The sound of her voice, that living echo which reveals the whole soul in one vibration of the air, left a deep and tender impression on the ear of those to whom she spoke. They still talked of the sound of her voice ten years after having heard it, as of a strange and not to be forgotten music engraven on the memory. She had in the keys of her soul notes so clear and so deep that to hear them, they say, was more than to see her, for sound with her formed a part of her beauty.

This young girl was named Charlotte Corday d'Armont. Though of noble blood, she was born in a hut called le Ronceray, in the village of Ligneries, not far from Argentau. welcomed her to the life she was to quit by the scaffold.

Misfortunes

Her father, Francois de Corday d'Armont, was one of those gentlemen of the provinces whose poverty confounds them almost with the peasantry. Of their ancient superiority they only retained a certain respect for the family name, and a vague hope of a return of fortune, which at once prevented them from sinking in their morals, or raising themselves by work. The land that this rural nobility cultivated in little inalienable estates maintained them without the humiliation of indigence. Nobility and land seemed inseparable in France, as the aristocracy and the sea at Venice.

M. de Corday added to his agricultural employments some political anxiety and literary taste, which at that time was much spread among the educated class of the noble population. He earnestly desired a speedy revolution. He was tormented by his own inactivity and poverty. He had written some works for the times against despotism and the right of primogeniture. These writings were full of the spirit that was about to manifest itself. He had a horror of superstition, the ardor of a growing philosophy, and the presentiment of a necessary revolution. Either from insufficiency of genius, or restlessness of character, or perversity of fortune, which will swallow up the best talents, he could not reach success amidst surrounding circumstances.

He languished in his little fief of Ligneries, in the bosom of a family increasing each year. Five children, two sons and three daughters, of whom Charlotte was the second, made him feel every day more and more the oppressions of povery. His wife,

Jacqueline-Charlotte-Marie de Gonthier-des-Autiers, died of these troubles, leaving a father to her infant daughters, but in reality leaving them orphans for want of that domestic tradition and daily inspiration of which, with the mother, death deprives the children.

Charlotte and her sisters remained for some years at Ligneries, almost entirely left to nature, dressed in coarse linen like the girls of Normandy, and, like them, weeding the garden, spreading the grass, gleaning the corn, and gathering the apples of their father's little estate. At last, necessity obliged M. de Corday to part with his daughters. They entered, by reason of their nobility and their poverty, into a convent at Caen, of which Madame de Belzunce was abbess. This convent is called the Abbaye aux Dames. The abbey, with its vast cloisters and chapel of Roman architecture, had been constructed in 1066, by Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror. Neglected and forgotten, it remained in ruins until 1730, when it was magnificently restored, and it now forms one of the finest hospitals of the kingdom, and one of the most splendid public monuments of the town of Caen, and of all Normandy.

Charlotte was thirteen years of age. These convents were then truly Christian gynécées,* where women lived apart from the world, but within hearing of its murmurs, and participating in all its movements. The monastic life, with its peaceful habits and intimate friendships, pleased the young girl for some time. Her ardent soul and passionate imagination plunged her into that dreamy state of contemplation, the subject of which is God, a state of mind in youth easily changed by the kind influence of a superior, and the power of imitation, into faith and exercises of devotion. The iron character of Madame Roland herself was kindled and softened by this heavenly fire. The more tender Charlotte yielded yet more easily. She was for some years a model of piety. She dreamed of closing her scarcely opened life, at this first page, and of burying herself in this sepulchre, where, instead of death, she found repose, friendship, and happiness.

But the more ardent her soul, the more quickly she delved and

* From a Greek word, signifying that part of a dwelling which was set apart for the women.

arrived at the extremity of her thoughts. She soon came to the bottom of her infantile faith. She had a glimpse beyond her domestic dogmas of other dogmas, new, luminous, and sublime. She gave up neither God nor virtue, but she gave them other names and other forms. Philosophy, at that time inundating France with its light, overleaped, with the books in vogue, the gates of the monasteries. More profoundly meditated upon in the seclusion of the cloister, and in opposition to monastic trivialities, philosophy acquired its most ardent adepts within the monastery walls. These young men and women, in the triumph of general reason, saw their chains broken, and adored their reconquered liberty.

