the evasive brevity of her responses, and withdrew come to her the next morning to take her to the herself altogether from them by feigning to sleep. Bureau. A young man, more reserved, seduced by so much She left with Duperret her name and her address, modesty and such attractions, dared to declare to and made some steps to withdraw; then, as if conher a respectful admiration. He besought her to quered by the interest which the honest appearance authorize him to ask her hand of her parents. of the good man and the childhood of his daughShe turned into gentle raillery and amusement that ters had inspired in her; "Permit me to advise sudden love; she promised the young man to let you, citizen Duperret," she said with a voice full him know after a time her name and her disposi- of mystery and of intimacy, "quit the Convention, tion in regard to him. She charmed her compan- you can do no more good here, go to Caen to ions to the end of the journey by that ravishing ap- join your colleagues and your brothers." pearance from which all regretted to separate.

XVI.

She entered Paris, Thursday the 11th of July at midday. She went to a hotel which had been recommended to her at Caen, on the street of the "Vieux Augustins, No. 17, Hotel de la Providence." She retired at five o'clock in the evening and slept in a profound sleep till the next morning. Without confidant and without witness, during those long hours of solitude and of agitation, in a publichouse and in the midst of the noise of that capital, whose immensity and tumult overwhelm the ideas and trouble the senses, no one knows what passed in that spirit upon her awaking, finding before her a resolution, which summoned her to its accomplishment. Who can measure the power of thought and the resistance of nature? Thought triumphed.

XVII.

"My post is at Paris," responded the representative, "I will not quit it."

"You commit a fault," replied Charlotte, with a significant and almost suppliant importunity. "Trust to me," she added in a lower tone and with a more rapid accent, "fly, fly, before to-morrow evening!" and she departed without waiting an an

swer.

XVIII.

These words, of which the sense was only known by the stranger, were interpreted by Duperret as a simple allusion to the urgency of the perils which menaced men of his opinion at Paris. He went and reseated himself with his friends. He said to them that the young girl with whom he had just had an interview, had in her attitude and words something strange and mysterious with which he was struck and which imposed on him reserve and circumspection. During the evening, a decree of the Convention ordered that the seals should be put on the furniture of the deputies suspected of atShe arose, dressed herself in a simple but be- tachment to the twenty-two. Duperret was of the coming robe and went to the house of Duperret. number, yet he went the next day, the 12th, very The friend of Barbaroux was at the convention. early in the morning, to take Charlotte at her His daughters, in the absence of their father, re- lodgings and conducted her to Garat. Garat did ceived from the young stranger the letter of intro- did not receive them. The minister could not give duction from Barbaroux. Duperret was not to re- an audience before eight in the evening. This disturn before the evening. Charlotte returned and appointment seemed to discourage Duperret. He passed the entire day in reading, reflecting, and represented to the young girl that his position as a praying. She went back at six to Duperret. The suspected person and the measures taken against deputy was at table supping with his family and him by the Convention that night even rendered friends. He arose and received her in his saloon henceforth his patronage more injurious than useful alone. Charlotte explained to him the service to his clients, that, besides, she was not supplied which she expected from his obliging disposition, with papers from Mademoiselle de Forbin to act in and asked him to conduct her to the minister of the her name and that in default of that formality her Interior, Garat, to sustain by his presence and his steps would be in vain. credit the claims which she had to establish. That The stranger insisted but little as a person who request was in the mind of Mademoiselle de Cor- has no more need of the pretext with which she day but a pretext to approach one of these Gi- has colored an action and who contents herself rondins, for whose cause she came to sacrifice her- with the first reason to abandon her intention. Duself, and to draw from her conversation with him, perret quitted her at the door of the Hotel de la some information and some indications proper to Providence. She pretended to enter there. She give better assurance to her steps and her hand. immediately came out and obtained information Duperret, pressed by the hour and recalled by from street to street of the way to the Palaishis guests, said to her that he was not able to con- Royal. duct her that evening to Garat, but that he would

