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Montané, Presiding judge. Fouquer-Tinville, Prosecutor. Chaveau-lagarde, Defending counsel. Danton,} Leaders of the Jacobins. Robespierre,} Madam Evard, Marat’s friend. Charlotte Corday.

Montané

Where is your home?

Charlotte

Caen.

Montané

Why did you come to Paris?

Charlotte

To kill Marat.

Montané

Why?

Charlotte

His crimes.

Montané

What crimes?

Charlotte

The woes of France! His readiness to fire

All France with civil war.

Montané

You meant to kill

When you struck?

Charlotte

Yes! I meant to kill.

Montané

How old are you?

Charlotte

Twenty-four.

Montané

A woman

Young as you are could not have done this murder

Unless abetted.

Charlotte

No! You little know

The human heart. The hatred of one’s heart

Impels the hand better than other’s hate.

Montané

You hated Marat?

Charlotte

Hated! I did not kill

A man, I killed a wild beast eating up

The people and the nation.

Fouquer-Tinville

She’s familiar

With crime, no doubt.

Charlotte

You monster! Do you take me

For just a common murderer?

Fouquer-Tinville

Yes! Why not?

Here is your knife!

Charlotte

Oh! Yes, I recognize it.

I bought it at the cutler’s shop.

Montané

What for?

Charlotte

To kill Marat with; cost me forty sous.

After I came to Paris—

Fouquer-Tinville

When?

Charlotte

Four days ago.

Fouquer-Tinville

That was the day you wrote Marat?

Charlotte

Same day.

Fouquer-Tinville

Saying you knew of news in Caen, knew

Means by the which Marat could render service

To the Republic!

Charlotte

By his death!

Fouquer-Tinville

But yet

You gave him credit in this note for love

Of France, our France. You tricked him.

Charlotte

Like a viper.

He was a mad-dog, dog-leech, alley rat,

With bits of carrion festering ’twixt his teeth,

Hair glued with ordure, urine. Why not trick

By best means, so to catch a beast with fangs

As venomous as his? He was a fire

That crawled and licked its way; why not put out

The fire by water, snuffing, stamping, why

Be precious of the means?

Madam Evard

You know me, woman?

Charlotte

You struck me when I stabbed him. You’re his whore!

Madam Evard

Oh! Oh!

Robespierre

(To Danton) This is enough! When fury claws at fury. I hear the tumbril for her. Come!

Danton

The slut!

(Danton and Robespierre leave the room together.)

Charlotte

Was that not Robespierre who left the room?

Fouquer-Tinville

Why do you ask?

Charlotte

I wanted him for counsel.

Fouquer-Tinville

For what? The guillotine?

Charlotte

(Shrinking) You monster! You!

Montané

Have you a lawyer?

Charlotte

No! I wrote Doulcet.

He shirks the honor, doubtless; have not heard.

I thought of Chabot and of Robespierre.

Montané

Chaveau-Lagarde shall counsel you. Proceed!

Fouquer-Tinville

Is this your letter?

Charlotte

Yes.

Fouquer-Tinville

This letter here

Is written to a man named Barbarous,

Her lover—

Charlotte

No! You monster!

Fouquer-Tinville

Very well!

Is this yours: “To the French, friends of the laws,

And friends of peace.”

Charlotte

Yes! I admit what’s true.

Fouquer-Tinville

And is this yours: “To the Committee of Public Safety”?

Charlotte

I wrote it, yes.

Fouquer-Tinville

Let’s see now what’s her mind.

This letter to the friends of peace and laws:—

“O France, thy peace depends upon the laws.”

Laws! And she hastens to the cutler’s shop,

And buys a knife with which to slay Marat.

Now look! This friend of France’s peace and laws

Must dodge self-contradiction. How? That’s plain:

“I do not break the law, killing Marat.”

Why? What’s Marat? A man? Of course, a man.

But then an “out-law,” as she writes. How’s that?

Outlawed by whom? Charlotte Corday of Caen!

What else? A man! But then condemned. By whom?

“The universe.” Voila! The universe

Is swallowed by her swollen vanity.

She speaks for God, for solar systems, stars;

Adjudges laws, interprets, executes;

Is greater than the Revolution, France.

