upon her, standing as if stricken into stone. Then heedless of
those about him, he bared his head, and thus silently saluted and
paid homage to her. She did not see him. He had not thought that
she would. He saluted her as the devout salute the unresponsive
image of a saint. The tumbril crawled on. He turned his head, and
followed her with his eyes for awhile; then, driving his elbows
into the ribs of those about him, he clove himself a passage
through the throng, and so followed, bare-headed now, with fixed
gaze, a man entranced.

He was at the foot of the scaffold when her head fell. To the
last he had seen that noble countenance preserve its immutable
calm, and in the hush that followed the sibilant fall of the
great knife his voice suddenly rang out.

"She is greater than Brutus!" was his cry; and he added,
addressing those who stared at him in stupefaction: "It were
beautiful to have died with her!"

He was suffered to depart unmolested. Chiefly, perhaps because at
that moment the attention of the crowd was upon the executioner's
attendant, who, in holding up Charlotte's truncated head, slapped
the cheek with his hand. The story runs that the dead face
reddened under the blow. Scientists of the day disputed over this,
some arguing from it a proof that consciousness does not at once
depart the brain upon decapitation.

That night, while Paris slept, its walls were secretly placarded
with copies of a eulogy of Charlotte Corday, the martyr of
Republicanism, the deliverer of France, in which occurs the