the brick-paved floor, bespattering--symbolically almost--a copy
of L'Ami du Peuple, the journal to which he had devoted so much
of his uneasy life.

In answer to that cry of his came now Simonne in haste. A glance
sufficed to reveal to her the horrible event, and, like a
tigress, she sprang upon the unresisting slayer, seizing her by
the head, and calling loudly the while for assistance. Came
instantly from the anteroom Jeanne, the old cook, the Fortress of
the house, and Laurent Basse, a folder of Marat's paper; and now
Charlotte found herself confronted by four maddened, vociferous
beings, at whose hands she may well have expected to receive the
death for which she was prepared.

Laurent, indeed, snatched up a chair, and felled her by a blow of
it across her head. He would, no doubt, have proceeded in his
fury to have battered her to death, but for the arrival of gens
d'armes and the police commissioner of the district, who took her
in their protecting charge.

The soul of Paris was convulsed by the tragedy when it became
known. All night terror and confusion were abroad. All night the
revolutionary rabble, in angry grief, surged about and kept watch
upon the house wherein the People's Friend lay dead.

That night, and for two days and nights thereafter, Charlotte
Corday lay in the Prison of the Abbaye, supporting with fortitude
the indignities that for a woman were almost inseparable from
revolutionary incarceration. She preserved throughout her
imperturbable calm, based now upon a state of mind content in the