92. Jean-Paul David's The Death of Marat

It all seems terribly romantic, and there's not even a hint of Marat's debilitating and scabrously putrid skin condition, apparently being a particularly vicious form of eczema which he contracted while conducting all that revolutionary activity down in the Parisian sewers, which made necessary Marat's virtually constant medicinal baths, and the oh so gentle suggestion of blood from the knife wound that punctured his lung. The public outpouring of grief over Marat's death was apparently of Princess Diana-esque proportions, complete with souvenir merchandising. Apparently David numbered Marat among his personal friends, and among all else, was responsible for organising and stage managing Marat's funeral, an event which saw Marat assume the status of martyr.

Thinking that as all possible manners of deaths might go, being stabbed in the bath might not be all too bad.

Next time I'm in Paris I'll be walking the route Charlotte Corday took, naturally beginning from where she slept the night after arriving from Caen, room 7 in the Hôtel de la Providence, 19 Rue Hérold, now the Hotel Odyssey, appropriately enough, to wandering the elegant arcades of the Palais Royal, buy a newspaper as she did, maybe Le Monde, or Libération, and then perhaps buying a handsome new black hat with green ribbons as she also did, partial as I am to berets and homburgs, and perhaps contemplate a walk through the Tuleries Garden, just over there, before heading to 177 Rue de Valois, which was once Badin's Cutler's shop, although Badin's itself has long gone, replaced by office buildings for some government agency or other, so perhaps buying a kitchen knife with a wooden handle and a six inch blade, as she did for two francs, from some other knife shop on the longish walk (and I seem to remember such a store at one end of Rue Monsieur-Le-Prince), but beginning with Croix des Petits Champs, heading towards the Place des Victoires Nationales, where she hailed a hackney cab to 30 Rue des Cordelières, where Marat lived, and while I'm walking, probably imagining his bathroom, and him there, his head wrapped in a vinegar soaked towel as he worked at his desk, the wooden crate undoubtedly knicked one night from some closed fruit shop, and Charlotte eventually being invited into his office of sorts, then him declaring that the names she had brought, Madame Roland, Barbaroux, Brissot and Vergniaud, would all be guillotined within a fortnight, and her then whipping the knife out from under her corset, and skewering him just beneath his right clavicle, killing him almost instantly, the herb scented bath filling with blood, before she put the note into his hands identifying herself as the murderer, and Il suffit que je sois bien malheureuse pour avoir droit a votre bienveillance which roughly translates into Given that I am unhappy, I have a right to your help. Not that it mattered, as she made no attempt to escape.
Should take a couple of hours, and while walking, I might ponder the circumstances at play that had David decide that having the Marquis de Sade deliver Marat's funeral eulogy was entirely appropriate, as even de Sade was a tad shocked at the violence of the Reign of Terror. Perhaps I'll still be pondering this, but I doubt it, on the return journey, in search of Marat's bathtub, and the knife, both on display in some tableaux at the Musée Grévin at 10 Boulevard Montmartre, but thinking of taking the metro, this time from the near enough Les Gobelins, Line 7, to Le Peletier. I have no doubt that Marat would have loved the metro.