She listened attentively to what he said, and exclaimed with unfeigned indignation, “Shame! Shame! The wretch wants to brand me as an assassin!”
Her words caused a sensation. The audience and even the judges were struck with admiration, so much energy and patriotic devotion were expressed in her answers. She stood before them like an antique heroine, not trembling for her life, but provoking death and inviting it by her justification of the crime she had committed to save her country. The trial resulted in her conviction. She received her sentence of death without showing any emotion; was it not the crown of immortality to which she had aspired? Her official defender, Chauveau Lagarde,—the same who three months later so nobly defended Marie Antoinette,—might have saved her by pleading insanity, but he comprehended her nobility of soul and would not offend her by such a plea. “She refuses to be defended,” he said; “she pleads guilty and is beyond the fear of death!” After the death sentence had been pronounced, she stepped up to her defender, and with a smile of angelic sweetness thanked him for his noble-minded, graceful and kind defence. “You understood me,” she said, “and your esteem consoles me for the contempt of the ignorant masses.”
One thing remarkable about this trial was the respect, not to say the admiration, with which this young woman, who had killed their idol, was looked upon by the spectators. They seemed to feel instinctively that a divine inspiration, a heaven-born principle of humanity and patriotism, had prompted her to commit an act which human law condemned and punished, but which posterity would forgive, if not glorify.
From the very hour of her conviction, she became a national heroine. The wild Maratists clamored against her, but there were thousands and thousands even among the Revolutionists who sympathized with her and admired her. Brutus ceased to be the patron saint of patriotic assassins; his place in the hearts of enemies of tyranny and despotism was taken by the young girl who had so heroically thrown life and beauty away to redeem her country. Poets and authors immediately celebrated her in song and prose; it may be said that her immortality commenced even before her beautiful head fell under the knife of the guillotine. She died on the evening of the nineteenth of July.
When she was taken to the place of execution in the costume of the condemned victims—a scarlet shirt—the sun was setting. His last rays sent a farewell greeting to the young heroine, who seemed to be bathed in a halo of glory, as she ascended the steps of the scaffold with firm step and serene countenance. A shudder passed through the multitude as her head fell into the basket.
She was not insane; she was an exalted, enthusiastic dreamer, who looked upon her crime as an act of justice demanded by the necessities of the times,—an act inspired by a higher Power which had guided her in her design and helped her in its execution. Thinking of Jeanne d’Arc, who had saved France and immortalized herself by her self-sacrificing devotion, she felt convinced that God often chooses woman as his instrument for interposition in the history of nations. If she deceived herself in the nature of the act by which she hoped to restore the happiness of France and to terminate the era of bloody hecatombs sacrificed to the fury of sanguinary monsters, is it the duty of the historian to judge her severely? Should he not rather, while pointing out the error of her judgment, be willing to bestow on her the laurel-wreath of a patriotic heroine, which has been accorded to her by poets, by her grateful countrymen, and by the whole world?
CHAPTER XIX
PAUL THE FIRST OF RUSSIA
