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 his sons entered the army; one of his daughters died young; and he became a widower when the other two were emerging from childhood into youth. They remained for some time with their father, but at length entered the Abbaye aux Dames, in the neighbouring town of Caën.

The greatest portion of the youth of Charlotte Corday—to give her the name by which she is generally known—was spent in the calm obscurity of her convent solitude.

When the Abbaye aux Dames was closed, in consequence of the revolution, Charlotte was in her twentieth year, in the prime of life, and of her wonderful beauty; and never, perhaps, did a vision of more dazzling loveliness step forth from beneath the dark convent portal into the light of the free and open world. Her whole aspect was fraught with so much modest grace and dignity, that, notwithstanding her youth, the first feeling she invariably inspired was one of respect, blended with involuntary admiration, tor a being of such pure and touching loveliness.

On leaving the convent in which she had been educated, Charlotte Corday went to reside with her aunt, Madame Coutellier de Bretteville Gouvilie, an old royalist lady, who inhabited an ancient-looking house in one of the principal streets of Caën. There the young girl, who had inherited a little property, spent several years, chiefly engaged in watching the progress of the revolution. The feelings of her father were similarly engrossed: he wrote several pamphlets in favour of the revolutionary principles; and one in which he attacked the right of primogeniture. His republican tendencies confirmed Charlotte in her opinions; but of the deep, overpowering strength which those opinions acquired in her soul, during the hours she daily devoted to meditation, no one ever knew, until a stern and fearful deed—more stern and fearful in one so gentle—had revealed it to all France. A silent reserve characterized this epoch of Charlotte Corday's life: her enthusiasm was not external, but inward: she listened to the discussions which were carried on around her, without taking a part in them herself. She seemed to feel, instinctively, that great thoughts are always better nursed in the heart's solitude: that they can only lose their native depth and intensity by being revealed too freely before the indifferent gaze of the world. Those with whom she then occasionally conversed took little heed of the substance of her discourse, and could remember nothing of it when she afterwards became celebrated; but all recollected well her voice, and spoke with strange enthusiasm of its pure, silvery sound. Like Madame Roland, whom she resembled in so many respects, Charlotte possessed this rare and great attraction; and there was something so touching in her youthful and almost childlike utterance of heroic thoughts, that it affected even to tears those who heard her, on her trial, calmly defending herself from the infamous accusations of her judges, and glorying, in the same low, sweet tones, in the deadly deed which had brought her before them.

The fall of the Girondists, on the 31st. of May, first suggested to Charlotte Corday the possibility of giving an active shape to her hitherto passive feelings. She watched with intense, though silent, interest the progress of events, concealing her secret indignation, and thoughts of vengeance, under her habitually calm aspect. Those feelings were heightened in her soul by the presence of the