Apparently she had thought of going to Paris in April, before the fall of the Girondins, for she had then procured a passport which she used in July. It contained the usual description of the bearer, and ran thus: _Laissez passer la citoyenne Marie, &c., Corday, âgée de 24 ans, taille de 5 pieds 1 pouce, cheveux et sourcils châtains, yeux gris, front élevé, nez long, bouche moyenne, menton rond fourchu, visage ovale._ Arrived in Paris she first attended to some business for a friend at Caen, and then she wrote to Marat: "Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place doubtless makes you 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 to give me a brief interview. I will put you in a condition to render great service to France." On calling she was refused admittance, and wrote again, promising to reveal important secrets, and appealing to Marat's sympathy on the ground that she herself was persecuted by the enemies of the republic. She was again refused an audience, and it was only when she called a third time (July 13) that Marat, hearing her voice in the antechamber, consented to see her. He lay in a bathing tub, wrapped in towels, for he was suffering from a horrible disease which had almost reduced him to a state of putrefaction. Our only source of information as to what followed is Charlotte's own confession. She spoke to Marat of what was passing at Caen, and his only comment on her narrative was that all the men she had mentioned should be guillotined in a few days. As he spoke she drew from her bosom a dinner-knife (which she had bought the day before for two francs) and plunged it into his left side. It pierced the lung and the aorta. He cried out, "_À moi, ma chère amie!_" and expired. Two women rushed in, and prevented Charlotte from escaping. A crowd collected round the house, and it was with difficulty that she was escorted to the prison of the Abbaye. On being brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal she gloried in her act, and when the indictment against her was read, and the president asked her what she had to say in reply, her answer was, "Nothing, except that I have succeeded." Her advocate, Claude François Chauveau Lagarde, put forward in vain the plea of insanity. She was sentenced to death, and calmly thanked her counsel for his efforts on her behalf, adding that the only defence worthy of her was an avowal of the act. She was then conducted to the Conciergerie, where at her own desire her portrait (now in the museum of Versailles) was painted by the artist Jean Jacques Hauer. She preserved her perfect calmness to the last. When she saw the guillotine, she placed herself in position under the fatal blade without assistance from any one. The knife fell, and one of the executioners held up her head by the hair, and had the brutality to strike it with his fist. Many believed they saw the dead face blush,--probably an effect of the red stormy sunset. It was the 17th of July 1793. It is difficult to analyse the character of Charlotte Corday; but there was in it much that was noble and exalted. Her mind had been formed by her studies on a pagan type. To C. J. M. Barbaroux and the Girondins of Caen she wrote from her prison, anticipating happiness "with Brutus in the Elysian Fields" after her death, and with this letter she sent a simple loving farewell to her father, revealing a tender side to her character that otherwise we would hardly have looked for in such a woman. Lamartine called her _l'ange de l'assassinat_, and Vergniaud said, "_Elle nous perd, mais elle nous apprend à mourir._"