han a faint surprise that the time spent with
Hauer should have gone so quickly. She begged for a few moments in
which to write a note, and, the request being granted, acquitted herself
briskly of that task, then announcing herself ready, she removed her
cap that Sanson might cut her luxuriant hair. Yet first, taking
his scissors, she herself cut off a lock and gave it to Hauer for
remembrance. When Sanson would have bound her hands, she begged that she
might be allowed to wear gloves, as her wrists were bruised and cut by
the cord with which she had been pinioned in Marat's house. He answered
that she might do so if she wished, but that it was unnecessary, as he
could bind her without causing pain.

"To be sure," she said, "those others had not your experience," and she
proffered her bare wrists to his cord without further demur. "If this
toilet of death is performed by rude hands," she commented, "at least it
leads to immortality."

She mounted the tumbril awaiting in the prison yard, and, disdaining
the chair offered her by Sanson, remained standing, to show herself
dauntless to the mob and brave its rage. And fierce was that rage,
indeed. So densely thronged were the streets that the tumbril proceeded
at a crawl, and the people surging about the cart screamed death and
insult at the doomed woman. It took two hours to reach the Place de la
Revolution, and meanwhile a terrific summer thunderstorm had broken
over Paris, and a torrential rain had descended upon the densely packed
streets. Charlotte's garments were soaked through and through, so that
her red smock, becoming glued now to her body and fitting her like a
skin, threw into relief its sculptural beauty, whilst a reflection of
the vivid crimson of the garment faintly tinged her cheeks, and thus
heightened her appearance of complete composure.

And it is now in the Rue St. Honore that at long last we reach the
opening of our tragic love-story.

A tall, slim, fair young man, named Adam Lux--sent to Paris by the
city of Mayence as Deputy Extraordinary to the National Convention--was
standing there in the howling press of spectators. He was an
accomplished, learned young gentleman, doctor at once of philosophy
and of medicine, although in the latter capacity he had never practiced
owing to an extreme sensibility of nature, which rendered anatomical
work repugnant to him. He was a man of a rather exalted imagination,
unhappily married--the not uncommon fate of s