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The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series by Rafael Sabatini
page 293 of 294 (99%)
comparison with Joan of Arc, that other great heroine of France.
This was the work of Adam Lux. He made no secret of it. The
vision of her had so wrought upon the imagination of this
susceptible dreamer, had fired his spirit with such enthusiasm,
that he was utterly reckless in yielding to his emotions, in
expressing the phrenetic, immaterial love with which in her last
moments of life she had inspired him.

Two days after her execution he issued a long manifesto, in which he
urged the purity of her motive as the fullest justification of her
act, placed her on the level of Brutus and Cato, and passionately
demanded for her the honour and veneration of posterity. It is in
this manifesto that he applies euphemistically to her deed the term
"tyrannicide." That document he boldly signed with his own name,
realizing that he would pay for that temerity with his life.

He was arrested on the 24th of July--exactly a week from the day
on which he had seen her die. He had powerful friends, and they
exerted themselves to obtain for him a promise of pardon and
release if he would publicly retract what he had written. But he
laughed the proposal to scorn, ardently resolved to follow into
death the woman who had aroused the hopeless, immaterial love
that made his present torment.

Still his friends strove for him. His trial was put off. A doctor
named Wetekind was found to testify that Adam Lux was mad, that
the sight of Charlotte Corday had turned his head. He wrote a
paper on this plea, recommending that clemency be shown to the
young doctor on the score of his affliction, and that he should
be sent to a hospital or to America. Adam Lux was angry when he
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