Convention as a delegate from Paris.
Perhaps he was to a greater degree responsible for the September
massacre than any other man. While he was dying of his malady he was
urging on his fanatical measures, and declared that most of the
members of the Convention, Mirabeau first, ought to be executed. His
most virulent hatred was directed against the Girondists, whose
execution he advocated with all the venom of his nature. Though he
could write only when seated in a bath, he continued to hurl his
invectives against them, impatient for the guillotine to do its gory
work upon them.

The avenger was at hand. Charlotte Corday d'Armont was the
granddaughter of Corneille, the great tragic poet of France. Though
of noble descent, she was born in a cottage, for her father was a
country gentleman so poor that he could not support his family. His
daughters worked in the fields like the peasants, till he was
compelled to abandon them. Then they obtained admission to a convent
in Caen, where they were received on account of their birth and
their poverty. The library furnished Charlotte abundant reading
matter, and she read works on philosophy, though she also rather
inflated her imagination by the perusal of romances, which had some
influence on her after life.

When monasteries and convents were abolished, she was turned loose
upon the world; but her aunt, as poor almost as her father, took the
young woman, now nineteen years old, to her home in Caen. Charlotte
had developed into a beautiful girl, rather tall, honest, and
innocent. She had imbibed republican sentiments from her father in
spite of his nobility, and Caen was the head-quarters of the
Girondists. She was familiar with the details of the struggle
between the Jacobins and the Girondists, and they inspired her with
an intense feeling against the persecutors of her people, as she
regarded the latter. The members of that party who had been driven
from Paris instructed her. She was a woman; but if she had been a
queen she had the nerve to rule a nation and fight its battles.

A tremendous purpose took possession of her being. It was not
prompted by the spirit of revenge. She was mistaken, but she
believed that the removal of Marat was the remedy for the evils of
the time; and this became the work of her life, upon which she
entered, fully conscious that her path ended at an ignominious
grave. She had an admirer in a young man by the name of Franquelin,
and though she fav