Part 16

The blood rushed to Charlotte's cheek. A fire of indignation and resentment burned in her usually tender eyes, making them blaze and flame until even the cold-blooded Deputy was moved to admire the beauty of this emotional woman, so fierce in the defence of her honor.

"You know well that I am no ordinary assassin," she exclaimed. "My hands are clean in the eyes of Heaven. My soul is guiltless before God."

The ex-priest took a step forward. "How dare you speak of God? You?"

"I dare speak of Him," replied the girl, in an impassioned voice, "because I believe that it was He who inspired me, as He inspired Judith of old, to make this sacrifice in the cause of liberty. I believe that He chose me to bear this message of His righteous vengeance to a people who have forgotten His name; that He nerved my arm to strike the blow at which you wonder. I have completed my task," she went on, in a quieter tone, "I leave the rest to others. I have avenged much innocent blood. I have prevented the shedding of much more." She turned proudly round and faced the Deputy with flashing eyes.

"I have killed one man," she said, "to save a hundred thousand!"

Chabot smiled grimly.

"Do you then imagine," he asked, "that you have murdered all the Marats?"

"I have destroyed one," she retorted. Her fearless gaze met the crafty eyes of her examiner, and they quailed before it.

"Perhaps the others will be afraid," she added meaningly.

"I must admit," replied the Deputy with a nervous assumption of jocularity, "I am relieved to think that for the moment I am beyond the reach of those pretty hands of yours. For I have no desire, believe me, to be added to the list of your victims!"

Charlotte smiled scornfully. "You need have no fears," she said. "Were my hands as free as yours, or my heart as black, you would still be safe. You surely cannot flatter yourself that the question of the life or death of such as you could be of any importance to the State."

The natural egotism of the man was wounded; his vanity was touched. Confident of Charlotte's helplessness, he approached to within a few feet of her.

"Are you not afraid to speak in such a tone to me?" he asked. "We are alone here--" he looked meaningly round at the empty cell. "The walls are thick. No one can hear us."

Charlotte looked him up and down with a slow, scornful gaze. "Afraid?" she asked. "Of you?" She smiled. "Do you think that one can look at you; at your shifty eyes--at your restless mouth--" involuntarily the Deputy's hand rose to his lips--"without discovering the secret which you conceal so badly behind a mask of insult and of bluster? Do you think I cannot see what a coward you are at heart?"

"Truly polite!" exclaimed the other nervously. "At any rate, I am no murderer!"

"Because you have not the courage!" replied the girl. "But be sure that however great the guilt of those who have shed all this innocent blood, you who have allowed it to be spilt will also have to answer for it."

Her face was transfigured by emotion as she spoke. She seemed to be gazing into the caverns of eternity with the eyes of some inspired prophetess. "I look forward into the future," she continued, "and I see you, and the other brigands who surrounded Marat, whom God only allows to live so as to make their fall the more terrible,--so as to frighten all who would attempt to establish their fortunes on the ruins of a misguided people,--I see you dragged by force up the scaffold steps--the ladder to Eternity which I scale so willingly--till your coward's eyes gaze forth flinching from that blood-stained casement, that is for me the window looking out on immortality!"

Chabot stared in amazement at this young girl, who seemed to speak with the assurance of a seer. He could not subdue his admiration of a woman who was so obviously fearless of death. "Come," he said, "I like your pluck." He inspected her with a critical eye. "You're not a bad-looking girl, either, for an aristocrat." He came very close to her, apparently unconscious of the loathing with which she regarded his approach. "Turn round and let me have a look at you," he ordered. Charlotte did not seem to have heard him, but kept her head high in the air, and the same lofty look of disdain in her eye.

"Proud, are you?" said the deputy, with a snarl. "I suppose I'm not good enough to speak to you, eh?"

Charlotte still remained silent.

