On the eve of causing himself to be crowned by the same men who had proscribed royalty, and of re-establishing a noblesse composed of the partisans of equality, he believed it necessary to satisfy them by the horrible guarantee of the assassination of a Bourbon.  In the conspiracy of Pichegru and Moreau, Bonaparte knew that the republicans and royalists had united against him; this strange coalition, of which the hatred he inspired was the sole bond, had astonished him.  Several persons who held places under him, were marked out for the service of that revolution which was to break his power, and it was of consequence to him that henceforward all his agents should consider themselves ruined beyond redemption, if their master was overturned; and, finally, above all, he wished at the moment of his seizing the crown to inspire such terror, that no one in future should think of resisting him.  Every thing was violated in this single action:  the European law of nations, the constitution such as it then existed, public shame, humanity, and religion.  Nothing could go beyond it; every thing was therefore to be dreaded from the man who had committed it.  It was thought for some time in France, that the murder of the Duke d’Enghien was the signal of a new system of revolution, and that the scaffolds were about to be re-erected.  But Bonaparte only wished to teach the French one thing, and that was, that he dared do every thing; in order that they might give him credit for the evil he abstained from, as others get it for the good they do.  His clemency was praised when he allowed a man to live; it had been seen how easy it was for him to cause one to perish.  Russia, Sweden, and above all England, complained of this violation of the Germanic empire; the German princes themselves were silent, and the weak sovereign on whose territory the outrage had been committed, requested in a diplomatic note, that nothing more should be said of the event that had happened.  Did not this gentle and veiled expression, applied to such an act, characterize the meanness of those princes, who made their sovereignty consist only in their revenues, and treated a state as a capital, of which they must get the interest paid as quietly as they could?

CHAPTER 16.

Illness and death of M. Necker.

My father lived long enough to hear of the assassination of the Duke d’Enghien, and the last lines which I received, that were traced by his own hand, expressed his indignation at this atrocity.

In the midst of the most complete security, I found one day upon my table two letters, announcing to me that my father was dangerously ill.  The courier who brought them was concealed from me, as well as the news of his death.  I set out immediately with the strongest hope, which I preserved in spite of all the circumstances which ought to have extinguished it.  When the real truth became known to me at