In honor of the hot spring stuff I'll be getting soon, here's a little lesson in French history.
Charlotte Corday was a supporter of the French Revolution, a Girondiste. She believed that the true enemy of France was the tyrannical Jean-Paul Marat, a Jacobin journalist & a prominent figure in the Reign of Terror. Quietly & independently, she planned his murder. She made an appointment with Marat, under pretenses of revealing to him a Girondiste plot. She slipped in to see him & stabbed him thru the heart as he lay soaking in his bath (he had an icky skin condition). Initially most of France supported Marat & Corday was sentenced to death. But history has redeemed her; I see her as a romantic vigilante, a lone figure stealing away to Paris on her own, a knife concealed in her scarf, convinced of her own ideals.
A witness to her execution had this to say: "Her beautiful face was so calm, that one would have said she was a statue. Behind her, young girls held each other's hands as they danced. For eight days I was in love with Charlotte Corday."
