It can scarcely be conceived that Napoleon could say at St. Helena, “Either they contrived to implicate the unfortunate Prince in their project, and so pronounced his doom, or, by omitting to inform him of what was going on, allowed him imprudently to slumber on the brink of a precipice; for he was only a stone’s cast from the frontier when they were about to strike the great blow in the name and for the interest of his family.”

This reasoning is not merely absurd, it is atrocious.  If the Duke was implicated by the confession of his accomplices, he should have been arrested and tried along with them.  Justice required this.  If he was not so implicated, where is the proof of his guilt?  Because some individuals, without his knowledge, plotted to commit a crime in the name of his family he was to be shot!  Because he was 130 leagues from the scene of the plot, and had no connection with it, he was to die!  Such arguments cannot fail to inspire horror.  It is absolutely impossible any reasonable person can regard the Due d’Enghien as an accomplice of Cadoudal; and Napoleon basely imposed on his contemporaries and posterity by inventing such falsehoods, and investing them with the authority of his name.

Had I been then in the First Consul’s intimacy I may aver, with as much confidence as pride, that the blood of the Due d’Enghien would not have imprinted an indelible stain on the glory of Bonaparte.  In this terrible matter I could have done what no one but me could even attempt, and this on account of my position, which no one else has since held with Bonaparte.  I quite admit that he would have preferred others to me, and that he would have had more friendship for them than for me, supposing friendship to be compatible with the character of Bonaparte, but I knew him better than any one else.  Besides, among those who surrounded him I alone could have permitted myself some return to our former familiarity on account of our intimacy of childhood.  Certainly, in a matter which permanently touched the glory of Bonaparte, I should not have been restrained by the fear of some transitory fit of anger, and the reader has seen that I did not dread disgrace.  Why should I have dreaded it?  I had neither portfolio, nor office, nor salary, for, as I have said, I was only with Bonaparte as a friend, and we had, as it were, a common purse.  I feel a conviction that it would have been very possible for me to have dissuaded Bonaparte from his fatal design, inasmuch as I positively know that his object, after the termination of the peace, was merely to frighten the emigrants, in order to drive them from Ettenheim, where great numbers, like the Due d’Enghien, had sought refuge.  His anger was particularly directed against a Baroness de Reith and a Baroness d’Ettengein, who had loudly vituperated him, and distributed numerous libels on the left bank of the Rhine.  At that period Bonaparte had as little design against the Due d’Enghien’s life as against that of any other emigrant.  He