MARAT INIMICAL TO THE MAYOR. 185 
touched him much less, and yet they were far from con- 
temptible. Let us surmount our repugnance, although a 
reasonable one; let us cast a firm look on the sink where 
the unworthy calumnies were manufactured, of which 
Bailly was for some time the object. 
Several years before our first revolution, a native of 
Neufchatel quitted his mountains, traversed the Jura, 
and lighted upon Paris. Without means, without any 
recognized talent, without eminence of any sort, repulsive 
in appearance, of a more than negligent deportment, it 
seemed unlikely that he should hope, or even dream, of 
success ; but the young traveller had been told to have 
full confidence, although a celebrated academician had 
not yet given that singular definition of our country, 
_ “France is the home of foreigners.” At all events, the 
definition was not erroneous in this instance, for soon 
after his arrival, the Neufchatelois was appointed physi- 
cian to the household of one of the princes of the royal 
family, and formed strict intimacies with the greater part 
of the powerful people about the court. 
This stranger thirsted for literary glory. Amongst his 
early productions, a medico-philosophical work figured in 
three volumes, relative to the reciprocal influences of the 
mind and the body. The author thought he had pro- 
duced a chef d’euvre ; even Voltaire was not thought to 
be above analyzing it suitably ; let us hasten to say that 
the illustrious old man, yielding to the pressing solicita- 
tions of the Duke de Praslin, one of the most active 
patrons of the Swiss doctor, promised to study the work 
and give his opinion of it. 2 
The author was at the acmé of his wishes. After hav- 
ing pompously announced that the seat of the soul is in 
the meninges (cerebral membrane), could there be any 
