. His constant fears of assassination
were shared by those around him; the porter seeing a strange woman pass
by his lodge, without pausing to make any inquiry, ran out and called
her back. She did not heed his remonstrance, but swiftly ascended the
old stone staircase, until she had reached the door of Marat's
apartment. It was cautiously opened by Albertine, a woman with whom
Marat cohabited, and who passed for his wife. Recognizing the same young
and handsome girl who had already called on her husband, and animated,
perhaps by a feeling of jealous mistrust, Albertine refused to admit
her; Charlotte insisted with great earnestness. The sound of their
altercation reached Marat: he immediately ordered his wife to admit the
stranger, whom he recognized as the author of the two letters he had
received in the course of the day. Albertine obeyed reluctantly; she
allowed Charlotte to enter; and after crossing with her an ante chamber,
where she had been occupied with a man named Laurent Basse in folding
some numbers of the "Ami du Peuple," she ushered her through two other
rooms, until they came to a narrow closet where Marat was then in a
bath. He gave a look at Charlotte, and ordered his wife to leave them
alone: she complied, but allowed the door of the closet to remain half
open, and kept within call.

According to his usual custom, Marat wore a soiled handkerchief bound
round his head, increasing his natural hideousness. A coarse covering
was thrown across the bath; a board, likewise, placed transversely,
supported his papers. Laying down his pen, he asked Charlotte the
purport of her visit. The closet was so narrow that she touched the bath
near which she stood. She gazed on him with ill-disguised horror and
disgust, but answered as composedly as she could, that she had come from
Caen, in order to give him correct intelligence concerning the
proceedings of the Girondists there. He listened, questioned her
eagerly, wrote down the names of the Girondists, then added, with a
smile of triumph: "Before a week they shall have perished on the
guillotine." "These words," afterward said Charlotte, "sealed his fate."
Drawing from beneath the handkerchief which covered her bosom the knife
she had kept there all along, she plunged it to the hilt in Marat's
heart. He gave one loud, expiring cry for help, and sank back dead, in
the bath. By an instinctive impulse, Charlotte had instantly drawn out
the knife from the breast of her vi