Charlotte Corday, accused of murder, stood beautiful and smiling in the midst of accusers, all of whom wore fierce looks of hate and rage.
She was fearless until she reached the street, when the blaze of shouts so terrified this young country girl, that she fainted. Restored to consciousness, (they had bound her weak hands), she cried, “Alas! do I still live?”
Then quite consistently, she thanked her guardians for saving her from the crowd.
She never for one moment looked upon her act as a crime. When interrogated at her trial, she adhered to this statement:—“I saw civil war enveloping France. I considered Marat its chief cause, and to save my country I sacrificed myself, and slew him.”
That her virtue was attacked at her trial, is a condition of things which clearly proves how deeply dyed in prejudice by this time had become the revolutionary tribunals.
One Chabot under pretence of suspecting a concealed paper, tore off her breast kerchief. She leaped back at the outrage, the string of her dress broke, and her fair chest was exposed to the gaze of a number of savage men. Her hands were corded, so that she could not save herself from degradation; and her virtue gave of itself her best proof, for she crouched down to hide her disarranged dress. Entreating them to untie her hands, they complied; and turning her back to the wall, she rapidly completed her toilette. Where the cords had been, the flesh was marked with great blue bands; and very meekly she asked to be allowed to put on her long gloves before the knots were again tied. Upon her dress, after her death, was found pinned a long address to France, in which she entreated all men to destroy the Jacobins, and save France.
She was condemned to die the following morning. An artist, during her trial, having been remarked by her drawing her face, she requested he might complete it, and the painter was introduced to her cell. One man endeavored to save her by maintaining she was insane. In this shape of pity, he nearly lost his own head.
She wrote of Marat finally:—“Pardon me, oh men! The name of Marat dishonors your race. He was a beast of prey seeking to devour France by war and hate. I thank Heaven that by birth he was no Frenchman.”
She was pained by the accusation made by Chabot, the wretch who had torn away her neckerchief, who declared she had been his mistress, far more than by the thought of approaching death. “Chabot,” she wrote, “is a mere madman. I never even dreamed of this man. He need not be feared—he has not intellect enough to be dangerous.”
In the same paper she said, “All Parisians are such good citizens, they cannot comprehend how a useless woman, whose longest term of life would be good for nothing, can calmly sacrifice herself for her country. To-morrow, at twelve, I shall have lived!”