At that time there lived at Caen in Normandy a young girl of noble descent, very beautiful and ingenious, but poor. Her name was Charlotte Corday, or rather Marie Anna Charlotte Corday; she lived at Caen in the house of her aunt, Madame de Bretteville. Charlotte was the daughter of Monsieur de Corday d’Armans, and a great-grandniece of Pierre Corneille, the greatest of the tragic poets of France. The statement that she was the great-granddaughter of the poet is erroneous. She was the great-granddaughter of Marie Corneille, the only sister of Pierre Corneille, whose daughter married Adrian Corday, Baron of Cauvigny. This lineage makes the claim of heredity for Charlotte’s sublime character, which is so often insisted on, rather fanciful, especially since no other members of the great poet’s family have manifested these characteristics. Charlotte had a sister and two brothers, who had left their father’s house after he married his second wife. Her two brothers went to Germany to take service in the army of the Prince of Condé in his campaign against the French Revolutionists.
Charlotte had been placed in a convent at Caen when only twelve years of age, and being naturally contemplative, the retirement and silence of the convent made her even more so. She abandoned herself entirely to those vague dreams and exaltations which so often fill the minds and souls of young girls on the threshold of womanhood. Especially the proud, exalted, grandiose heroines, whom her great-granduncle had immortalized in his tragedies, Cinna, Horace, Polyeucte, Le Cid, made a profound impression upon her, and she learned the most beautiful passages by heart. Her very education seemed to prepare her for the great historic rôle which she was to play some ten or twelve years later. At the age of seventeen or eighteen she left the convent and was kindly received in the house of Madame de Bretteville. Her mind was filled with the exalted sentiments of Corneille and Plutarch, whom she read and reread with great delight. Her soul was restless at the sight of the increasing agitation against the corruption of the aristocratic classes and of the profound misery and degradation of the poor. The house of Madame de Bretteville was one of those sombre, sad-looking, narrow residences which are still found occasionally in the silent and sleepy streets of old Norman towns, and well adapted to the stern and dreamy character of Charlotte. In the rear of the house there was a garden, surrounded by high walls, and this garden became the favorite spot of Charlotte in her readings and studies. Her extraordinary beauty, which consisted as much in the classical cast of her features, her dazzling complexion, her magnificent eyes, as in the intellectual expression of her countenance and her queenlike bearing, had fully unfolded itself in the quietude of her home.
Those who have found in books the greatest joys and pleasures of their lives know what an immense enthusiasm, what an ardent and insatiable curiosity fills the soul when circumstances permit them to explore the vast field of human thought and inspiration and to dive into its treasury. Madame de Bretteville’s library was well filled with translations of the great classics of Greece and Rome, and also with the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and other modern writers. These became the favorite study of Charlotte. One of her greatest favorites was Raynal, whose famous History of the two Indies had just appeared and filled Europe with admiration. Very likely that which appealed so strongly to Charlotte’s heart was the sympathy which the author felt for the oppressed races, and especially for the black slaves. With untiring zeal and passion she devoured everything in her aunt’s library,—novels, history, philosophy,—and these studies finally led her to politics, which engaged at that time the minds of the foremost writers of France and became the favorite subject of public and private discussion. In this way two parallel currents of ideas had formed themselves in Charlotte’s mind,—on the one hand, a powerful desire for greater liberty and the elevation of the oppressed and degraded; on the other hand, a profound admiration for those who devote and sacrifice themselves to the great cause of humanity, and a vague but ardent desire to adorn her name with the halo of heroism and immortality. Left entirely to the instincts and aspirations of her own nature, the young royalist (for her entire family was strictly royalistic) had become a republican, but a republican in the sense of Plutarch and Tacitus, nourished by the sentiments of Corneille and Rousseau. Nothing in her appearance indicated her enthusiastic and soul-devouring ambition to make herself the deliverer of her country from the terrible calamities which had recently befallen it. Her political studies had filled her, republican though she was, with extreme disgust and hatred for the Terrorists, and especially for Marat, who seemed to be their inspiring genius. This was the general situation and also the personal frame of mind of Charlotte Corday at the time the Girondists who had escaped from Paris came to Caen to organize armed resistance to the terrorism of the “Mountain.”