She’s a descendant of the great Corneille;

A stage imagination, actress, acts,

And quotes here in this letter from Voltaire’s

“Mort de César.” Now listen what her hate

Has used for whetrock, in the words of Brutus:

“Whether the world astonished loads my name “And deed with horror, admiration, censure, “I do not care, nor care to live in Time. “I act indifferent to reproach or glory, “A free, untrameled patriot am I. “Duty accomplished I shall rest content. “Think only, friends, how you may break your chains.” So Brutus lives in her! And like disease Loosed from the crumbling cerements and dust Of broken tombs, the madness which slew Cæsar Infects, makes mad this woman; and she slays The great Marat! She does not care for the world’s Censure or admiration! Does not care To live in time! She lies! Why, in this room A man, Huer, is sketching her. Behold He’s drawing now her face for Time to see. And in this letter written to the Committee She says: “Since I have little time to live, “I trust you will permit me to have painted “My portrait.” Why? If careless if she live In memory or time? The secret’s out, And written in her hand: “I want to leave “A picture for remembrance to my friends.” What friends? Her father? Barbarous? Caen, Paris, the whole of France, the world, if Time Writes down the people’s friend as beast, would see The face, in such case, which destroyed Marat, Condemned first by the “universe” and at last By France, the world! What next? She doubts her God, Her Brutus warrant, “universe” approval, And writes here as a reason, in addition: “That as men cherish memory of good men, “So curiosity”—see her spirit flop And smile with idiot guilt upon itself— “So curiosity sometimes seeks out “Memorials of criminals.” That’s her word: “Criminals,” and by that word she stands Self-dedicated to the guillotine.

Charlotte

Well, am I not a criminal in the eyes

Of such a beast as you? Will nature spawn

No other beasts like you?

Fouquer-Tinville

Yes, in my eyes,

You are a criminal. But you mistake.

I have no curiosity about you.

When you are dead I’d have your name erased,

Your face erased, lest it corrupt the face

Of Brutus, and lead hands in years to come

To speak the “universe,” interpret “laws,”

And slay whom they would slay.

This is not all

About her picture, a memorial

For admiration by posterity.

She writes this Barbarous, lover or what,

It matters nothing, writes him pages here

In detail of herself, and intimate

Portrayal of her feelings: how she planned,

And killed Marat. To Barbarous she writes

About her letter to the Committee, asking

To have her portrait painted. Now, for whom? Her friends? Not now! For the department now Of Calvados. There! hanging on a wall, A prize of history, is the deathless face Of Charlotte Corday, destroyer of Marat, Saviour of France, as Brutus struck for Rome! Yes, I invite your thought to what she writes To Barbarous: description of her act In sneaking to Marat with hidden knife; And as he sat there helpless in the tub, And unsuspecting of her hatred, quick She rips him like a butcher. Then, “A moi!” He cries, “A moi!” And she’s elate, her eyes Bright as the lightning that has struck. Look now! How she writhes here, how passing cross her face Are lights of ghastly fields of fire and clouds When hurricanes descend.

Charlotte

You beast! You beast!

Fouquer-Tinville

I am a beast, eh? You are what? I’ll tell. From Caen, as ’tis known. She’s being sketched, I’ll sketch her too. You see, she’s strongly built, Large eyes of blue, large features, handsome though; Nose shapely, and good teeth; equipped to play In dramas of Corneille, her ancestor. She needs a man. A husband would have drawn Innocuously the electric passion, which Collected in a bolt to loose and lurch Against Marat. All women should be farmed. She has her schooling in a convent, reads; Lives with her thoughts and dreams. I’ll sketch her soul: Has not enough of living to consume The forces of her dreams. She reads Rousseau, And Plutarch’s heroes, Brutus most of all. Thrills at the words “Republic,” “Liberty.” Thinks the Girondists only can set up A real republic. Ideas are the stuff Of history. Kill ideas or be killed By ideas is the fate of man. Republic, Liberty, Brutus are ideas. Ideas Are dangerous, being truths, more so as lies. And lies destroyed Marat.

Who was Marat?

A man of study, learning. Physicist,

Admired of Franklin, Göethe for his works

On heat and light; a doctor, having won

An honorary title at St. Andrew’s

In England. Linguist, speaking Spanish, German,

Italian, English. Versed in Governments:—

You know his work on England’s constitution

Whereby he sought to clear the mind of France—

This Charlotte Corday’s with the rest—that England

Is free, her systems free; stop the Girondists

From that re-iterated lie; stop France

From taking on the English system.

So

True ideas of Marat, evolved from life,

Living and study must combat, destroy

False ideas of Girondists, will succeed;

But cannot bar the door to the idea

That enters at his bathroom with a knife.

How was it that no valet and no guard

Preserved him? Why? Lovers of liberty

Starve in her service!

But there was a time

When he knew elegance and privacy.

But Liberty and Wisdom would be served.

He went to rags, was hunted, had to hide

In sewers for the cause of Liberty;

And there took loathsome trouble, eased at times

By steam, hot tubs. And thus our people’s friend

Is found accessible to this female lie,

Girondist lie, possessing her, and stabbed.

Or at the best ideas of Liberty

Conduct her to his bath-room, where Marat

Is tubbed in sequence and in punishment

Of his idea of Liberty. Gods can laugh,

But men must weep. O worthless, rotten world!

It is most pitiful, most tragic, lifts

Man’s heart to spit at heaven, that these friends

Of peoples must be slain, starved, hunted first,

Then butchered for their service and their love.

