Claude Marot

“ Marot, who was with Calvin in Ferrara, went back to Paris, still countenanced at court; but no favor of king or king's sister could save a sinner who would eat meat during Lent; and in 1543 Marot was forced to flee to Italy, and died in Turin in 1544. He lives less in his special verse than in his general influence, along with Rabelais and Montaigne, in the formation of French letters. These three cleansed that language into literature, by purging 94 it of the old Gallic chaos and clumsiness of form. ”

“ His versified translation of forty-nine Psalms added to his glory, and brought him the honour of personal danger from the hostility of the Sorbonne; but to attempt such a translation is to aim at what is impossible. His gift to French poetry is especially a gift of finer art—firm and delicate expression, felicity in rendering a thought or a feeling, certainty and grace in poetic evolution, skill in handling the decasyllabic line. A great poet Marot was not, and could not be; but, coming at a fortunate moment, his work served literature in important ways ”

“ To the characteristics of the lighter French poetry, from La Fontaine to Béranger, which has always been more popular both at home and abroad than the more ambitious and serious efforts of French poets, Marot does in some sort stand in a parental relation. He retained the sprightliness and sly fun of the Fabliau-writers, while he softened their crudity of expression, he exchanged clumsiness and horse-play for the play of wit, and he emphasised fully in the language the two characteristics which have never failed to distinguish it since, elegance and urbanity. ”

“ But as a rule he does not go deep; ease and grace, not passion or lofty flights, are his strong points. Representing, as he did, the reaction from the stiff forms and clumsily classical language of the rhétoriqueurs, it was not likely that he should exhibit the tendency of his own age to classical culture and imitation very strongly. He and his school were thus regarded by their immediate successors of the Pléiade as rustic and uncouth singers, for the most part very unjustly. But still Marot's work was of less general and far-reaching importance than that of Ronsard. ”

“ Of the performers before this audience Jean Marot and his stalwart companion found themselves particularly observed from their début. The red turban was conspicuous enough, and gave a theatrical aspect to the man who wore it. There was that in his ensemble which recalled the great Revolution and the scarcely less sanguinary conflicts of '71. By his side and contrasting strangely with the coarse brute features of this muscular humanity was the finely chiselled face of the student under the rough cap of the workman. ”

“ Since the great revival of the taste for older literature, which preceded and accompanied the Romantic movement, Marot has scarcely held this pride of place. The Pléiade on the one hand, the purely mediaeval writers on the other, have pushed him from his stool. But sane criticism, which declines to depreciate one thing because it appreciates another, will always have hearty admiration for his urbanity, his genuine wit, his graceful turn of words; and his flashes of pathos and poetry. ”

“ What is Jean Marot's address? Good! I will leave you company. You [136] will not mind? Dubat will entertain you. It is better than resting in the station-house, eh?"
With this pleasantry Inspector Loup hurried away, snatched a cab, and was driven rapidly to the address in the Faubourg St. Honoré.
Jean Marot was the son of a rich silk manufacturer of Lyon, and therefore lived in more comfortable quarters than most students, in a fashionable neighborhood on the right bank of the Seine. He had reached his lodgings scarcely three-quarters of an hour before Inspector Loup. ”

“ Like Marat, he began to show physically the effects of a life full of alarms; for this monster dreaded darkness, trembled at unusual noises, and remained to the last the most carefully dressed man in Paris. To understand him at all, one must credit him in his early political life with a sincere love of country, and with willingness to sacrifice himself for others. It is impossible to regard him as entirely sound of mind at a later date. ”

“ Marat then resided in the Rue des Cordeliers, in a gloomy-looking house, which has since been demolished. His constant fears of assassination were shared by those around him; the porter, seeing a strange woman pass by his lodge without pausing to make any inquiry, ran out and called her back. She did not heed his remonstrance, but swiftly ascended the old stone stair-case, until she had reached the door of Marat’s apartment. It was cautiously opened by Albertine, a woman with whom Marat cohabited, and who passed for his wife. ”

“ Marat forgets himself like Jesus. They throw themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think not of themselves. They have a glance, and that glance seeks the absolute. The first has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last, enigmatical though he may be, has still, beneath his eyelids, the pale beam of the infinite. Venerate the man, whoever he may be, who has this sign—the starry eye. ”

“ Marthe was now undergoing a complete change; she was becoming quite another woman. She had grown much more refined, through the life of nervous excitement which she had been leading. The stolid heaviness and dull lifelessness which she had acquired from having spent fifteen years behind a counter at Marseilles seemed to melt away in the bright flame of her new-born piety. She dressed better than she had been used to do, and joined in the conversation when she now went to the Rougons' on Thursdays.
'Madame Mouret is becoming quite a young girl again,' exclaimed Madame de Condamin in amazement. ”

“ Marat, the tender-hearted, the humane, Marat our benefactor, is no longer there to guide us, Marat who was never deceived, who saw through every subterfuge and never feared to reveal the truth!... What can we do, what is to become of us? ”

“ O [pg 29] worshipful Maruts, you create for man an active king, fashioned by Vibhvan; from you comes the man who can fight with his fist, and is quick with his arm, from you the man with good horses and valiant heroes. Like the spokes of a wheel, no one is last, like the days they are born on and on, not deficient in might. The very high sons of Prisni are full of fury, the Maruts cling firmly to their own will. When you have come forth with your speckled deer as horses on strong-fellied chariots, O Maruts, the waters gush, the forests go asunder;—let Dyu roar down, the bull of the Dawn. ”

