When he died, she looked upon her spiritual guide's death as a direct warning from God, that nothing could relieve her of her oath.
She had watched the turmoils of the Revolution through the attic window of her tiny apartment in Paris.

Waited upon by faithful Petronelle, she had been forced to live on the savings of that worthy old soul, as all her property, all the Marny estates, the _dot_ she took with her to the convent--everything, in fact--had been seized by the Revolutionary Government, self appointed to level fortunes, as well as individuals.
From that attic window she had seen beautiful Paris writhing under the pitiless lash of the demon of terror which it had provoked; she had heard the rumble of the tumbrils, dragging day after day their load of victims to the insatiable maker of this Revolution of Fraternity--the Guillotine.
She had seen the gay, light-hearted people of this Star-City turned to howling beasts of prey, its women changed to sexless vultures, with murderous talons implanted in everything that is noble, high or beautiful.
She was not twenty when the feeble, vacillating monarch and his imperious consort were dragged back--a pair of humiliated prisoners--to the capital from which they had tried to flee.
Two years later, she had heard the cries of an entire people exulting over a regicide.

Then the murder of Marat, by a young girl like herself, the pale-faced, large-eyed Charlotte, who had commited a crime for the sake of a conviction.

"Greater than Brutus!" some had called her.
Greater than Joan of Arc, for it was to a mission of evil and of sin that she was called from the depths of her Breton village, and not to one of glory and triumph.
"Greater than Brutus!" Juliette followed the trial of Charlotte Corday with all the passionate ardour of her exalted temperament.
Just think what an effect it must have had upon the mind of this young girl, who for nine years--the best of her life--had also lived with the idea of a sublime mission pervading her very soul.
She watched Charlotte Corday at her trial.

Conquering her natural repulsion for such scenes, and the crowds which usually watched them, she had forced her way into the foremost rank of the narrow gallery which overlooked the Hall of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
She heard the indictment, heard Tinville's speech and the calling of the witnesses.
"All this is unnecessary.