Laurent, indeed, snatched up a chair, and felled her by a blow of
it across her head. He would, no doubt, have proceeded in his
fury to have battered her to death, but for the arrival of gens
d'armes and the police commissioner of the district, who took her
in their protecting charge.
The soul of Paris was convulsed by the tragedy when it became
known. All night terror and confusion were abroad. All night the
revolutionary rabble, in angry grief, surged about and kept watch
upon the house wherein the People's Friend lay dead.
That night, and for two days and nights thereafter, Charlotte
Corday lay in the Prison of the Abbaye, supporting with fortitude
the indignities that for a woman were almost inseparable from
revolutionary incarceration. She preserved throughout her
imperturbable calm, based now upon a state of mind content in the
contemplation of accomplished purpose, duty done. She had saved
France, she believed; saved Liberty, by slaying the man who would
have strangled it. In that illusion she was content. Her own life
was a small price to pay for the splendid achievement.
Some of her time of waiting she spent in writing letters to her
friends, in which tranquilly and sanely she dwelt upon what she
had done, expounding fully the motives that had impelled her,
dwelling upon the details of the execution, and of all that had
followed.
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