But these things had no interest for the People's
Friend. What to him was woman and the lure of beauty? Charlotte
beheld a feeble man of a repulsive hideousness, and was full
satisfied, for in this outward loathsomeness she imagined a
confirmation of the vileness of the mind she was come to blot
out.
Then Marat spoke. "So you are from Caen, child?" he said. "And
what is doing in Caen that makes you so anxious to see me?"
She approached him.
"Rebellion is stirring there, Citizen Marat."
"Rebellion, ha!" It was a sound between a laugh and a croak.
"Tell me what deputies are sheltered in Caen. Come, child, their
names." He took up and dipped his quill, and drew a sheet of
paper towards him.
She approached still nearer; she came to stand close beside him,
erect and calm. She recited the names of her friends, the
Girondins, whilst hunched there in his bath his pen scratched
briskly.
"So many for the guillotine," he snarled, when it was done.
But whilst he was writing, she had drawn the knife from her
fichu, and as he uttered those words of doom to others his own
doom descended upon him in a lightning stroke. Straight driven by
that strong young arm, the long, stout blade was buried to its
black hilt in his breast.
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