state of
putrefaction. Our only source of information as to what followed is
Charlotte's own confession. She spoke to Marat of what was passing at
Caen, and his only comment on her narrative was that all the men she had
mentioned should be guillotined in a few days. As he spoke she drew from
her bosom a dinner-knife (which she had bought the day before for two
francs) and plunged it into his left side. It pierced the lung and the
aorta. He cried out, "_A moi, ma chere amie!_" and expired. Two women
rushed in, and prevented Charlotte from escaping. A crowd collected
round the house, and it was with difficulty that she was escorted to the
prison of the Abbaye. On being brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal
she gloried in her act, and when the indictment against her was read,
and the president asked her what she had to say in reply, her answer
was, "Nothing, except that I have succeeded." Her advocate, Claude
Francois Chauveau Lagarde, put forward in vain the plea of insanity. She
was sentenced to death, and calmly thanked her counsel for his efforts
on her behalf, adding that the only defence worthy of her was an avowal
of the act. She was then conducted to the Conciergerie, where at her own
desire her portrait (now in the museum of Versailles) was painted by the
artist Jean Jacques Hauer. She preserved her perfect calmness to the
last. When she saw the guillotine, she placed herself in position under
the fatal blade without assistance from any one. The knife fell, and one
of the executioners held up her head by the hair, and had the brutality
to strike it with his fist. Many believed they saw the dead face
blush,--probably an effect of the red stormy sunset. It was the 17th of
July 1793. It is difficult to analyse the character of Charlotte Corday;
but there was in it much that was noble and exalted. Her mind had been
formed by her studies on a pagan type. To C. J. M. Barbaroux and the
Girondins of Caen she wrote from her prison, anticipating happiness
"with Brutus in the Elysian Fields" after her death, and with this
letter she sent a simple loving farewell to her father, revealing a
tender side to her character that otherwise we would hardly have looked
for in such a woman. Lamartine called her _l'ange de l'assassinat_, and
Vergniaud said, "_Elle nous perd, mais elle nous apprend a mourir._"

See _OEuvres politiques de Charlotte Corday_ (Caen, 1863; some letters
and an _Adresse aux Francais amis des lois el de