"Hoity toity!" continued Chabot, "with your fine airs and graces! You won't be so damned haughty in an hour's time, _I_ know! You won't hold your head so high then, I'll be bound!" He came quite close and leered into her face. "Why do you treat me like this?" he asked. "Aren't I good enough for you?" There was no tremor of fear in the girl's attitude, but almost unconsciously she turned her head away. "Come here!" he said sharply. "Come closer!" Charlotte Corday did not move. Chabot stooped until his face was only a few inches from hers. "I've a good mind to take a kiss from you," he said, with an ugly smile. "What do you say to that, eh?" he asked. The girl moved her head still further away so as to avoid looking upon the hideous features which were now so close to her own pure lips.

"What's the use of making all this fuss?" said Chabot impatiently. Still no reply from the woman, who, beneath her appearance of calm and courage, could feel her heart beating wildly with terror and apprehension. "What?" continued the Deputy, "Look at me!" he commanded. Then, as Charlotte seemed to pay no attention to his orders, "Damn you!" he said, "you _shall_ look at me!" And he placed his hands upon her shoulders and turned her quickly round so as to face him.

Then, and not till then, did her self-reliance give way. With the amorous touch of his hateful fingers upon her neck, she realized the helplessness and horror of her position. With a convulsive movement she tried to free her hands. The face of her enemy came closer and closer to hers, and she read the coarse desires of his vicious soul in the lustful brightness of his eyes. In a perfect agony of disgust and terror she fought desperately to fling herself out of his reach.

"Let me go!" she appealed, "let me go! Ah, God!" she cried, in a strangled voice, "Let me go!"

Her cry must have been loud enough to penetrate the thick prison door, for in a moment it was flung open, and two men, Richard and another, rushed into the room, and Charlotte was aware that the old warder had interposed his burly person between her and the man she loathed.

"I should have known better than to leave you alone with a man of his character," exclaimed the veteran, glowering at the ex-priest. "The wife will never forgive me."

Chabot had recovered his self-possession, and was regarding the old man's perturbation with evident amusement.

The stranger who had entered the cell with Richard was a young man of about thirty, clean-shaven, with dark, almost black hair shading a high, intellectual brow and eyes of unusual brilliance. He was dressed in the uniform, such as it was, of the National Guard, but his appearance was not that of a soldier, and the artist's block and sketching materials which he carried in his hand proclaimed him to be, what indeed he was, a portrait painter.

He had heard the woman's agonized cry. The scene that he had witnessed on entering the room had shown him the cause of her distress, and, with the blind, impetuous rage which the sight of any act of violence or injustice towards the weak or helpless rouses in a young and chivalrous soul, he rushed to where Chabot was standing and seized that worthy violently by the shoulder.

"What the devil are you doing?" he demanded furiously.

"That is no business of yours," retorted Chabot, coolly disengaging himself from the other's grasp. "You evidently do not know who I am, young man."

"I have no wish to. It does not interest me. But I do know that you are not wanted here!"

"I am the Deputy Chabot, of the Department of Loir-et-Cher!"

"Indeed," replied the young man, apparently unabashed by so much distinction. "Well, I am Jean Jacques Hauer! And to the devil with your 'deputy'!"

"So you are the fortunate Citizen Hauer," said Chabot, with a dark smile of comprehension. "I see, I see!"

"What do you mean?" asked the artist threateningly.

Chabot turned to Charlotte Corday with a bow.

"I congratulate you, mademoiselle," he said, with meaning in his voice, "I congratulate you on the possession of so well-bred, so well-mannered a lover!"

Hauer sprang forward with a cry of rage, and would have hurled himself upon the Deputy, had not Charlotte's quiet voice stopped him.

"Leave him alone," she begged. "Let him be, I pray you. He is not worthy of your anger."

Chabot moved toward the entrance slowly.

"Good-by, mademoiselle," he said, "and thank you"--ironically--"thank you for a very pleasant chat, which I shall always remember, when you are--what shall we say?--forgotten!"

Charlotte faced him with quiet dignity.

"I may be forgotten," she replied, "and that soon. But what I have done shall not readily be forgotten."

With a sarcastic laugh the Deputy crossed the threshold and was gone.

