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CHARLOTTE CORDAY

BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

During the French Revolution of 1798, there lived in the city of Caen, France, a young lady, of the celebrated Corneille. Though born of gentle blood, she had been nurtured in the school of adversity, her father being too aristocratic to work, and too poor to live comfortably without work. In early life she was placed in a monastery in Caen, where her whole future destiny was influenced by the peculiar discipline to which she was exposed, and the ideas of futy which were inculcated. In the dreams of the cloister her ardent soul became fired with the ambition of exalted deeds, which should render her a benefactress to her race.

After thus living for six years, the Jacobin hovernment suppressed the convent, and she took up her residence with an elderly relative in Caen, where she remained until she was nealy twenty-five years of age. Living amidst the terrible scenes of the revolution, where the guillotine was in constant exercise, and the mod daily demanding the blood of new victims, her thoughts naturally turned to the possibility of stopping these horrors. She mindgled as much as possible with the Girondists, to ascertain who were the principal agents in those woes which were desolating her native land.

Though Danton and Robespierre were then in their ascendencey, the sanguinary delirium of Marat rendered him more conspicuous to the mass of the people, who saw "tyranny and freedom in one man's hands only." To Marat, then, the eyes of Charlotte Corday were directed, as the one who was deluging the republic in blood. She thought that his death would arrest this flood and save the lives of thousands. It had been announced that he had proscribed twenty-five hundred victims in Lyons, three thousand in Marsellies, twenty-eight thousand in Paris, and three hundred thousand in Brittany. Conspiracies were being organized all over the republic for the overthrow of this bloodthirsty tyrant. The lover of Charlotte Corday, whom she idolized with all the purity and fervor of her impassioned nature, was engaged in one of these conspiracies, which, if successful, would cost the lives of thousands, and, if unsuccessful, would only consilidate the power of the tyrant. Charlotte resolved to free France of the monster at the certain sacrifice of her own life.

All the energies of her being were now aroused for the accomplishment of this object. It was no easy matter for an obscure young lady to get such access to the tyrant as to be able to assassinate him. She, however, formed her plans so cautiously, as to guard against every conceivable cause of failure.