She entered the garden, not as a stranger who

desires to satisfy his curiosity by the contempla-1agem and immolation into assassination, was the tion of the monuments and of the public gardens, first remorse of her conscience and her first punbut as a traveller who has but one office in a city, ishment. A criminal act is distinguished from a and who does not wish to lose a step or a minute. heroic, before the acts may be even accomplished, She sought with the eye, under the galleries, a by the means which it is necessary to use for cutler's shop. She entered one and selected a their accomplishment. Crime is always obliged dagger-knife with a handle of ebony, payed for it to deceive; virtue never. The reason is that the three francs, concealed it under her neckerchief one is falsehood, the other truth in action. The and with slow steps reëntered the garden. She one has need of darkness, the other requires only seated herself a moment upon one of the benches light. Charlotte decided to deceive. It cost her of stone against the arcade. more than to strike. She avowed it herself. Conscience is just before posterity.*

Then, although plunged in her reflections, she permitted herself to be distracted by the sports of She went back to her chamber and wrote to the children, some of whom played at her feet and Marat a letter, which she left at the door of the leant with confidence on her knees. She had one" friend of the people." "I come from Caen," she last smile of woman for those sports. Her inde- said to him. "Your love for the country induces cision oppressed her not as to the act itself for me to presume that you will willingly learn the which she was already armed, but as to the manner miserable events of that part of the republic. I in which she should accomplish it. She wished to shall present myself at your house at one o'clock, make of the murder a solemn immolation, which have the goodness to receive me and to accord to might cast terror into the souls of the imitators of me one moment's conversation. I will put you in the tyrant. Her first thought had been to approach a position to render a great service to France." Marat and sacrifice him in the Champ de Mars, at Charlotte, counting upon the effect of this note, the great ceremony of the federation which was went at the hour named to the door of Marat, but to take place the 14th of July in commemoration she was not able to accomplish an entry into his of conquered liberty. The delay of that solemnity presence. She left then with his porter a second till the triumph of the republic over the Vendéens note more pressing and more insidious than the first. and the insurgents took from her the theatre and In it she made an appeal not only to his patriotism the victim. Her second thought had been, up to but to the pity of "the friend of the people," and this moment, to strike Marat at the summit of the laid for him a snare even by the generosity which Mountain, in the midst of the Convention, under she accorded to him. "I have written you this the eyes of his adorers and his accomplices. Her morning;" she said to him, “Marat, have you rehope, in that case, was to be immolated herself ceived my letter? I cannot believe, it since your immediately after, and torn in pieces by the fury door is refused to me. I hope that to-morrow you of the people without leaving any other traces, or will accord me an interview. I repeat to you that any other memorial than two dead bodies, and I arrive from Caen. I have to reveal to you setyranny overthrown in her blood. To bury her crets the most important for the safety of the rename in oblivion and not to seek her recompense public. Besides, I am persecuted for the cause of but in the act itself, not asking shame or renown, liberty. I am miserable, it suffices that I may be bat inquiring of her own conscience, of God and of so to have a right to your patriotism." the good she would have accomplished. Such was, as far as to the end, the only ambition of her soul. The shame! she did not wish it on account of her family. The renown! she did not wish it for herself. Glory seemed to her a human reward unworthy of the disinterestedness of her action or proper only to lower her virtue.

But the interviews which she had had since her arrival at Paris with Duperret and with her hosts, had taught her that Marat appeared no more at the Convention. It was necessary then to find her victim elsewhere, and to approach him it was necessary to deceive him.

XIX.

XX.

Without awaiting an answer, Charlotte left her

* The argument of the author seems to the translator to be utterly sophistical in this last section. Marat may well be considered as "hostis humani generis," and any deception

practised to entrap and destroy him was just and proper; as much so as if the effort had been to destroy a ferocious wild beast. Such cases should not be considered with reference to the ordinary principles of morals. They are exceptions. Nearly all tyrants, or at least very many who

have met with their deserts have been reached only by stratagem. Brutus deceived Cæsar, Judith deceived Holophernes to rescue the people of Israel. Our Washington deceived his enemies in war. Marat was the enemy of the human race. The tiger is not more savage than was this monster in human form. Then why should not the tiger's fate be justly meted to him. The interest of man

She resolved on it. That dissimulation which requires that such beings, anomalous as they are, exceptions ruffled the natural loyalty of her heart, which as they are in the human race, should be esteemed beyond changed the poniard into a snare, courage into strat-the pale of humanity.