Richard watched his departure with evident relief, and then turned to address his prisoner.

"There is a priest without," he said, "who asks whether you desire his services."

Charlotte shook her head. "Will you thank him on my behalf for his kindness. But I do not need the offices of the Church."

She crossed to the table and leaned one hand upon it.

"The blood that I have spilt, and my blood that I am about to shed, are the only sacrifices that I can offer to God," she said. "I have no fears. He knows all, and will forgive."

The warder bowed his head, took a last look round the cell to see that all was well, and left the room.

II

As the door closed Charlotte sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. The long trial and the incidents that had followed it had been very tiring. She was young and lonely, and her last hour had come. Small wonder then that for a moment she should give way to emotion or that her eyes should brim with the bitter tears of fatigue and disappointment.

Hauer watched her in silence for a little while, and then crossed the narrow room and stood beside her chair.

"Perhaps you would rather be alone?" he said, in a tender voice of pity.

Charlotte raised her shining eyes to his, and a grave smile stole like a shadow to her lips.

"No, no," she exclaimed, holding out a detaining hand, "I have but few moments left to me, and still fewer friends. Stay with me, Monsieur Hauer, if you will, and," she added in a lighter tone, "you may finish the portrait."

He took his painting materials from the table, set up the small portable easel, arranged the palette and brushes in his hand, and commenced his work upon the portrait of the prisoner, which he had begun in the court-house, and which, at her request and by permission of her judges, he was now to be allowed to complete.

And as he painted, they talked together, quietly, sympathetically, with the understanding and the occasional silence of old friends, these two who had but learned to know each other during the last few days, but from whose short acquaintance were destined to spring, for the one, a friendship which did much to lighten the burden of these last hours, for the other, a love which he was to bear in his heart to the end of an adventurous career.

This girl, who had lost her mother at an early age; who had ever since lived a simple, secluded, somewhat lonely existence, first in the convent of L'Abbaye-aux-Dames, and subsequently under the care of an old aunt at Caen; who had never found a friend in whom to confide her troubles; now for the first time discovered a sympathetic listener, who gradually drew from her the sad story of her life and of the sinister events that led up to the tragedy with which it was to close.

As a girl she had been much alone; had played alone, thought alone, lived alone. And in her case, as in that of many others, solitude had been the mother of great thoughts. Hers was not an unhappy childhood, but her happiness had sprung from sources other than those usually open to children. She drew most of her pleasure from books, from Plutarch, from Corneille, the poet, her ancestor, of whom she was justly proud, and who had declared that poetry and heroism were of the same race, the one carrying out what the other conceived.

So had she grown up at Caen, dreaming much of her country's welfare, filled with a romantic ambition to do something for France, something grand, something noble.

And then came all the horrors of the Revolution. Terrible tales of bloodshed and injustice reached the little sun-kissed village of Caen. The name of Marat was on every tongue--Marat, who made the streets run with blood; Marat, the murderer of thousands whose only crime was loyalty; Marat, through whose wanton ferocity the blood-stained Loire was discolored for miles, to whose rage for extermination the gloomy solitude of the towns and the desolation of the country bore ghastly testimony. The very crimson of the autumn woods seemed to reflect the bloodshed of those cruel September massacres.

It was then, no doubt, that the thought first entered the mind of this young girl; the idea that perhaps she, though only a woman, with no knowledge of the world, without experience, might achieve what men seemed frightened to attempt, something that should help to retrieve the lost honor of France. It was ambitious, surely; but then, was not Joan of Arc a girl?

Marat, the murderer of peace, if only he were dead, thought Charlotte Corday, peace would be restored. "It is expedient for one man to die for all."

The shadow of Marat darkened the whole picture, and in the background stood the scaffold, which liberty was mounting in company with the victims of this murderer, at whose name one shuddered, as at the mention of death. Marat, without Danton's courage or the integrity of Robespierre, seemed but a wild beast bent on devouring France.

Charlotte saw her beloved country in its death agony, she saw the victims and the tyrant. She sought to avenge the one, to punish the other, to save all.

