The Museum Gazette 



in features, and to study in character the laws of descent. 

 In this instance we are presented with no unusual difficulties^ 

 and as the life of the heroine is well known, it is not needful 

 to enter upon it in any detail. Although the act which has 

 made her name famous was a mistake as well as a crime, there 

 can be no question that its design and perpetration disclosed 

 courage, coolness, and contempt of danger in a very remark- 

 able degree. The white heat of the times in which she lived 

 may be allowed to supply the initiatory impulse, but the 

 resolution which made that impulse capable of realisation y 

 and which left the actor cool and undaunted after its execu- 

 tion, was due to inborn character. Nor is there anything 

 incongruous with such character in the features or in the 

 known facts as to racial and family descent. The portrait 

 which we have copied is one preserved in Paris, and was 

 taken whilst its subject was in prison, a day or two before 

 her death. It is said that she was pleased to have it done, 

 and that it was, indeed, at her own request. She sat for it to 

 the artist Hauer^with cheerful calmness. At her trial she 

 had rejected all suggestions of excuse or palliation : " It is 

 I that killed Marat." "By whose instigation?" " By no 

 one's." " What tempted you then ? " " His crimes. I 

 killed one man," added she, raising her voice high, " I killed 

 one man to save a hundred thousand ; a villain to save 

 innocents ; a savage wild beast, to give repose to my 

 country. I was a republican before the Revolution ; I never 

 wanted energy." To the last she displayed neither the love 

 of display nor the slightest trace of cowardice. From her 

 prison cell, after having declined the services of a priest, she 

 wrote to her political friends a letter stating that she antici- 

 pated happiness with Brutus in the Elysian fields, and in 

 the same packet a letter to her father couched in simple,, 

 loving terms. 



