The cry uttered by the murdered man was heard, and Charlotte, who did not attempt to escape, was captured and conveyed to prison amid the murmurs of an angry crowd. It had been from the first her intention to sacrifice her life for the cause of her country, and glorying in her deed, she met death with stoical indifference. ‘I killed one man,’ she said, when brought before the revolutionary court, ‘in order to save the lives of 100,000 others.’ ♦Sanguinary tendencies of the Government.♦ Thus perished by the hands of an assassin the man who, since the revolution began, had persistently maintained that assassination was a justifiable mode for the accomplishment of political ends. His murder brought about contrary results to those which the woman who ignorantly and rashly had flung away her life, hoped by the sacrifice to effect. Marat had not been the creator of the circumstances which enabled him to exert influence, and there was no lack of men equally sanguinary, and equally fanatic, ready to usurp the place left vacant by his death. He was regarded as a martyr by no small portion of the working population of Paris. The influence which he had exerted over them was in reality due, not so much to his exhortations to massacre, as to the fact that amongst the many writers who had put themselves forward as the spokesmen of the lower orders, he alone had truly at heart the destruction of the existing material misery. His murder excited indignation beyond the comparatively narrow circle of those who took an active part in political life, while at the same time it added a new impulse to the growing cry for blood. After the expulsion of the Girondists, power drifted more and more into the hands of those who were most violent in language, and who were prepared to be most violent in act. The more moderate section of the Mountain, composed of Dantonists and seceders from the Plain, rapidly lost influence. They were without means by which to exert control over their colleagues, and were driven to use exaggerated and sanguinary language in order to escape the charge of being themselves bad patriots and secret supporters of royalists and federalists. The deputies forming the right and centre of the Convention kept silence, or ceased to appear in their seats. The nation remained passive, incapable of resistance. Every day the Government displayed a more and more ferocious character. It was cruel, because it was weak in the sense that it had little material force on which it could rely for support, if its authority were once disputed. It was cruel also, because it was resolute and fanatic, determined to maintain itself at whatever cost, and at the same time under the influence of theories and ideas which could not be carried into practice except by resort to despotic means and by the destruction of individual as well as of political liberty. ♦Disorganisation of Government.♦