Did her face change color? Some hold that the head has consciousness and power after being severed from the body, and that it can see and hear. Nay, it was urged during the Revolution that the passion of the heads remained, because the interior of the wicker baskets in which the heads were carried away were often found to be gnawed, as though the teeth of the heads gnashed after separation from the body. For my part, I believe that this gnawing was effected by rats, which at that time, even more than now, overran Paris.
Such was the death of Marat—of his murderer, whom we cannot praise. But who can blame her? Assuredly her death was necessary to purge her of assassination, to some extent.
Adam Lux, wild with love, published a defence of Charlotte Corday. He was seized, and, three days afterwards, died by the very knife which destroyed her life.
Chénier, the patriotic poet, sang her heroism. He was soon arrested, and therefore beheaded.
But what good had Charlotte Corday done?
She had strengthened the love of the people for desperate measures; she had made a martyr of their most foul leader. She gave a dignity to those who advocated the scaffold. The liberal twenty-two knew that this last act annihilated them.
CHAPTER LVIII.
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
The Convention ordained the worship of Marat, and cast his corpse to the people as an idol.
He was called Cæsar, and his funeral was modelled upon the historical narrative of that given by Rome to the great Julius.