The hand still grasping the pen trailed on the ground beside the bath at
the end of his long, emaciated arm. His body sank sideways in the same
direction, the head lolling nervelessly upon his right shoulder, whilst
from the great rent in his breast the blood gushed forth, embruing
the water of his bath, trickling to the brick-paved floor,
bespattering--symbolically almost--a copy of L'Ami du Peuple, the
journal to which he had devoted so much of his uneasy life.

In answer to that cry of his came now Simonne in haste. A glance
sufficed to reveal to her the horrible event, and, like a tigress, she
sprang upon the unresisting slayer, seizing her by the head, and calling
loudly the while for assistance. Came instantly from the anteroom
Jeanne, the old cook, the Fortress of the house, and Laurent Basse, a
folder of Marat's paper; and now Charlotte found herself confronted
by four maddened, vociferous beings, at whose hands she may well have
expected to receive the death for which she was prepared.

Laurent, indeed, snatched up a chair, and felled her by a blow of it
across her head. He would, no doubt, have proceeded in his fury to
have battered her to death, but for the arrival of gens d'armes and the
police commissioner of the district, who took her in their protecting
charge.

The soul of Paris was convulsed by the tragedy when it became known.
All night terror and confusion were abroad. All night the revolutionary
rabble, in angry grief, surged about and kept watch upon the house
wherein the People's Friend lay dead.

That night, and for two days and nights thereafter, Charlotte Corday lay
in the Prison of the Abbaye, supporting with fortitude the indignities
that for a woman were almost inseparable from revolutionary
incarceration. She preserved throughout her imperturbable calm, based
now upon a state of mind content in the contemplation of accomplished
purpose, duty done. She had saved France, she believed; saved Liberty,
by slaying the man who would have strangled it. In that illusion she
was content. Her own life was a small price to pay for the splendid
achievement.

Some of her time of waiting she spent in writing letters to her friends,
in which tranquilly and sanely she dwelt upon what she had done,
expounding fully the motives that had impelled her, dwelling upon
the details of the execution, and of all that had followed. Among the
letters written by her during those "days of the preparation of peace
"-