the wonderful voice.
When Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from
the scene and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he
lay prostrate, his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an
instant won the adoration of his heart.

Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy,
did he behold the heroine of his dreams.

On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the
gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a
setting fit for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge
masses across the sky until their base appeared to rest on the very
summit of the guillotine. Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond
the river. Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young,
beautiful, unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the
shadow of the knife.

At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through
the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in
the eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished
bronze. Thus illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she
bowed herself beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if
misdirected, impulse. As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last
and only plea:

"My duty is enough--the rest is nothing!"

Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven upon
his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the
sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from those
brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The
self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had
never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own
destruction.

He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and of
all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed, and
scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last
sentences are as follows:

The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar,
from which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed
there on the 17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find
it impossible at the last moment to show the courage and the gentleness
that were yours! I glory because you are superior to me, for it is
right that she who is adored should be higher and more glorious than
her adorer!