Beasts of the Bastille - a Revolutionary Serial

Part 8

Jun 30, 2026

The Story So Far - We are in the fading days of Ancien Régime France, a time of great upheaval. We have followed the correspondence of twins Joseph-Marie, a witch, and Marie-Joseph, a deserting soldier, as they broke out jail and sought to provoke a revolt against the predatory elites.

But now we also run into other figures plotting their own form of upheaval, the Marquis de Sade and firebrand revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat…

PART 4 – The Marat Papers

8th July 1789

Les Cordeliers, Paris

Antoine,

I feel certain that the king’s officers are seeking me after I published the Project for the Constitution and the Rights of Man just as the Estates General began gathering. I fear – not really fear, for Jean-Paul Marat fears nothing, but suspect – I suspect, then, that the law is after me. I must take refuge in the only place safe at present, the sewers of Paris.

This means I will be unable to make the final revisions to the text of the journal. So as my typesetter and confidant, I trust in you to make the following changes to issue 1:

Title: The proposed name Publiciste parisien is shit, what am I, a goddamn advertising shill? No, though of course if we can find sponsors for our serious political work, so much the better. I’ve decided on L’ami du peuple. Good, right? I am a friend to the people, and heaven knows the people need a friend in the hard times ahead.

Text: In reference to Lafayette, replace the phrase “that lackey to the King, Lafayette” with “George Washington’s bumboy, the pedophile Lafayette.” It’s time to remind people that though he dared much against the King of England, he won’t do shit to bring discomfort to the King of France. Such a reference would be very timely, as I believe the Americans have chosen today as their national day or somesuch. We reference them, then, in honor of their constitution (though mine is better).

The reference to “the good doctor G’s delicate machine” is on reflection a little obscure. We need to call a spade a spade. Change that to: “that national razor, the good Doctor Guillotine’s aristo-shortening device, must be given full rein in these liberating times.”

That’s all for now, if I consider any other urgent changes to the text I’ll let you know from the sewers. By all means get this journal – The Friend of the People, Volume One, Issue One – out onto the streets as soon as possible.

Adieu, my friend and may good fortune serve you. I’ve hired a strong young man to help me on my journey into the sewers, an ex-soldier (I think he’s a deserter) called Joseph. He says he can carry me through the streams of sewage if the waters get deep, and that he has a sister who will meet us with provisions of food and wine.

I think everything is going to be alright, though I confess to concerns now and again that the people will lack for heart and falter at the critical moment. Let us pray – to the Goddess Liberty, not to their Kingly God – that we will give them the courage to take action when action is needed.

Give my love to your beautiful sister Simone, tell her I think of her always and keep her lock of hair in a locket close to my chest.

Your friend and comrade

Doctor Jean-Paul Marat

Colonel Perrin,

As you well know I have been tracking the escaped witch and suspected murderer Marie-Joseph Beauchêne. I have reason now to believe that she and a brother of hers, possibly a deserter from the King’s army, are somewhere in Paris. The attached document is a transcription of a message written (allegedly) in blood on a wall in the Paris sewer.

It is almost too shocking. That it implicates that reprobate mob-monger Jean-Paul Marat is no surprise. Make of this document what you will, Sir, but at the very least it implicates the woman as a vile heretic and proves her wicked heart. I have men combing the streets, we believe they are no longer in the sewers.

Capitaine Lucien Pelletier

13 July

(Found in the Paris sewers by a transient and reported to the Garde nationale, transcribed by Frère Marcelin.)

“Written in blood on this day of our Dark Lord, Prince, and Infernal Master, The Unmaker, The Great Leveler and One True Judge, His Unholiness, Satan, 13 July 1789.

The blood whereof this pact is written was mixed in equal parts of Marie-Joseph Beauchêne, Joseph-Marie Beauchêne, and Jean-Paul Marat, that it may bring forth the full power of Mighty Hell to bare down upon the oppressors and enslavers of the sans-culottes. Let it be also known that nine rats, the number of wisdom and prophecy, were sacrificed in alignment with the rules set down in the Great Tract of Semyaz in the Spirit of Attainment.

Cast down into these sewers, as the benay Elohim were cast down from Heaven, we called upon the powers of Beliar and Leraje and Eligos, Powerful Demons of Hell, to grant Jean-Paul Marat a Revolution for His People. In our nakedness and frenzy, we danced in firelight, baring ourselves to The Infernal Divine, offering our bodies to these Spirits who birth war.

And let it be known, here writ in blood, that these Spirits did appear and did eat of our sacrifices, and did enjoy of our bodies and drink of our blood and our offering was deemed acceptable to them. Jean-Paul Marat did enter into a covenant with them, that he would have his revolution, at the cost of the comfort of his own flesh and that his own life must also be paid as debt.

This covenant hereby signed,

Jean-Paul Marat