In the convent Charlotte formed those tender friendships of childhood, relationships of the heart. Her friends were two young girls of noble family and humble fortune like herself: Mesdemoiselles de Fandoas and de Forbin. The abbess, Madame de Belzunce, and the assistant, Madame Doulcet de Pontécoulant, had particularly distinguished Charlotte. They admitted her to the little réunions in the convent, that custom allowed the abbesses to have with their relations not within the walls. Charlotte had thus made acquaintance with two young men, nephews of the two ladies, M. de Belzunce, colonel of a regiment of cavalry in garrison at Caen, and M. Doulcet de Pontécoulant, an officer of the king's body guard. One was soon after massacred in an émeute in Caen; the other adopted the Revolution with temperate constancy, entered the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, and suffered exile and persecution for the cause of the Girondins. It has since been supposed that the too tender recollection of young Belzunce, who was immolated at Caen by the people, had induced Charlotte, deprived of her first love, to swear the vengeance that awaited and struck Marat. Nothing confirms this supposition, and everything refutes it. If the Revolution had only raised in Charlotte's heart horror and resentment for the murder of a lover, she would have confounded all parties of the Republic in the same hatred; she would not have pursued to fanaticism and death a cause that would stain her memory with blood, and cover her future with mourning.

At the time of the suppression of monasteries, Charlotte was

nineteen years of age. The distress of the paternal house had increased with years. Her two brothers, who had engaged in the service of the king, had emigrated. One of her sisters was dead. The other managed the humble household of their father at Argentau. The old aunt, Madame de Bretteville, took Charlotte into her house at Caen. This aunt was without property, as were all her family. She lived in such retirement that her nearest neighbors hardly knew the name and the existence of the poor widow. Her age and her infirmities deepened the shadow that her condition cast over her life. One woman only attended upon her. Charlotte assisted the servant in the domestic arrangements. She gracefully received the old friends of the house. In the evening she accompanied her aunt to the houses of the nobility of the town, who were not yet dispersed by the fury of the people, and where some old remnants of the ancient régime were permitted to shut themselves up to console one another and lament. Charlotte was respectful towards the regrets and superstitions of the past, and never annoyed them with cruel words; but she smiled to herself, and nourished very different opinions in her soul. These opinions became more decided each day. But her gentle spirit, her graceful person, the infantine puerility of her manner, prevented the suspicion of any deep thought existing under her cheerfulness. Her sweet gayety shone over the house of her aunt like the rays of the morning sun on a stormy day, brilliant as the evening is gloomy.

Having discharged her household duties, accompanied her aunt to church and back, Charlotte had leisure to give herself up to her thoughts. She passed her time in sauntering about the court and the garden, dreaming and reading. She was not controlled or directed in anything, in her opinions, her liberty, or her studies. The religious and political opinions of Madame de Bretteville were more from habit than conviction. She preserved them as she did the costume of her age and her time, but she did not inflict them upon others. Philosophy, besides, had by this time undermined the foundation of all belief in the minds even of all the old nobility. The revolution had upset everything. Opinions that each day were tottering and falling could not be held. And then the republican opinions of Charlotte's father had been imbibed more or less

by his relations. The family of Corday inclined to new ideas. Madame de Bretteville herself concealed, under the decency of her regret for the old government, a secret inclination for the Revolution. She allowed her niece to feed upon works, opinions, and journals of her own choosing. Charlotte's age inclined ber to read romances, which furnished ready-made dreams to the imagination of an indolent mind. Her intellect inclined her to study works on philosophy, which transform the vague instincts of humanity into sublime theories of government; and books of history, which change theories into actions, and ideas into men.

The twofold yearning of her heart and her intellect was satisfied in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the philosopher of love, the poet of politics; in Raynal, the fanatic of humanity; and lastly, in Plutarch, the personificator of history, who paints rather than relates, and who vivifies events and the characters of his heroes. These three books were one or other constantly in her hand. The romantic and light works of the period, such as Héloise or Faublas, were also perused by her. But although she had fed her imagination from these sources, her mind never lost its modesty, or her youth its chastity. Full of a desire to love, inspiring and sometimes feeling the first symptoms of love, her reserve, her diffidence, and her poverty restrained her from expressing her sentiments. She rent her heart that she might drag from it the first tie that attached itself. Her love, thus repulsed by will and fate, did not change its nature, but changed its ideal. It became a vague and sublime devotion to a dream of public good. Her heart was too expansive to contain her own happiness only. She wished it to contain the happiness of an entire people. The passion she would have felt for one man she felt for her country. She gave herself up more and more to these ideas, continually seeking an opportunity of rendering service to mankind. Her thirst for self-sacrifice became a madness, a passion, or a virtue. Though the sacrifice might be bloody, she was resolved to accomplish it. She had arrived at that despairing state of mind which is the destruction of happiness, not for the profit of glory or ambition, like Madame Roland, but for the profit of liberty and humanity, like Judith or Epicharis. She only wanted an opportunity; she watched for it, she believed she had found it.