CHAPTER VIII
Madame dines with the Terrorists Marat and Robespierre, models their figures, and subsequently takes casts of their heads—She visits Charlotte Corday in prison—Death of Curtius—Madame marries—Napoleon sits for his model.
One of the most bloodthirsty of all the red Terrorists was Jean Paul Marat, who was slain in his bath by Charlotte Corday on the 13th of July, 1793.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY
Marat, as a young man, had lived in this country for some time, and was well known to Madame Tussaud through visits he paid to the house of her uncle, Curtius, at 20 Boulevard du Temple.
Immediately after his assassination she was called upon to take a cast of Marat’s head. “They came for me,” she relates, “to go to Marat’s house at once, and to take with me what appliances I needed to make an impression of his features. The cadaverous aspect of the fiend made me feel desperately ill, but they stood over me and forced me to perform the task.” Marat’s model is still to be seen in the Exhibition lying in the bath in which he was stabbed by the heroic young Norman girl.
Charlotte Corday had addressed a letter to Marat stating that she had news of importance to communicate, and when she called he readily admitted her. She amused him with an account of the Deputies at Caen, when he said. “They shall all go to the guillotine.” “To the guillotine!” exclaimed she, and as he took up a pencil to write the names of his intended victims Charlotte plunged a knife into his heart.
Madame Tussaud afterwards visited Charlotte Corday in the Conciergerie Prison, and described her as tall, well-mannered, and possessed of many graces of character and appearance. The brave young woman, who paid for her avenging act with her life, wrote in a letter to her father that she had done what was right. After the heroine’s death Madame Tussaud obtained a record of Charlotte Corday’s beautiful face.