“ As she defended Mouret against the gossip of Plassans, Marthe's voice assumed a sudden animation, as though she felt the need of defending him quite as much from the secret accusations which arose within her own mind; and she kept reverting with nervous uneasiness to the subject of society life. She seemed to seek a refuge within the little dining-room and the old-fashioned garden with its box borders, as if everything else filled her with vague alarm, and made her doubtful of her strength, apprehensive of some possible catastrophe. ”

“ The citoyenne Gamelin shook her head, paying no heed to the cockade that fell out of her cap at the gesture.
"Have done, Évariste; your Marat is a man like another and no better than the rest. You are young and your head is full of fancies. What you say to-day of Marat, you said before of Mirabeau, of La Fayette, of Pétion, of Brissot." ”

“ He bore graven upon his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from those brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own destruction.
He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and of all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed, and scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. ”

“ The Maruts with their rings appeared like the heavens with their stars, they shone wide like streams from clouds as soon as Rudra, the strong man, was born for you, O golden-breasted Maruts, in the bright lap of Prisni. They wash their horses like racers in the courses, they hasten with the points of the reed on their quick steeds. O golden-jawed Maruts, violently shaking your jaws, you go quick with your spotted deer, being friends of one mind. ”

“ May the swiftly-gliding, swift-winged horses carry you hither! Come forth with your arms! Sit down on the grass-pile; a wide seat has been made for you. Rejoice, O Maruts, in the sweet food. Strong in themselves, they grew with might; they stepped to the firmament, they made their seat wide. When Vishnu saved the enrapturing Soma, the Maruts sat down like birds on their beloved altar. Like heroes indeed thirsting for fight they rush about; like combatants eager for glory they have striven in battles. All beings are afraid of the Maruts; they are men terrible to behold, like kings. ”

“ These Maruts are men brilliant with lightning, they shoot with thunderbolts, they blaze with the wind, they shake the mountains, and suddenly, when wishing to give water, they whirl the hail; they have thundering strength, they are robust, they are ever-powerful. When you drive forth the nights, O Rudras, the days, O powerful men, the sky, the mists, ye shakers, the plains, like ships, and the strongholds, O Maruts, you suffer nowhere. ”

“ For Marat is an intellect, and nothing more—leastways, nothing more that matters. What else there is to him of trunk and limbs and organs he has neglected until it has all fallen into decay. His very lack of personal cleanliness, the squalor in which he lives, the insufficient sleep which he allows himself, his habit of careless feeding at irregular intervals, all have their source in his contempt for the physical part of him. ”

“ That man, O Maruts, is not overpowered, he is not killed, he does not fail, he does not shake, he does not drop, his goods do not perish, nor his protections, if you lead him rightly, whether he be a seer or a king. The men with their steeds, like conquerors of clans, like Aryaman, the Maruts, carrying waterskins, fill the well; when the strong ones roar, they moisten the earth with the juice of sweetness. When the Maruts come forth this earth bows, the heaven bows, the paths in the sky bow, and the cloud-mountains with their quickening rain. ”

“ Accept, O Maruts, this thousandfold, domestic share, as an offering for the house-gods. If you thus listen, O Maruts, to this praise, at the invocation of the powerful sage, give him quickly a share of wealth in plentiful offspring, which no selfish enemy shall be able to hurt. The Maruts, who are fleet like racers, the manly youths, shone like Yakshas; they are beautiful like boys standing round the hearth, they play about like calves who are still sucking. May the bounteous Maruts be gracious to us, opening up to us the firm heaven and earth. ”

“ In the matter of Marat what I may call “the Tussaud tradition” is sounder. The man was unbalanced to the point of lunacy, and when Madame Tussaud was called in to take the impression of his face just after [42] death, her use of the word “fiend” though exaggerated is comprehensible. This effigy of Marat which you may see in the famous gallery and which was modelled immediately after his death—an immediate piece of historical evidence of the first value—was shown in Paris when it was completed. It is an astonishing thing to have that piece of continuity with us. ”

“ He felt himself firm, and his pulse, he was certain, beat regularly. He was as he had imagined he would be; experience confirmed his foresight; his hand would tremble no more than his will.
As he passed before the house he saw the concierge come slowly out of her lodge and close her door carefully, putting the key in her pocket. In her left hand she held something white that he could not see distinctly in the twilight, but it was probably the wax-taper which, doubtless, she had not lighted for fear the wind would blow it out. ”

“ The lightning lows like a cow, it follows as a mother follows after her young, when the shower of the Maruts has been let loose. Even by day the Maruts create darkness with the water-bearing cloud, when they drench the earth. Then from the shouting of the Maruts over the whole space of the earth, men reeled forward. Maruts on your strong-hoofed, never-wearying steeds go after those bright ones, which are still locked up. May your fellies be strong, the chariots, and their horses, may your reins be well-fashioned. ”

“ The Maruts, blazing with the wind, clothed in rain, are as like one another as twins, and well adorned. They have tawny horses, and red horses, they are faultless, endowed with exceeding vigor; they are in greatness wide as the heaven. Rich in rain-drops, well adorned, bounteous, terrible to behold, of inexhaustible wealth, noble by birth, golden-breasted, these singers of the sky have obtained their immortal name. ”

“ All Paris went into mourning for Marat—the public buildings were draped with black, and his portrait was displayed in the Pantheon with the great ones gone. A pension for life was bestowed upon his widow, and lavish resolutions of gratitude were laid at her feet in loving token of what she had done in upholding the hands of this strong man. ”

“ In spite of Marthe's unruffled tranquillity and Rose's angry glances, Mouret still often indulged in bursts of anger.
'What can the young scamp be after up there?' he would growl. 'Whole days pass without my catching more than a glimpse of him. He never seems to stir from the Abbé; they are always talking together in some corner or other. He shall be off to Paris at once. He's as strong as a Turk. ”