was a great diplomatic move, and the people applauded. Danton was tall, powerful, athletic and commanding, just past his thirtieth year. Marat was approaching fifty, and his sufferings while in hiding in the sewers had told severely on his health, but he was still the fearless agitator. When Marat and Danton appeared upon the balcony of the Hotel de Ville, the hearts of the people were with the little man.
But behold, another man had forged to the front, and this was Robespierre. And so it was that Danton, Marat and Robespierre formed a triumvirate, and ruled Paris with hands of iron. Coming in the name of the people, proclaiming peace, they held their place only through a violence that argued its own death.
Marat was still full of the desire to educate—to make men think. Deprivation and disease had wrecked his frame until public speaking was out of the question—the first requisite of oratory is health. But he could write, and so his little paper, "The People's Friend," went fluttering forth with its daily message.
So scrupulous was Marat in money matters that he would accept no help from the Government. He neither drew a salary nor would he allow any but private citizens to help issue his paper. He lived in absolute poverty with his beloved wife, Simonne Evrard.
They had met about Seventeen Hundred Eighty-eight, and between them had grown up a very firm and tender bond. He was twenty years older than she, but Danton said of her, "She has the mind of a man."
Simonne had some property and was descended from a family of note. When she became the wife of Marat, her kinsmen denounced her, refused to mention her name, but she was loyal to the man she loved.
The Psalmist speaks of something "that passeth the love of woman," but the Psalmist was wrong—nothing does.
Simonne Evrard gave her good name, her family position, her money, her life—her soul into the keeping of Jean Paul Marat. That his love and gratitude to her was great and profound, there is abundant proof. She was his only servant, his secretary, his comrade, his friend, his wife. Not only did she attend him in sickness, but in banishment and disgrace she never faltered. She even set the type, and at times her arm pulled the lever of the press that printed the daily message.
Let it stand to the eternal discredit of Thomas Carlyle that he contemptuously disposes of Simonne Evrard, who represents undying love and unflinching loyalty, by calling her a "washerwoman." Carlyle, with a savage strain of Scotch Calvinism in his cold blood, never knew the sacredness of the love of man and woman—to him sex was a mistake on the part of God. Even for the sainted Mary of Galilee he has only a grim and patronizing smile, removing his clay pipe long enough to say to Milburn, the blind Preacher, "Oh, yes; a country lass elevated by Catholics into a wooden image and worshiped as a deity!"