copies of a eulogy of Charlotte Corday, the martyr of Republicanism,
the deliverer of France, in which occurs the 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 heard of this, and protested indignantly
against the allegations of Dr. Wetekind. He wrote to the Journal de la
Montagne, which published his declaration on the 26th of September, to
the effect that he was not mad enough to desire to live, and that his
anxiety to meet death half-way was a crowning proof of his sanity.
He languished on in the prison of La Force until the 10th of October,
when at last he was brought to trial. He stood it joyously, in a mood
of exultation at his approaching deliverance. He assured the court that
he did not fear the guillotine, and that all ignominy had been removed
from such a death by the pure blood of Charlotte.
They sentenced him to death, and he thanked them for the boon.
“Forgive me, sublime Charlotte,” he exclaimed, “if I should find it
impossible to exhibit at the last the courage and gentleness that were
yours. I glory in your superiority, for it is right that the adored
should be above the adorer.”
Yet his courage did not fail him. Far from it, indeed; if hers had been
a mood of gentle calm, his was one of ecstatic exaltation. At five
o’clock that same afternoon he stepped from the tumbril under the gaunt
shadow of the guillotine. He turned to the people, his eyes bright, a
flush on his cheeks.
“At last I am to have the happiness of dying for Charlotte,” he told
them, and mounted the scaffold with the eager step of the bridegroom on
his way to the nuptial altar.