It was only after much negotiation and the payment of a very considerable sum of money that her object was attained. And now the dread knife harmlessly reposes by the side of the impressions of those heads it so ruthlessly struck off a century and a quarter ago--that of Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, as well as those of Robespierre, Danton, Fouquier-Tinville, Hébert, and the miscreant of Nantes, Carrier. From the time they were first shown in Paris until the present day they have been viewed by an ever-increasing throng, though the sight of them can never have been pleasing, and those who gaze upon them shudder and pass on. Though Madame Tussaud did not witness the execution of Marie Antoinette, yet she remembered seeing the Queen pass on a tumbril through the jeering crowds to the scaffold. The once gay and light-hearted Queen was dressed in white for her last pageant on earth, her hands tied behind her. The spectacle brought back to Madame memories of the royal palace where she had frequently attended to give lessons in modelling, and she was so overcome that she fainted. Perhaps the most horrifying experience undergone by Madame Tussaud during this terrible period was when the mangled head of the greatly beloved Princess de Lamballe was brought to her that a cast might be made. In vain did she protest that she could not endure the ordeal. The brutal murderers compelled her to comply. [Illustration: MARIE ANTOINETTE Impression of her head taken immediately after she had been guillotined, 16th October, 1793.] CHAPTER VIII Madame dines with the Terrorists Marat and Robespierre, models their figures, and subsequently takes casts of their heads--She visits Charlotte Corday in prison--Death of Curtius--Madame marries--Napoleon sits for his model. One of the most bloodthirsty of all the red Terrorists was Jean Paul Marat, who was slain in his bath by Charlotte Corday on the 13th of July, 1793. [Illustration: CHARLOTTE CORDAY] Marat, as a young man, had lived in this country for some time, and was well known to Madame Tussaud through visits he paid to the house of her uncle, Curtius, at 20 Boulevard du Temple. Immediately after his assassination she was called upon to take a cast of Marat’s head. “They came for me,” she relates, “to go to Marat’s house at once, and to take with me what appliances I needed to make an impression of his features. The cadaverous aspect of the fiend made me feel desperately ill, but they stood over me and forced me to perform the task.” Marat’s model is still to be seen in the Exhibition lying in the bath in which he was stabbed by the heroic young Norman girl.