Many a long summer night did she lie awake in her little attic room at Caen, wondering what she should do. Suddenly all seemed to clear before her. Her mind was made up.

After a sad parting with her family, who believed that she was going to England with the many other refugees who found a haven there at this time, she started for Paris, arriving there with no friend save a battered copy of her beloved Plutarch. During the two days and nights that she spent at the little Hotel de la Providence in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, but one thought was uppermost in her mind; to seek out Marat and do what she had to do.

The recital of these incidents had brought a tinge of color into the girl's cheeks, and to Hauer, as he sat and gazed at her in admiration, her beauty appealed irresistibly. He could picture the whole scene as she described it. In imagination he accompanied heron that early morning walk, on the fatal Saturday, the eve of the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, when she went to the Palais Royal to buy the knife with which the murder was committed. He could fancy, as she described it, the sun shining through the trees, the children playing in the public gardens. She told him how she had helped one little curly-headed lad to recover his top which had rolled through the railings out of reach. The little fellow had kissed her, little realizing what she carried so carefully hidden in her bosom. In his heart Hauer blessed that little boy; he was grateful for that childish kiss, the last that Charlotte was to know. He followed her to the house in the Rue des Cordeliers, where Marat lived, and where for so long she strove in vain to gain admission, until, at last, toward evening, she forced her way in.

"You know the rest," continued Charlotte. "How I pretended to be a traitor to my cause.--God will forgive me," she added, "for we owe no truth to tyrants.--How I informed Marat of the names of the refugee deputies at Caen who were organizing the Federalist movement. 'Ah!' he exclaimed, his irresistible thirst for blood rekindled at the thought of these new victims, 'they shall be guillotined within a week!' Guillotined!" repeated Charlotte, rising to her feet. "My friends! The patriots of Caen!"

She turned and saw Hauer's eye fixed upon her as though awaiting the end of the story. "And then?" he asked.

There was silence for a short space, broken only by the quick breathing of the girl.

"I stabbed him to the heart."

"Did you not realize----?"

"I realized nothing," she interrupted, "save that I was carrying out my unalterable purpose. I felt no more remorse than if I were treading on the head of some loathsome snake. The hideousness of Marat's appearance, the squalor of his surroundings, the infamy of his character, all these urged me on to accomplish the deed I had planned. And in my heart a voice kept whispering that the end justified the means."

"Brave little Jesuit!"

"Oh, I am glad I killed him! I have no regrets, none. I was ready, I am ready now, to pay the penalty." She paused, "Ah, I weary you with all this," she said. "But I have had no one to speak to, all these days; nobody seems to understand----"

"_I_ understand," said Hauer with feeling.

"Yes, I believe you do, and I thank you for it." She sat at the table where the artist was putting the finishing touches to his picture.

"I had hoped that an old friend of mine," she added, "one on whose loyalty I relied implicitly, would have appeared to defend me at the trial. I wrote and asked him. But he never came. He did not even trouble to reply. Well," she sighed, "I am no poorer for the loss of such a friend."

Hauer laid down his brushes, rose, and stood before her. His voice was unsteady, and his face had grown pale.

"Others may fail you," he exclaimed, "but you know that I will always stand by you, though the whole world turn against you."

He took both her hands in one of his, and, looking into her eyes, saw down to the very depths of her pure soul. A rush of memories flooded his brain as he gazed at this woman whose life was to close so soon.

He recalled the very first time he had ever seen her--how long ago was it?--in the gardens at Caen, opposite the little Church of St. Antoine. Five years ago; and yet to him it seemed but yesterday. She had been a girl then; a timid, neatly-dressed girl of nineteen she looked, as she walked slowly along, deep in meditation, intent upon her own thoughts. Hauer was sitting sketching beneath a tree as she passed. She dropped one of the books she was carrying; he picked it up for her; she thanked him. That was all--and yet at the sound of that one word something had stirred in the young artist's heart, something that he had not been able to understand at the time, but that he had understood in the court-house to-day, when he heard once more the music of her voice--something that he understood now, and knew to be love.

