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licanism which she hoped to see realized in her own country. A friend at first to the revolution, she exulted in the opening dawn of freedom; but when she saw this dawn overcast by the want of energy of the Girondins, the mean and unprincipled conduct of the Feuillans, and the sanguinary ferocity of the Mountain party, she thought only of the means of averting the calamities which threatened again to enslave the French people.

On the overthrow of the Girondins, and their expulsion from the Convention, Charlotte Corday was residing at Caen, with her relation, Madame de Broteville. She had always been an enthusiastic admirer of the federal principles of this party, so eloquently developed in their writings, and had looked up to them as the saviors of France. She was, therefore, not prepared for the weakness, and even pusillanimity, which they afterwards displayed.

The Girondist representatives sought refuge in the department of Calvados, where they called upon every patriot to take up arms in defence of freedom. On their approach to Caen, Charlotte Corday, at the head of the young girls of that city, bearing crowns and flowers, went out to meet them. The civic crown was presented to Lanjuinais, and Charlotte herself placed it upon his head-a circumstance which must constitute not the least interesting recollection of Lanjuinais' life.

Marat was, at this period, the ostensible chief of the Mountain party, and the most sanguinary of its members. He was a monster of hideous deformity, both in mind and person; his lank and distorted features, covered with leprosy, and his vulgar and ferocious leer, were a true index of the passions which worked in his odious mind. A series of unparalleled atrocities had raised him to the highest power with his party; and though he professed to be merely passive in the revolutionary government, his word was law with the Convention, and his fiat irrevocable. In everything relating to the acquisition of wealth, he was incorruptible, and even gloried in his poverty. But the immense influence he had acquired, turned his brain, and he gave full range to the evil propensities of his nature, now unchecked by any authority. He had formed principles of political faith in which, perhaps, he sincerely believed, but which were founded upon his inherent love of blood, and his

CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

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hatred of every human being who evinced talents or virtue above his fellow-men. The guillotine was not only the altar of the distorted thing he worshipped under the name of Liberty, but it was also the instrument of his pleasures for his highest gratification was the writhings of the victim who fell under its axe. Even Robespierre attempted to check this unquenchable thirst for human blood, but in vain-opposition only excited Marat to greater atrocities. With rage depicted in his livid features, and with the howl of a demoniac, he would loudly declare that rivers of blood could alone purify the land, and must therefore flow. In his paper entitled, "L'Ami du Peuple," he denounced all those whom he had doomed to death, and the guillotine spared none whom he designated.

Charlotte Corday, having read his assertion in this journal, (that three hundred thousand heads were requisite to consolidate the liberties of the French people,) could not contain her feelings. Her cheeks flushed with indignation,—

"What!" she exclaimed, "is there not in the whole country a man bold enough to kill this monster ?"

Meanwhile, an insurrection against the ruling faction was in progress, and the exiled deputies had established a central assembly at Caen, to direct its operations. Charlotte Corday, accompanied by her father, regularly attended the sittings of this assembly, where her striking beauty rendered her the more remarkable, because from the retired life she led, she was previcusly unknown to any of the members.

Though the eloquence of the Girondins was here powerfully displayed, their actions but little corresponded with it. A liberating army had been formed in the department, and placed under the command of General Felix Wimpfen. But neither this general nor the deputies took any measures worthy of the cause; their proceedings were spiritless and emasculate, and excited, without checking, the faction in power. Marat denounced the Girondins in his paper, and demanded their death as necessary for the safety of the republic.

Charlotte Corday was deeply afflicted at the nerveless measures of the expelled deputies, and imagining that, if she could succeed in destroying Marat, the fall of his party must necessarily ensue, she determined to offer up her own life for the good of her country. She accordingly called on Barbaroux,

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one of the Girondist leaders, with whom she was not personally acquainted, and requested a letter of introduction to M. Duperret, a deputy, favorable to the Girondins, and then at Paris. Having also requested Barbaroux to keep her secret, she wrote to her father, stating, that she had resolved to emigrate to England, and had set out privately for that country, where alone she could live in safety.

She arrived at Paris at the beginning of July, 1793, and immediately called upon M. Duperret. But she found this deputy as devoid of energy as of talent, and therefore only made use of him to assist her in transacting some private business.

A day or two after her arrival, an incident occurred, which is worthy of a place here.

Being at the Tuileries, she seated herself upon a bench in the garden. A little boy, attracted no doubt by the smile with which she greeted him, enlisted her as a companion of his gambols. Encouraged by her caresses, he thrust his hand into her half-open pocket and drew forth a small pistol.

