To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice: 

“All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days!”

As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and a portion of his heart.

Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out: 

“Help, darling!”

His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house.  Both heard it, for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded in pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to escape.  Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l’Abbaye, and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.

Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as of one who gloried in the act which she had just performed.  A written charge was read.  She was asked what she had to say.  Lifting her head with a look of infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice: 

“Nothing—­except that I succeeded!”

A lawyer was assigned for her defense.  He pleaded for her earnestly, declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm eyes and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt.  She showed her quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she had accomplices.

“Who prompted you to do this deed?” roared Tinville.

“I needed no prompting.  My own heart was sufficient.”

“In what, then, had Marat wronged you?”

“He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France in the fires of civil war.”

“But whom did you expect to benefit?” insinuated the prosecutor.

“I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand.”

“What?  Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats?”

“No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning.”

Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap her into betraying any of her friends.  The court, however, sentenced her to death.  She was then immured in the Conciergerie.

This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel.  At the time there lived in Paris a young German named Adam Lux.  The continual talk about Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl who had been so daring and so patriotic.  She was denounced on every hand as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan.  Street songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.

As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible creature.  He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the court-room and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a beautiful sketch.  From that moment until the end of the trial the eyes of Adam Lux were fastened on the prisoner.  What a contrast to the picture he had imagined!