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Mad. Marie Ann Char. Corday. [page 2]

[ . . . ] This unhappy Lady had two Counsellors, one of whom was Mr. STONE, an Englishman, who during the last two hours of her trial incessantly felt her pulse, to distinguish if there was any symptoms of burning fever or timidity. He declared they were the same as those of a person contented in their mind. She did not manifest the least irresolution but in one interval, when Mr. Stone was so struck with her firmness and answers, that he was quite dismayed, and at that instant her undaunted courage fell, and tears of sweet sensibility declared her gratitude for his pleading for her. She was condemned at three o'clock in the afternoon, after a trial of six hours, to be beheaded at eight o'clock the same evening on the Place de la Revolution.

She requested this Gentleman, as a last favour, which, said she, will make me die contented, to defray all the little debts she had contracted in the prison of the Concergerie, as the property she had brought with her to Paris was confiscated. —Mr. Stone promised and executed her request.

The scene which her execution presented was magnificently awful. The place was thronged with multitudes; and the most feeling minds were excited to behold the Amazonian courage of this unhappy lady in her last moments.

It was with much difficult she arrived at the scaffold. The fish women and others, belonging to the markets, were near tearing her to pieces, with oaths and imprecations the most horrid. The Gens d'Armes and horse of the Republic prevented this horrid act, by galloping up with lifted sabres.

Mad. Corday ascended the scaffold with intrepidity. She appeared serene and reconciled to death. She pulled off her bonnet and handkerchief herself, but recoiled when the executioner went to bind her legs, and said, "Are you so bad as to expose me here?" He answered, "No, it is to bind you." "Do it then," she replied with firmness.

The inhuman monster when shewing her head to the people after her execution, slapped her twice on the cheek!! This was considered as such an atrocious act, that the very Tribunal who had condemned her to death, sentenced her executioner to twelve years imprisonment in irons.

The corpse of Mad. Corday was buried in the church-yard of St. Magdalaine, near the grave of LOUIS XVI, she having been executed in the same section with that unfortunate Monarch.