The fall of the Girondists, on the 31st of May, first suggested to Charlotte Corday the possibility of giving an active shape to her hitherto passive feelings. She watched with intense, though still silent interest, the progress of events, concealing her secret indignation and thoughts of vengeance under her habitually calm aspect. Those feelings were heightened in her soul by the presence of the fugitive Girondists, who had found a refuge in Caen, and were urging the Normans to raise an army to march on Paris. She found a pretense to call upon Barbaroux, then with his friends at the Intendance. She came twice, accompanied by an old servant, and protected by her own modest dignity. Pethion saw her in the hall, where she was waiting for the handsome Girondist, and observed with a smile, "So the beautiful aristocrat is come to see republicans." "Citizen Pethion," she replied, "you now judge me without knowing me, but a time will come when you shall learn who I am." With Barbaroux, Charlotte chiefly conversed of the imprisoned Girondists; of Madame Roland and Marat. The name of this man had long haunted her with a mingled feeling of dread and horror. To Marat she ascribed the proscription of the Girondists, the woes of the Republic, and on him she resolved to avenge her ill-fated country. Charlotte was not aware that Marat was but the tool of Danton and Robespierre. "If such actions could be counseled," afterward said Barbaroux, "it is not Marat whom we would have advised her to strike." While this deadly thought was daily strengthening itself in Charlotte's mind, she received several offers of marriage. She declined them, on the plea of wishing to remain free: but strange indeed must have seemed to her, at that moment, those proposals of earthly love. One of those whom her beauty had enamored, M. de Franquelin, a young volunteer in the cause of the Girondists, died of grief on learning her fate; his last request was, that her portrait, and a few letters he had formerly received from her, might be buried with him in his grave. For several days after her last interview with Barbaroux, Charlotte brooded silently over her great thought; often meditating on the history of Judith. Her aunt subsequently remembered that, on entering her room one morning, she found an old Bible open on her bed: the verse in which it is recorded that "the Lord had gifted Judith with a special beauty and fairness," for the deliverance of Israel, was underlined with a pencil.