"I be identified!" answered the woman, turning pale. "I do not understand you, Doctor Marat!"
"But I do," whispered Marat, still more softly, for he saw that Simon's little sparkling eyes were turned toward the woman with a look of curiosity. "I understand the Duke Philip d'Orleans very well. He wants to rouse up the people, but he is unwilling to compromise his name or his title. And that may be a very good thing. But you are not to disown yourself before Marat, for Marat is your very good friend, and will keep your secret honorably."
"What are you whispering about?" shouted Simon. "Why do you not speak to the people? You were going to tell us why Paris has no bread, and who is to blame that we must all starve."
"Yes, yes, that is what you were going to tell us!" was shouted on all sides. "We want to know it."
"Tell us, tell us!" cried the giantess. "Give me your hand once more, that I may press it in the name of all the women of Paris!"
Marat with an assuring smile reached his great, bony hand to the woman, who held it in both of her own for a moment, and then retreated and was lost in the crowd.
But in Marat's hand now blazed the jewelled ring which had a moment before adorned the large, soft hand of the woman. He, perhaps, did not know it himself; he paid no attention to it, but turned all his thoughts to the people who now filled the immense square, and hemmed him in with thousands upon thousands of blazing eyes.
"You want to know why you have no bread?" snarled he. "You ask why you starve? Well, my friends and brothers, the answer is an easy one to give. The baker of France has shut up his storehouse because the baker's wife has told him to do so, because she hates the people and wants them to starve! But she does not intend to starve, and so she has called the baker and the little apprentices to Versailles, where are her storehouses, guarded by her paid soldiers. What does it concern her if the people of Paris are miserably perishing? She has an abundance of bread, for the baker must always keep his store open for her, and her son eats cake, while your children are starving! You must always keep demanding that the baker, the baker's wife, and the whole brood come to Paris and live in your midst, and then you will see how they keep their flour, and you will then compel them to give you of their superfluous supplies."
"Yes, we will make her come!" cried Simon the cobbler, with a coarse laugh. "Up, brothers, up! We must compel the baker and his wife to open the flour-store to us!"
"Let us go to Versailles!" roared the great woman, who had posted herself among a group of fishwives. "Come, my friends, let us go to Versailles, and we will tell the baker's wife that our children have no bread, while she is giving her apprentices cakes. We will demand of her that she give our children bread, and if she refuses it, we will compel her to come with her baker and her whole brood to Paris and starve with us! Come, let us go to Versailles!"