She was ordered to be transferred to the Abbaye, the nearest prison. An immense and infuriated crowd had gathered around the door of Marat’s house; one of the witnesses perceived that she would have liked to be delivered to this maddened multitude, and thus perish at once. She was not saved from their hands without difficulty; her courage failed her at the sight of the peril she ran, and she fainted away on being conveyed to the fiacre. On reaching the Abbaye, she was questioned until midnight by Chabot and Drouet, two Jacobin members of the convention. She answered their interrogatories with singular firmness; observing, in conclusion: “I have done my task, let others do theirs.” Chabot threatened her with the scaffold; she answered with a smile of disdain. Her behavior until the 17th, the day of her trial, was marked by the same firmness. She wrote to Barbaroux a charming letter, full of graceful wit and heroic feeling. Her playfulness never degenerated into levity: like that of the illustrious Thomas Moore, it was the serenity of a mind whom death had no power to daunt. Speaking of her action, she observes— “I considered that so many brave men need not come to Paris for the head of one man. He deserved not so much honor: the hand of a woman was enough. . . . I have never hated but one being, and him with what intensity I have sufficiently shown, but there are a thousand whom I love still more than I hated him. . . . I confess that I employed a perfidious artifice in order that he might receive me. In leaving Caen, I thought to sacrifice him on the pinnacle of ‘the mountain,’ but he no longer went to it. In Paris, they cannot understand how a useless woman, whose longest life could have been of no good, could sacrifice herself to save her country. . . . May peace be as soon established as I desire! A great criminal has been laid low. . . . the happiness of my country makes mine. A lively imagination and a feeling heart promise but a stormy life; I beseech those who might regret me to consider this: they will then rejoice at my fate.” A tenderer tone marks the brief letter she addressed to her father on the eve of her trial and death: “Forgive me, my dear father,” she observed, “for having disposed of my existence without your permission. I have avenged many innocent victims. I have warded away many disasters. The people, undeceived, will one day rejoice at being delivered from a tyrant. If I endeavored to persuade you that I was going to England, it was because I hoped to remain unknown: I recognized that this was impossible. I hope you will not be subjected to annoyance: you have at least defenders at Caen; I have chosen Gustave Doulcet de Pontecoulant for mine: it is a mere matter of form. Such a deed allows of no defense. Farewell, my dear father. I beseech of you to forget me; or, rather, to rejoice at my fate. I die for a good cause. I embrace my sister, whom I love with my whole heart. Do not forget the line of Corneille: