The second is the buckle which he invented and which
Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the
story of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence
exercised upon him by the affection of a good woman.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX

Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those
that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and
as it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot
forbear relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest
and pathetic power.

All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in
their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant
Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted
the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The
tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told
a thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them
have neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and
which was consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth
our while to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew,
and then to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with
her great deed of daring.

Charlotte Corday--Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand--was a native of
Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble ancestors.
Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and
soldiers, and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom
the French rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes
had reduced her branch of the family almost to the position of
peasants--a fact which partly justifies the name that some give her
when they call her "the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution."

She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods
tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed in
charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such
education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned
inward, brooding over many things.

After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here
she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which the
house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers,
especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent
faith, though it is not likel