"Charlotte," he exclaimed, with a sudden passionate cry, as he flung himself on his knees at her feet, "I love you, I love you!"

The girl gazed tenderly down at him, with a look of innocent affection in those eyes which no hint of any deeper passion had ever illumined. She laid her hand lightly upon his head for a moment and then drew him to his feet.

"Please, monsieur," she said gently, "please; you will not say that. You are my very good friend, and you must think of me as a friend, and nothing more. You know well that I can never be grateful enough for the blessing of your friendship, and for all you have done for me."

Hauer had recovered his self-possession. "Alas! I have done nothing for you--I, who would gladly lay down my life for your happiness."

"You have done much," replied the girl. "You have spoken to me, when all others were afraid and held aloof. You have given me the comfort of your welcome society, while other friends stayed away. Are your words of sympathy nothing?" she asked. "Ah, I could not bear to think that I should cause you any unhappiness. I pray you, let us be friends, and friends only. The parting will be the easier for that."

"Don't speak of parting," he cried, aghast at the picture conjured up in his imagination by her ominous words.

"And yet it is to be so soon. In a little while I shall go out of your life forever. I shall be nothing to you but a memory. It is hard enough to have to die, do not make it harder for me."

"Charlotte!" cried the young man in an agonized voice, "you shall not go out of my life like this! I will kill myself! I will share your fate. I cannot live without you!"

The girl gazed up at him with a look of infinite tenderness and pity. "Do you really love me?" she asked.

"Charlotte----"

"Remember then that the price of love is sacrifice; and do as I ask." She sat down on the edge of the hard bed and drew him down beside her.

"Is it so easy for me to be brave?" she asked, "to leave the sunshine, to say goodby to all the bright and beautiful things of this world, to life and love? Do not make it harder for me; then. Ah, I pray you, forget me; or rather, rejoice at my fate, remembering that the cause for which I lay down my life is indeed a glorious one. Help me to bear the trials of this last scene bravely, with a courage you would wish to see in one you loved."

Hauer seized her hands and kissed them feverishly.

Charlotte smiled sadly at him.

"I have had but little tenderness in my life," she said. "Your kisses are dear to me, believe. I will bear them in my hands to the scaffold, as I shall bear the comfort of your friendship in my heart.

"Do not weep for me," she added, as the tears, which he was unable to control, fell and mingled with his kisses upon her pale hands. "I want all your help, all your courage, if I am to face the end bravely, to meet death with a smile."

There was a loud and peremptory knock at the entrance. With a swift exclamation Hauer crossed the floor and threw open the door.

A tall man, dressed entirely in black, with a thick beard half covering a sallow but not un-kindly face, entered the room. He carried a long red smock over his shoulder, a short piece of thick cord in his hand, and to his wide leather belt was suspended a pair of shears. It was Charles Henry Sanson, the public executioner.

A momentary expression of terror flitted across Charlotte Corday's eyes as they gazed upon this sinister figure, whose mission required no explanation. After a brief inward struggle, she regained possession of her wonted calm and faced the unwelcome visitor with an unflinching gaze.

The executioner advanced, holding out the red smock, a roughly made cloak of common scarlet material, which condemned persons wore on their way to the scaffold. Without a word spoken on either side, Charlotte allowed him to throw this garment round her shoulders.

Sanson then drew the shears from his belt. But the prisoner, anticipating his intention, stopped him with a quick gesture and took the instruments from his hand.

"Give them to me," she said quietly, and the man obeyed. Then, throwing off her cap, she unbound the ribbon with which her hair was confined and with a quick, graceful movement of the head, shook down its burden of auburn hair so that it covered her shoulders. With a few swift strokes of the scissors she cut off the waving masses, which fell in a heap in her lap and at her feet, and handed the shears back to Sanson. With her bared head, its aureole of close-cropped hair crowning the small oval face beneath it, Charlotte looked like some beautiful boy, and it was evident that even the impassive executioner was moved by her charm and by the tender grace of her every movement.