at heart but must be touched? (Deux Amis, x. 374-384.)
Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of Mentz, declares that she is greater
than Brutus; that it were beautiful to die with her: the head of this
young man seems turned. At the Place de la Revolution, the countenance
of Charlotte wears the same still smile. The executioners proceed to
bind her feet; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word
of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all
being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck: a blush of
maidenly shame overspreads that fair face and neck; the cheeks were
still tinged with it, when the executioner lifted the severed head, to
shew it to the people. 'It is most true,' says Foster, 'that he struck
the cheek insultingly; for I saw it with my eyes: the Police imprisoned
him for it.' (Briefwechsel, i. 508.)

In this manner have the Beautifullest and the Squalidest come in
collision, and extinguished one another. Jean-Paul Marat and Marie-Anne
Charlotte Corday both, suddenly, are no more. 'Day of the Preparation of
Peace?' Alas, how were peace possible or preparable, while, for example,
the hearts of lovely Maidens, in their convent-stillness, are dreaming
not of Love-paradises, and the light of Life; but of Codrus'-sacrifices,
and death well earned? That Twenty-five million hearts have got to such
temper, this is the Anarchy; the soul of it lies in this: whereof
not peace can be the embodyment! The death of Marat, whetting old
animosities tenfold, will be worse than any life. O ye hapless Two,
mutually extinctive, the Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye well,--in
the Mother's bosom that bore you both!

This was the History of Charlotte Corday; most definite, most complete;
angelic-demonic: like a Star! Adam Lux goes home, half-delirious; to
pour forth his Apotheosis of her, in paper and print; to propose that
she have a statue with this inscription, Greater than Brutus. Friends
represent his danger; Lux is reckless; thinks it were beautiful to die
with her.

Chapter 3.4.II.

In Civil War.

But during these same hours, another guillotine is at work, on another:
Charlotte, for the Girondins, dies at Paris to-day; Chalier, by the
Girondins, dies at Lyons to-morrow.

From rumbling of cannon along the streets of that City, it has come
to firing of them, to rabid fighting: Nievre-Chol and the Girondins
triumph;--behind whom there is, as everywhere, a Royalist Faction