"What toy is this?" said he.

"It is a toy," Charlotte replied, "which may prove very useful in these times."

So saying, she quickly concealed the weapon, and looking round to see whether she was observed, immediately left the garden.

On the 11th of July, Charlotte Corday attended the sitting of the Convention, with a determination to shoot Marat in the midst of the assembly. But he was too ill to leave his house; and she had to listen to a long tirade against the Girondins, made by Cambon, in a report on the state of the country.

On the 12th, at nine o'clock in the evening, she called on M. Prud'homme, a historian of considerable talent and strict veracity, with whose writings on the revolution she had been much struck.

"No one properly understands the state of France," said she, with the accent of true patriotism; "your writings alone have made an impression upon me, and that is the reason why I have called upon you. Freedom, as you understand it, is for all conditions and opinions. You feel, in a word, that you have a country. All the other writers on the events of the day

are partial, and full of empty declamation-they are wholly guided by factions, or, what is worse, by coteries."

M. Prud'homme says, that, in this interview, Charlotte Corday appeared to him a woman of most elevated mind and striking talent.

The day after this visit, she went to the Palais Royal and bought a sharp-pointed carving-knife, with a black sheath. On her return to the hotel in which she lodged-Hotel de la Providence, Rue des Augustins-she made her preparations for the deed she intended to commit next day. Having put up her papers in order, she placed a certificate of her baptism in a red pocket-book, in order to take it with her, and thus establish her identity. This she did because she had resolved to make no attempt to escape, and was therefore certain she should leave Marat's house for the conciergerie, preparatory to her appearing before the revolutionary tribunal.

Next morning, the 14th, taking with her the knife she had purchased, and her red pocket-book, she proceeded to Marat's residence, at No. 18, Rue de l'Ecole de Médicine. The representative was ill, and could not be seen, and Charlotte's entreaties for admittance on the most urgent business were unavailing. She therefore withdrew, and wrote the following note, which she herself delivered to Marat's servant :

"CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVE,

"I am just arrived from Caen. Your well-known patriotism leads me, to presume that you will be glad to be made acquainted with what is passing in that part of the republic. I will call on you again in the course of the day; have the goodness to give orders that I may be admitted, and grant me a few minutes' conversation. I have important secrets to reveal to you.

"CHARLOTTE CORDAY."

At seven o'clock in the evening she returned, and reached Marat's ante-chamber; but the woman who waited upon him refused to admit her to the monster's presence. Marat, however, who was in a bath in the next room, hearing the voice of a young girl, and little thinking she had come to deprive him of life, ordered that she should be shown in. Charlotte seated

herself by the side of the bath. The conversation ran upon the disturbances in the department of Calvados, and Charlotte, fixing her eyes upon Marat's countenance as if to scrutinize his most secret thoughts, pronounced the names of several of the Girondist deputies.

They shall soon be arrested," he cried with a howl of rage, "and executed the same day."

He had scarcely uttered these words, when Charlotte's knife was buried in his bosom.

"Help! immediately.

he cried, "help! I am murdered."

He died

Charlotte might have escaped, but she had no such intention. She had undertaken, what she conceived, a meritorious action, and was resolved to stay and ascertain whether her aim had been sure. In a short time, the screams of Marat's servant brought a crowd of people into the room. Some of them beat and ill-used her, but, the Members of the Section having arrived, she placed herself under their protection. They were all struck with her extraordinary beauty, as well as with the calm and lofty heroism that beamed from her countenance. Accustomed as they were to the shedding of human blood, they could not behold unmoved this beautiful girl, who had not yet reached her twenty-fifth year, standing before them with unblenching eye, but with modest dignity, awaiting their fiat of death, for a deed which she imagined would save her country from destruction. At length Danton arrived, and treated her with the most debasing indignity, to which she only opposed silent contempt. She was then dragged into the street, placed in a coach, and Drouet was directed to conduct her to the conciergerie. On her way thither, she was attacked by the infuriated multitude. Here, for the first time, she envinced symptoms of alarm. The possibility of being torn to pieces in the streets, and her mutilated limbs dragged through the kennel and made sport of by the ferocious rabble, had never before occurred to her imagination. The thought now struck her with dismay, and roused all her feelings of female delicacy. The firmness of Drouet, however, saved her, and she thanked him warmly,

"Not that I feared to die," she said; "but it was repugnant to my woman's nature to be torn to pieces before everybody."