I shall no longer be here. Heaven denied us the happiness of
living together, as it has denied us other happinesses. May it
show itself more clement to our country. Good-by, dear Father.
Embrace my sister for me, and do not forget me."

That was all. The fiction that she was going to England was
intended to save him pain. For she had so laid her plans that her
identity should remain undisclosed. She would seek Marat in the
very Hall of the Convention, and publicly slay him in his seat.
Thus Paris should behold Nemesis overtaking the false Republican
in the very Assembly which he corrupted, and anon should adduce a
moral from the spectacle of the monster's death. For herself she
counted upon instant destruction at the hands of the furious
spectators. Thus, thinking to die unidentified, she trusted that
her father, hearing, as all France must hear, the great tidings
that Marat was dead, would never connect her with the instrument
of Fate shattered by the fury of the mob.

You realize, then, how great and how terrible was the purpose of
this maid of twenty-five, who so demurely took her seat in the
Paris diligence on that July morning of the Year 2 of the
Republic--1793, old style. She was becomingly dressed in brown
cloth, a lace fichu folded across her well-developed breast, a
conical hat above her light brown hair. She was of a good height
and finely proportioned, and her carriage as full of dignity as
of grace. Her skin was of such white loveliness that a contemporary
compares it with the lily. Like Athene, she was gray-eyed, and,
like Athene, noble-featured, the oval of her face squaring a little
at the chin, in which there was a cleft. Calm was her habit, calm
her slow-moving eyes, calm and deliberate her movements, and calm