Saved not by truth; destroyed by lies, a lie

That he was evil, by the maniac lie

Of her mad vision that she knew what Freedom,

Liberty, Republic mean. Slain by the lie

Of this Girondist dream, this milk and water,

Emasculated, luke-warm craft of states:

Girondists: patches on the robes of kings;

Girondists: autogamists; mating sisters,

The past, and in the mating without child

Of truth or progress. Neither hot nor cold,

Spewed, therefore, from the mouth of Time. Betrayers,

Waylayers of the brave, the clear of eye;

Girondists: ’twixt republicans and kings,

And holding hands of each to make them friends.

Workers and owners of the new foaled mule

Bred of the royal stallion and an ass.

Girondists! loving wealth and ease, the church

Which loves them too. Girondists picking steps

Of moderate reform. Girondists hating

The Revolution, which must kill the foes

Of Liberty, as criminals are killed

For robbery, yet rejoice to see the blood

Of dead Marat. They’re lofty! They are pure!

They love the laws, love peace! Yes, as this woman

Loves law and peace.

What is it like? A play

Where all is mimicked. Do we talk of facts?

Are these not fautocinni? Where’s the hand

That plays this coarse and bloody joke to eyes

Of men that crave reality? I mean this:

A woman with lovers who suggest, abet;

A woman with no man, who dreams and reads,

Lives in the stench of these Girondist lies;

Ghosts float on fogs of her miasmic soul.

She hears Marat’s a monster, dabbling blood,

A rabid ignoramus running foul

Of liberty and order, nihilist,

And sanguinary madman, dragon slimed

In back-wash of all hatred, envy, lust

Of the dispossessed, malformed, misborn; and then

She dreams of Brutus, who struck down—there now

I nail a lie that will be always truth

To Charlotte Cordays. Cæsar? Tyrant? No.

No man is tyrant who sees truth and rules

For truth’s sake. For the ruled must share the truth

Where Cæsars rule.

So much for her. She stands

Watchful and envious in the wings, and sees

Marat, not as we see him; not as Time

Will see Marat. L’Ami du Peuple to her

Is enemy of France, of Liberty.

This man most rare, most pure of soul, most clear

Of vision that the contest lies between

The rich and poor, has always lain between

The rich and poor, and not between the people

And kings; that poverty’s the thing, is seen

By Charlotte Corday from the wings, as nothing

But hatred, murder.

Well, my girl, you’ll get

Your picture in the galleries of history.

You’ll get it; and to choke you with your words:

“So curiosity would have memorials

Of criminals, which serve to keep alive

Horror for their crimes.”

Your picture’s up

Already. Horror stares! You killed Marat.

That is your place in Time: you killed Marat!

You sneaked upon a great man, true man, weak

From torture of disease, contracted serving

Democracy, and slew him like a beast.

Charlotte Corday, assassin! That’s your place,

And character in history.

Charlotte

Let it be.

Assassin. Well, assassins kill assassins:

The words repel, destroy each other, sir.

If any grieve for me I beg of them

To think of me in the Elysian Fields

With Brutus and the heroes.

Chaveau-Lagarde

Gentlemen!

The deed’s admitted. What to say, but ask

Your clemency? The girl’s fanatical.

The prosecutor argues well for me

In saying that a lie corrupted her,

And maddened her to act; which is to say

If that lie were a truth, she had the right

To slay Marat. With this regard Voltaire,

Great minds before him, painted Brutus great

Because he slew a tyrant. But if Cæsar

Was not a tyrant, how does Brutus stand

But mad-man who believed, was honest, slew

In honesty of heart? Then what’s the case?

To punish for ill-judging of the facts,

Or mercy show for human frailty

Of judgment and of vision? Great Marat

Has done his work, and left his legacy.

We cannot help him, meting death for death.

And would his noble spirit ask her death?

Think of it! You will answer no, I think.

He would say: kill the ideas of Caen,

The world which fires these Charlottes with a lie.

Smallpox is deadly as a butcher knife,

He had to die. The syllabus is death

In this our human logic: what’s the odds

What premises produce conclusions? Knives,

Consumptions, fevers, wars? We may be gods

Withholding death where we have power to kill;

Withhold it saying: She mistook, believed

A lie, was faultless for believing it,

And slew believing. Were it truth and all

Believed we would applaud, as nations war,

Bound in a common vision of one truth.

The Revolution, France, will lose not, rather

Gain by this clemency; ’twill lift a light,

First in the world, of reason, justice purged

Of hatred’s refuse: vengeance, fear, all passions

Of bitterness of soul. We worship Reason,

And this is Reason.

Charlotte

You have done your part

And served me well. I thank you.

The Jury

Let her join

Brutus in the Elysian Fields. We say:

The guillotine!

The Mob

(Outside) To the guillotine! To the guillotine!

Charlotte

I am content.