The devouring activity of the writer had not been relaxed by the slow malady which consumed him. The inflammation of his blood seemed to illumine his mind. Sometimes from his bed, sometimes from his bath, he never ceased to write, to apostrophize, to abuse his enemies, to incite the

chamber at seven in the evening, dressed with more | pied himself in the ante-chamber with the manual care than ordinarily to seduce by an appearance work rendered necessary in the reading of the more becoming, the eyes of the persons who watch journals and of the advertisements of "L'ami da ed over Marat. Her white robe was covered at peuple." the shoulders by a neckerchief of silk. That neckerchief veiled the bosom, folded back below the bust, after the manner of a sash or girdle, and was united behind the body. Her hair was enclosed in a Norman cap, of which the floating lace beat upon her two cheeks. A large ribbon of green silk pressed this cap around the temples. Her hair es- Convention and the Cordeliers. Offended by the caped upon the nape of the neck, and some curls only were scattered over the neck. No paleness of color, no wandering of the eye, no emotion of the voice revealed in her the death which she bore. She struck, under these seducing features, at the door of Marat.

XXI.

silence of the assembly on the reception of his messages, he had just addressed it a new letter, in which he menaced the Convention that he would cause himself to be borne dying to the tribune to shame the representatives for their effeminacy and to dictate to them the necessary morders. He left repose neither to others nor himself. Full of the presentiment of death, he seemed to fear only that the last hour, too rapidly approaching, might not leave him the time to sacrifice enough of the guilty. More eager to kill than to live, he hastened to send before him the largest number of victims possible, as so many hostages given

Marat inhabited the first story of a dilapidated house of the street of the Cordeliers, at this time the street of l'Ecole de Medicine, number 20. His lodgings were composed of an ante-chamber and a by the sword to the complete revolution which cabinet of labor, receiving light from a narrow he wished to leave without enemies after him. court, of a little room adjacent where was his bath, The terror which came forth from the house of of a chamber and of a saloon whose windows re- Marat reëntered there under another form: the ceived light from the street. His lodgings were perpetual fear of assassination. His companion almost naked. The numerous works of Marat and his trusty friends believed they saw as many heaped upon the floor, the public Journals, still hu- poinards raised over him as he raised himself over mid with ink, scattered over the chairs and tables, the heads of three hundred thousand citizens. The correctors of the printing press entering and depart- approach to his dwelling was interdicted as the aping without ceasing, some women employed in proach to the palace of tyranny. No person was folding and addressing pamphlets and journals, the permitted to draw near but sure friends or denunworn steps of the staircase, the badly swept thresh-ciators recommended in advance, and submitted to old of the door, all attested the habitual movement interrogatories and severe examinations. Love, disand disorder around a man immured in affairs, and trust and fanaticism watched together over his the perpetual affluence of the citizens into the days. house of a journalist and a Corypheus of the people. That dwelling paraded, so to speak, the pride of his poverty. It seemed that its master, all powerful then over the nation, wished to say to his visiters by the aspect of his misery and his labor : "Behold the friend and model of the people! He has shifted neither his lodgings, nor his manners, nor his garments."

That misery was the ensign of the tribune. But although affected it was real. The house of Marat was that of an humble artisan. The woman who governed his house is known. She was formerly named Catherine Everard; she was then called Albertine Marat, since the "friend of the people," had given her his name in taking her for a spouse "one beautiful day in the face of the sun," after the example of Jean Jacques Rousseau. An only servant assisted this woman in the cares of the household. An errand-boy, called Laurent Basse, carried the messages and did the labor without. In his moments of liberty this man of labor occu

XXII.

Charlotte was ignorant of these obstacles, but she suspected them. She descended from her voiture on the opposite side of the street in face of the dwelling of Marat. The day began to decline, above all in that quarter, darkened by high houses and narrow streets. The woman in charge of the " Porte cochere," refused in the beginning to permit the young, unknown girl to enter into the court. Nevertheless, she insisted and mounted several steps of the staircase, recalled in vain by the woman. At this noise the mistress of Marat half opened the door and refused the entry of the apart ment to the stranger. The low altercation between these women, one of whom begged that she might be permitted to speak to the "friend of the people," and the other persisted in closing the door, came to the ear of Marat. He comprehended by the in

terrupted explanations that the visiter was the " To me! my dear friend! to me!" cries Marat stranger from whom he had received two letters and expires under the blow.

