he
Palais Royal, and bought for two francs a stout kitchen knife in
a shagreen case. She then returned to her hotel to breakfast, and
afterwards, dressed in her brown travelling-gown and conical hat, she
went forth again, and, hailing a hackney carnage, drove to Marat's house
in the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine.

But admittance to that squalid dwelling was denied her. The Citizen
Marat was ill, she was told, and could receive no visitors. It was
Simonne Everard, the triumvir's mistress--later to be known as the Widow
Marat--who barred her ingress with this message.

Checked, she drove back to the Providence Inn and wrote a letter to the
triumvir:

"Paris, 13th July, Year 2 of the Republic.

"Citizen,--I have arrived from Caen. Your love for your country leads me
to assume that you will be anxious to hear of the unfortunate events
which are taking place in that part of the Republic. I shall therefore
call upon you towards one o'clock. Have the kindness to receive me, and
accord me a moment's audience. I shall put you in the way of rendering a
great service to France.

"Marie Corday."

Having dispatched that letter to Marat, she sat until late afternoon
waiting vainly for an answer. Despairing at last of receiving any, she
wrote a second note, more peremptory in tone:

"I wrote to you this morning, Marat. Have you received my letter? May I
hope for a moment's audience? If you have received my letter, I hope you
will not refuse me, considering the importance of the matter. It should
suffice for you that I am very unfortunate to give me the right to your
protection."

Having changed into a gray-striped dimity gown--you observe this further
manifestation of a calm so complete that it admits of no departure from
the ordinary habits of life--she goes forth to deliver in person this
second letter, the knife concealed in the folds of the muslin fichu
crossed high upon her breast.

In a mean, brick-paved, ill-lighted, and almost unfurnished room of that
house in the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine, the People's Friend is seated
in a bath. It is no instinct of cleanliness he is obeying, for in all
France there is no man more filthy in his person and his habits than
this triumvir. His bath is medicated. The horrible, loathsome disease
that corrodes his flesh demands these long immersions to quiet the
gnawing pains which distract his active, restless mind. In these baths
he can benumb the torment of the body with which he is