ment, and in a moment be
extinguished: to be held in memory, so bright complete was she,
through long centuries!--Quitting Cimmerian Coalitions without, and
the dim-simmering twenty-five million within, History will look
fixedly at this one fair Apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note
whither Charlotte moves, how the little Life burns forth so radiant,
then vanishes swallowed of the Night.

With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we
see Charlotte on Tuesday the 9th of July seated in the Caen Diligence,
with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her
Good-journey: her Father will find a line left, signifying that she is
gone to England, that he must pardon her, and forget her. The drowsy
Diligence lumbers along; amid drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of
the Mountain; in which she mingles not: all night, all day, and again
all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of
Neuilly; here is Paris with her thousand black domes, the goal and
purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence in the Rue
des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room; hastens to bed; sleeps
all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.

On the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret. It relates
to certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's
hands; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent friend of Charlotte's, has
need of; which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this then was
Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has finished this, in the course of
Friday:--yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently
investigated several things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she
has seen; what the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat
she could not see; he is sick at present, and confined to home.

About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large
sheath-knife in the Palais Royal; then straightway, in the Place des
Victoires, takes a hackney-coach: "To the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine,
No. 44." It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat!--The Citoyen Marat
is ill, and cannot be seen; which seems to disappoint her much. Her
business is with Marat, then? Hapless beautiful Charlotte; hapless
squalid Marat! From Caen in the utmost West, from Neuchatel in the
utmost East, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very
strangely, business together.--Charlotte, returning to her Inn,
dispatches a short Note to Marat