during the day. With an imperative and strong At the cry of distress from the victim, Albervoice, he ordered that they should let her enter. tine, the servant woman and Laurent Basse, preWhether it was jealousy, whether distrust, Alber- cipitated themselves into the chamber; they retine obeyed with repugnance and grumbling. She ceived in their arms the fainting head of Marat. introduced the young girl into the little apartment Charlotte, without motion, and as if petrified by where Marat was, and in withdrawing left the door her crime, was standing behind the curtain of the of the corridor partly opened to hear the least word window. The shade of her body was seen through or the least movement of the sick man. the transparency of the stuff by the last rays of This apartment was dimly lighted. Marat was day. The errand-boy, Laurent, arms himself with in his bath. In that forced repose of his body he a chair, strikes a blow, badly aimed at her head, did not suffer his mind to rest. A plank badly and fells her on the floor. The mistress of Marat planed, placed over the bath, was covered with pa- tramples her under her feet, stamping with rage. per, with open letters and sheets of paper on which The inhabitants of the house run to the tumult of he had commenced to write. He held in his right the scene and the cries of the two women, the hand the pen which the arrival of the stranger had neighbors and the passers by stop in the street, suspended on the page. That paper was a letter mount the staircase, inundate the apartment, the to the Convention to demand of it the judgment court and soon the quarter, demand with furious and proscription of the last Bourbons tolerated in vociferations that they may cast out the assassin to France. By the side of the bath an enormous log them to avenge the death of the idol of the people of oak like a post placed standing, sustained an over his body still warm. The soldiers of the inkstand of lead of the rudest workmanship; the neighboring ports and the National Guards run to filthy source whence had fl wed for three years so the scene. Order is reestablished in the tumult. much madness, so much denunciation, so much The surgeons arrive, endeavor to staunch the blood. Marat, covered in his bath with a dirty wound. The reddened water gives to the sancloth, spotted with ink, had his head, shoulders, guinary man the appearance of expiring in a bath the upper part of the bust, and the right arm above of blood. They transport only a dead man to his the water. Nothing in the feature of that man was bed.

of a nature to soften the eye of a woman and cause hesitation in the stroke. Greasy hair, surrounded with a filthy handkerchief, a receding forehead, a brazen eye, prominent cheek-bones, an immense grinning mouth, lank limbs, a livid skin; such was Marat.

XXIII.

Charlotte avoided fixing her eye upon him for fear of betraying the horror of her soul at that aspect. Standing, her eyes cast down, her hands hanging near the bath, she awaits that Marat may interrogate her on the situation of Normandy. She responds briefly, giving to her responses the sense and color proper to flatter the presumed dispositions of the demagogue. He demands of her at length the name of the deputies who had taken refuge at Caen. She announces them to him. He notes them; then, when he finished writing the names, “It is well,” he said with the accent of a man sure of his vengeance," before eight days they shall all go to the guillotine !”

XXIV.

Charlotte had risen of herself. Two soldiers held her arms crossed the one over the other as in manacles, waiting that a cord might be brought to tie her hands. The hedge of bayonets which surrounded her, restrained with difficulty the multitude, that was precipitated without ceasing upon her, from tearing her in pieces. The gestures, the raised fists, the sticks, the sabres brandished a thousand deaths over her head. The concubine of Marat escaping from the women who consoled her, rushed on Charlotte time after time and fell back into tears and faintings. A fanatic Cordelier named Langlois, a hair dresser of the street Dauphine, had picked up the bloody knife. He made the funeral oration over the corpse of the victim. He interrupted his lamentations and his eulogies with avenging gestures, in which he seemed each time to plunge the iron into the heart of the assassin. Charlotte, who had accepted in advance all their deaths, contemplated with a fixed and petrified look At these words, as if the soul of Charlotte had this movement, their gestures, their hands, their waited for a last crime to decide her to strike the arms directed so near against her. She did not stroke, she draws from her bosom the knife and appear moved but by the lacerating cries of the plunges it with a supernatural force up to the han- concubine of Marat. Her physiogomy seemed to dle into the heart of Marat. Charlotte withdraws express before this woman astonishment at not with the same movement the bloodied weapon from having thought that such a man could be loved, the body of the victim and lets it fall at her feet. and regret for having been forced to pierce two

VOL. XIV-20

tures.

