"Where does the great citizen live?" Victor asked the men in a tone of earnest entreaty. On learning the address they took their way to the dirty and disreputable street where Marat lodged.
"The citizen Marat lives in this street, does he not?" Victor asked a man lounging at the door of a cabaret.
"Yes, in that house opposite. Do you want him?"
"No; only I was curious to see the house where the friend of the people lives, and as I was passing the end of the street turned down. Will you drink a glass?"
"I am always ready for that," the man said, "but in these hard times one cannot do it as often as one would like."
"That is true enough," Victor said as they took their seats at a table. "And so Marat lives over there; it's not much of a place for a great man."
"It is all he wants," the other said carelessly; "and he is safer here than he would be in the richer quarters. There would be a plot against him, and those cursed Royalists would kill him if they had the chance; but he is always escorted home from the club by a band of patriots."
In the evening Harry and Victor returned to the street and watched until Marat returned from the Jacobin Club. His escort of men with torches and bludgeons left him at the door, but two or three went upstairs with him, and until far in the night visitors came and went. Then the light in the upper room was extinguished.
"It is not such an easy affair," Victor said as they moved away; "and you see, as that man in the wine-shop told us, there is an old woman who cooks for him, and it is much more difficult to seize two people without an alarm being given than one."
"That is so," Harry agreed; "but it must be done somehow. Every day matters grow more threatening, and those bands of scoundrels from Marseilles have not been brought all this way for nothing. The worst of it is, we have such a short time to act. Marat does not seem to be ever alone from early morning until late at night. Supposing we did somehow get the order of release from him at night we could not present it till the morning, and before we could present it some one might arrive and discover him fastened up, and might take the news to the prison before we could get them out."