He was suffered to depart unmolested. Chiefly, perhaps because at that moment the attention of the crowd was upon the executioner’s attendant, who, in holding up Charlotte’s truncated head, slapped the cheek with his hand. The story runs that the dead face reddened under the blow. Scientists of the day disputed over this, some arguing from it a proof that consciousness does not at once depart the brain upon decapitation. That night, while Paris slept, its walls were secretly placarded with copies of a eulogy of Charlotte Corday, the martyr of Republicanism, the deliverer of France, in which occurs the comparison with Joan of Arc, that other great heroine of France. This was the work of Adam Lux. He made no secret of it. The vision of her had so wrought upon the imagination of this susceptible dreamer, had fired his spirit with such enthusiasm, that he was utterly reckless in yielding to his emotions, in expressing the phrenetic, immaterial love with which in her last moments of life she had inspired him. Two days after her execution he issued a long manifesto, in which he urged the purity of her motive as the fullest justification of her act, placed her on the level of Brutus and Cato, and passionately demanded for her the honour and veneration of posterity. It is in this manifesto that he applies euphemistically to her deed the term “tyrannicide.” That document he boldly signed with his own name, realizing that he would pay for that temerity with his life. He was arrested on the 24th of July—exactly a week from the day on which he had seen her die. He had powerful friends, and they exerted themselves to obtain for him a promise of pardon and release if he would publicly retract what he had written. But he laughed the proposal to scorn, ardently resolved to follow into death the woman who had aroused the hopeless, immaterial love that made his present torment. Still his friends strove for him. His trial was put off. A doctor named Wetekind was found to testify that Adam Lux was mad, that the sight of Charlotte Corday had turned his head. He wrote a paper on this plea, recommending that clemency be shown to the young doctor on the score of his affliction, and that he should be sent to a hospital or to America. Adam Lux was angry when he heard of this, and protested indignantly against the allegations of Dr. Wetekind. He wrote to the Journal de la Montagne, which published his declaration on the 26th of September, to the effect that he was not mad enough to desire to live, and that his anxiety to meet death half-way was a crowning proof of his sanity. He languished on in the prison of La Force until the 10th of October, when at last he was brought to trial. He stood it joyously, in a mood of exultation at his approaching deliverance. He assured the court that he did not fear the guillotine, and that all ignominy had been removed from such a death by the pure blood of Charlotte.