beauty in the visage, so much calmness and resolution in the words. Never had crime appeared under like features to the mind of man. She seemed to transfigure it to such a degree to their eyes, that even by the side of the corpse, they sympathised for the assassin.

hearts to reach one. Except the impression of first interrogations. They were confounded and pity which the reproaches of Albertine gave for a mute at the aspect of so much youth, so much moment to her mouth, no change was perceived, either in her features or her color. Only to the invectives of the orator and the groans of the people over the loss of their idol, there was seen sketched on her lips the bitter smile of contempt. "Poor creatures," she said once, "you wish my death and you owe me an altar for having delivered The "procès verbal" being terminated, and the you from a monster!" "Throw me to those infu- first responses of Charlotte written, the deputies riated men," she said another time to the soldiers Chabot, Drouet, Legendre and Maure ordered that who protected her," since they regret him, they are she should be transported to the Abbaye, the nearworthy to be my executioners! That smile, as if est prison to the house of Marat. They called the a defiance to the fanaticism of the multitude, raised same "voiture de place" which had brought her. more furious imprecations and more menacing ges- The multitude filled the street of the Cordeliers. The Commissaire of the section of the The low murmur interrupted by vociferations and "Theatre Francais." Guillard, entered, escorted by excesses of rage announced vengeance, and rena reinforcement of bayonets. He prepared the dered the transfer difficult. The detachments of proces verbal" of the murder and caused Char-musketeers successively arrived, the sash of the lotte to be conducted into the saloon of Marat to commissaries, the respect for the members of the commence the interrogation of her. He wrote her Convention, cast back, yet badly restrained the responses. She made them calm, lucid, considerate, multitude. The cortege made for itself, with with a firm and sonorous voice, in which was per- difficulty, a passage. At the moment in which ceived no other accent than that of a proud satis- Charlotte, her arms tied with cords and susfaction at the act which she had committed. She tained by the hands of two national guards, who dictated her avowals as so many eulogies. The held her elbows, passed the threshold of the house administrators of the police of the departments, to mount the steps of the voiture, the people flowed Louvet and Marino, girdled with the tri-colored around the wheels with such gestures and such sash were present at the interrogation. They had howlings, that she believed she felt her members sent to inform the council of the commune, the torn to pieces by those thousands of hands, and she committee of public safety and the committee of fainted. general security. The report of the death of the In returning to herself, she was astonished and "friend of the people" was scattered with the ra- afflicted to find that she breathed still. This death pidity of an electric commotion by men who ran in was that which she had dreamed of. dismay from quarter to quarter. All Paris stopped cast the veil of a swoon over her punishment. She still if struck with stupor at the recital of this at- regretted not to have entirely disappeared in the tack. It seemed that the republic trembled or that tempest which she had raised, and to have to desome events unknown were to spring from the mur-liver her name to the earth before her other death; der of Marat. Some deputies, pale and trembling, and yet she thanked with emotion those who had entering the Convention, and interrupting the sit-protected her against the mutilations of the multiting, cast the first rumors of the occurrence into tude.

XXVI.

Nature had

Chabot, Drouet, and Legendre, followed her to

the hall. They refused to believe them as men refuse to believe in a sacrilege. The Commandant-general of the national guard, Henriot, soon came to confirm the news. "Yes, tremble all," he said, "Marat is dead, assasssinated by a young girl, who glories in the blow she has given. Re- the Abbaye and made her undergo a second inquest. double your vigilance over your own lives. The It was protracted a long time into the night. Some same danger surrounds us all. Distrust green rib-members of the Committees, and among others bons, and let us swear to avenge the death of this great man!"

XXV.

Harmand (de la Meure) attracted by curiosity, had been introduced with their colleagues and assisted at the interrogatory, often interrupted by rest and conversation. Legendre, proud of his 1evolutionary importance and desirous of having been reputed worthy also of the martyrdom of the patriots, The deputies Maure, Chabot, Drouet and Le- believed, or feigned to believe, that he recognized gendre, members of the committees of government, in Charlotte a young girl who had come to his house departed on the instant from the hall and ran to the the day before under the costume of a nun, and theatre of the crime. They found there the multi-whom he had repulsed. "The citizen Legendre tude increasing and Charlotte responding to the is deceived," said Charlotte, with a smile which