Charlotte Corday had zealously followed the reports in the newspapers she could get hold of concerning the situation at Paris, and her heart beat warmly for the cause of the Girondists. Like all others in the city she lived in, she believed that Marat was the secret spring that kept the entire machinery of the Revolution in motion, that he was the head and soul of the anarchists and murderers, that he was the centre of all conspiracies, the originator of all crimes, and that, with him out of the way, peace and liberty would soon regain the ascendency, and a freer, nobler, greater France would arise from the ruins. With such convictions in her mind she attended the meetings of the Girondists, where appeals were made to the citizens of Caen and all Normandy to enroll themselves in the service of their country, of liberty, of humanity, against the tyrants at Paris. The impression which these meetings made upon her soul can hardly be described. For the first time she saw and heard the men she had read so much about, and whose patriotic utterances had so often found a loud echo in her own heart; they were there, young, beautiful, enthusiastic, made doubly interesting by the ban of proscription which had exiled them from Paris; they were there with their inspiring eloquence and patriotic appeals, and in the tumultuous audience there was no one more fully enchanted and carried away than the young girl, the disciple of Plutarch and Rousseau. The words: “Country!” “Duty!” “Public Welfare!” repeated again and again by the orators, were deeply engraved upon her impressionable heart. An extraordinary exaltation took possession of Charlotte’s soul; she aspired to a part as grand as that of these orators; she longed for a chance to devote herself to the holy cause of liberty and to suffer for it.
These projects and aspirations remained mere vague dreams, until an event occurred which gave them definite shape. On the seventh of July the volunteers who were to march on Paris assembled on a large plain in the immediate vicinity of Caen. The plain was large enough to hold one hundred thousand men; but only thirty volunteers appeared. General disappointment was visible among the spectators; but no one was more deeply affected than Charlotte Corday, who was also present. It seems that from that very sorrow there sprang up within her mind a project both heroic and terrible,—to assassinate Marat, whose words had been most influential in expelling and proscribing the Girondists. To Charlotte’s mind the cause of the Girondists was identical with that of liberty, country, and justice. And how often in the past had a pure and blameless life sacrificed for a great cause appeased the wrath of Destiny! She went home and requested an interview with the Girondist deputies.
Charlotte Corday was then twenty-four years old, but looked much younger. She was tall, and of beautiful proportions; her complexion was of dazzling whiteness, her hair was blond, her luminous eyes of charming sweetness, her nose finely cut, and her chin indicated firmness and determination. Her face was a perfect oval, and the total impression was that of perfect beauty. Both her smile and her voice were of angelic sweetness. Charlotte made a profound impression upon the deputies; but they were not inclined to take her seriously. One day Pétion came in while she was in conversation with Barbaroux. “Ah, ah,” said he, “there is the beautiful young aristocrat paying a visit to the Republicans.” “You judge me wrongly,” she replied, “but some day you will know who I am.”
The question has often been asked whether the Girondists put the dagger in Charlotte Corday’s hand to assassinate Marat. The enemies of the Girondists persistently asserted this, but there is no evidence to that effect. Possibly in her two conversations with Barbaroux her determination to assassinate Marat, and not Danton or Robespierre, became confirmed by the intensity of hatred and contempt manifested for him by the famous Girondist leader. At all events, after these interviews she made her preparations to go to Paris with great circumspection, and great tranquillity of mind. A little dressing-case, a night-gown and a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, with some money, was all her baggage. But before going to Paris she proceeded to Argentan to bid her family farewell. Her father and her sister were living there, and she told them that she intended to go to England, and would remain there until the storm of the Revolution had blown over. She bade them farewell without showing an excess of emotion, but also without faintness, and then departed for Paris in the public stage-coach.
During the journey, which at that period lasted two days, she appeared serene and happy; no preoccupation seemed to disturb the tranquillity of her mind. Her fellow-travellers all fell in love with her and treated her with distinguished courtesy. One of them offered to marry her. Charlotte smiled, but refused politely. Moreover they were all radical revolutionists, and swore by Danton, Robespierre and Marat.
At Caen nobody had any idea of her plan. She had told her aunt she would go to Argentan and thence to England. She had always concealed her political views so carefully that nobody could have suspected her.
She arrived at Paris on the forenoon of the eleventh of July, and put up at the Providence Hotel. Tired out by the long and tedious journey, she went to bed early in the afternoon and slept well till the next morning. No conscientious scruples disturbed her. Her mind was fully made up, and she did not for a minute hesitate to execute her project. The next morning she went to the Palais Royal, purchased a strong and sharp steel knife, and carefully hid it in her bosom. She then asked herself when and where she was to use her weapon. She would have preferred to give her act a certain solemnity. At Caen, while brooding over her purpose, she had conceived the plan to assassinate Marat on the Champ de Mars, on the fourteenth of July, during the celebration of the anniversary of the destruction of the Bastile and the overthrow of the monarchy. She hoped to slay this king of anarchy, surrounded as he would then be by thousands of his murderous followers; but when the celebration was postponed, she planned to assassinate him at one of the sessions of the Convention, the scene of his crimes and proscriptions. When she learned that Marat was ill and did not attend the sessions of the Convention, there seemed no way left for her except to go to his residence and meet him there. She addressed a letter to him asking for a private interview. The letter remained unanswered. She sent a second letter, more urgent than the first, in which she requested an immediate interview for the purpose of communicating to him a secret of great importance. Moreover she represented herself as unhappy, as a victim of political persecution and appealed to his protection. After this appeal she hoped to be admitted.