“Who inspired you with so much hatred against him?” asked the president.
“I needed not the hatred of others, I had enough of my own,” she energetically replied. “Besides, we do not execute well that which we have not ourselves conceived.”
“What, then, did you hate in Marat?”
“His crimes.”
“Do you think that you have assassinated all the Marats?”
“No; but now that he is dead, the rest may fear.”
She answered other questions with equal firmness and laconism. Her project, she declared, had been formed since the 31st of May. “She had killed one man to save a hundred thousand. She was a republican long before the Revolution, and had never failed in energy.”
“What do you understand by energy?” asked the president.
“That feeling,” she replied, “which induces us to cast aside selfish considerations, and sacrifice ourselves for our country.”
Fouquier Tinville here observed, alluding to the sure blow she had given, that she must be well practiced in crime.