CORDAY D’ARMANS, Marie-Anne-Charlotte, born in 1768, at St Saturnin near Séez in Normandy, was descended from a noble family, and numbered among her ancestors the dramatist Corneille. She was educated in a convent, and then sent to live with an aunt at Caen. Here she saw hardly any one but her relative, and passed her lonely hours in reading the works of the philosophes, especially Voltaire and the Abbé Raynal. Another of her favourite authors was Plutarch, from whose pages she doubtless imbibed the idea of classic heroism and civic virtue which prompted the act that has made her name famous. On the outbreak of the Revolution she began to study current politics, chiefly through the medium of the papers issued by the party afterwards known as the Girondins. On the downfall of this party, on May 31, 1793, many of the leaders took refuge in Normandy, and proposed to make Caen the headquarters of an army of volunteers, at tho head of whom Wimpfenn, the commandant of Cherbourg, w as to have marched upon Paris. Charlotte attended their meetings, and heard them speak; but we have no reason to believe that she saw any of them privately, till the day when she went to ask for introductions to friends of theirs in Paris. She saw that their efforts in Normandy were doomed to fail. She had heard of Marat as a tyrant and the chief agent in their overthrow, and she had conceived the idea of going alone to Paris and assassinating him,—doubtless thinking that this would break up the party of the Terrorists and be the signal of a counter-revolution. Apparently she had thought of going to Paris in April, before the fall of the Girondins, for she had then procured a passport which she used in July. Jt contained the usual description of the bearer, and ran thus: “Laissez passer la ...