Charlotte Corday

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1064, 30 August 1930, Page 26

Charlotte Corday

PATRIOT’S DEATH IN THE RED SMOCK OF A MURDERESS

Romantic Revolution Figure

“History will look fixedly at I his one fair apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will note whither Charlotte moves how the little life burns forth so radi ant, then vanishes, swallowed ot the night."

Those words of Carlyle’s were no mere flash of empty rhetoric (says "John o’ London's Weekly”). The name of Charlotte Corday is indeed written imperishably in the records ef human action: Morality may not condone her crime, but Man cannot with

hold his interest nor his sympathy, and that brief tremendous deed, so terrible, so honest, so futile, must for ever be remembered as a gleam of light in one of the darkest episodes in the story of France.

The time was July, 1793, the place Caen. In that cpiiet little country town, far removed from the tumult and anarchy of revolutionary Paris, dwelt Charlotte, then in her 25th year. She was a descendant of the dramatist Corneille and a student of Voltaire, was intelligent and liberal-minded, iu sympathy with the aims of the Revolution, young as she was: horrified by the excesses of those who had destroyed one tyranny but to establish another, and who were fast engulfing their countrymen in a sea of blood. So this obscure, unknown country maid resolved to strike a blow in protest. A Blow at Marat And she would aim the blow at Marat - -Marat, the triumvir, the "People’s friend,” whose grim "recommendation” had ordained the fate of many a noble and fine lady, whose strident voice cried incessantly, insatiable for

"heads,” and who—so it was whispered—would be v content. with nothing less than a hundred thousand fiosh victims for Madame la Guillotine. Marat himself should feel the keen edge of a knife! Marat, on whose head rested the guilt of the infamous September massacres. Charlotte wasted no time in conspiracy or preparation. One bright Tuesday morning she took a place iu the Caen diligence and set out for Paris. There were none to bid her farewell; she kept her ow-n counsel. She left a note for her father deviating that he must pardon and forget iter. Thus, as Carlyle puts it. Charlotte Corday "emerged from her secluded stillness suddenly like a star, cruel-lovely, with half-angelic, halfdaemonic splendour, to gleam for a moment, and in a moment be extinguished: to be held in memory, so bright complete was she, through long centuries.”

The drowsy diligence lumbered Into Paris at noon on Thursday. Charlotte delivered to the deputy Duperret a letter relating to some family business, then on the follow-ing morning went to witness a meeting of the Convention and to gaze on those high narrow benches that seated the dreaded Mountain—the Extremists’ party. A Large On Saturday morning. July 13. at S o'clock, she bought a large sheathknife in the Palais Royal. Then she rook a cab to the Rmitde l’Ecole de Medicine, and rapped at the door of Xo. -14, the residence or the patriot Marat. She was denied admittance. The People’s Friend was ill and would see no one. The People’s Friend had in truth been ill tor three years, and lately he had become worse- —his disease aggravated, maybe, by envy of his colleagues Danton and Robespierre, or by disappointment at. being refused a. head or two. or perhaps by the very fanaticism that burned within his shrunken frame. Once, from the violence of his own countrymen, he had to hide for a time in the sewers of his Paris, where he contracted his skin trouble.

"The citoyen -Marat is ill and cannot be seen: which seems to disappoint her much. Hapless, beautiful Charlotte: hapless, squalid Marat! Prom Caen in the utmost west, front Neuchatel in the utmost east they two are drawing nigh, each other; they two have, very strangely, business together."

The news of the citoyen’s, illness aroused in the maid no pity nor remorse nor slackening of purpose.

Straightway she returned to her inn and put pen to paper: “Citoyen, f have just arrived from Caen. Doubtless you are desirous of learning the events which have occurred in that part of the Republic. I shall call at your residence in about, an hour: have the goodness to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put you in a condition to render great service to France.” The keen-witted little schemer.

No answer came—the People’s Friend was ill and would see no one. . . . Back in her room at the inn she wrote a second note, and set out with it by coach at. about 7 in the evening, to that house in the Rue de I'Ecole de Medecine. For the third time she pleaded and cajoled in vain; the hag who served Marat as housekeeper and mistress was adamant. X’ote? The citoyen received scores of notes each day. The citoyen was ill. . . .-

But it chanced that at that moment the citoyen, stewing in his bath, was reading Charlotte’s first note. He heard her musical, insistent voice in the ante-chamber —the voice of the citoyenne who had news of the

enemies of the Republic. He called for her to be admitted. And so into that cheerless, momentous room—unfurnished save for the bath and the rough stool that served as writiug .desk, on the walls but a pair of pistols and the boldly-scrawled legend: “La Mort”—into that room passed Charlotte Corday, serene and implacable, to tell her false tale of traitorous plots in distant Caen and to add a line to history. One Sure Stroke Contrast these two: the young woman, graceful, grey-eyed, oval-faced, of “beautiful still countenance” and brilliant complexion; and the man. dwarfish, pallid, venomous, and half crazy, his eyes tigerish with the lust for blood, his “frog-like” mouth working feverishly as Charlotte unfolds her story. . . .

‘•Their heads shall fall within a fortnight.’ croaks the eager People’s Friend, clutching his tablets to write. Barbaroux, Pet-ion, writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath: Petion, and Louvet.” Surely and stealthily Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath. Coolly she watches her opportunity; it comes, and she plunges the keen blade with one sure stroke into the writer’s heart —then an agonised cry: “‘A moi, eherie amie. Help, dear!’ Xo more could the death-choked say or shriek.” The women of the house came rushing in, then the gendarmes. Charlotte surrendered quietly and was taken to the Abbaye Prison. Never did her composure break: neither remorse nor triumph could be discerned in her exxnession or bearing, and one can only guess at the nature of her thoughts during the last few days of life that remained to her. Heroic, marvellous, foolish Charlotte! Did she not see that her crime would set the seal upon the doom of the Moderates she had sought to champion, would inspire the campaign of vengeance that culminated in the victory of the Mountain and the Reign of Terror? ”A Villain to Save Innocents” No. for she dated Wednesday, the day of her trial, the “fourth day of the Preparation of Peace,” and in the thronged Palais de Justice her warm voice rang out calmly and confidently. “I killed one man to save a hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a savage wild beast to give repose to my country. T was a Republican before the Revolution: T never wanted energy. . . .

She gave her very last minutes to an officer of the National Guard. Jacques Hauer, whom she had noticed sketching her during the trial. While he worked she talked indifferently, and when Samson, the executioner, appeared with the scissors, she gave a lock of hair to the artist, saying that she had nothing else to give him. She had only one request—that she might wear her gloves, for her wrists had been torn by the brutal way in which they had been tied. Samson assured her that he could arrmge it without giving her pain. “Time,” she said, gaily, “the others have not had your practice.” The Red Smock of a Murderess

And so. at half-past seven in the evening, at the same hour as her victim suffered the knife, Charlotte Corday, clad in the red smock of a murderess, journeyed to her death. As the tumbril passed through the streets of Paris many raised their hats in reverent farewell; one young man, indeed, openly declared that it would be joy to die after Charlotte. Corday, and it was not long before his wish was gratified. . . .

Calmly she mounted the platform, walked toward the fatal engine. “Do not hide it,” she said to the delicate Samson, “for I have never seen it before.” Only when he took the neckerchief from her throat did she change colour, and then it was a blush of maidenly shame that suffused her face —“the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioners lifted the severed head to show it to the People.” Thus, at the age of twenty-four, died Charlotte Corday, patriot and murderess.