“Business detained me unavoidably in Versailles.  Only on the 16th of January did I return to Paris, and consequently I had lost three or four scenes of this tragedy of ambition.  But on the 18th of January I went to the National Convention.  Ah, my friend, it is true, and the most infuriated republicans avow it also, a prince is but an ordinary man!  His head will as surely fall as that of another man, but whosoever decrees his death trembles at his own madness, and were he not urged by secret motives, his vote would die on his lips ere it was uttered.  I gazed with much curiosity at the fearless mortals who were about deciding the fate of their king.  I watched their looks.  I searched into their hearts.  The exceeding weightiness of the occasion had exalted them, intoxicated them, but within themselves they were full of fear in the presence of the grandeur of their victim.

“Had they dared retreat, the prince had been saved.  To his misfortune, they had argued within themselves, ’If his head falls not to-day, then we must soon give ours to the executioner’s stroke.’

“This was the prominent thought which controlled their vote.  No pen can adequately portray the feelings of the spectators in the galleries.  Silent, horrified, breathless, they gazed now on the accused, now on the defenders, now on the judges.

“The vote of Orleans sounded forth—­’Death!’ An electric shock could not have produced deeper impression.  The whole assembly, seized with an involuntary terror, rose.  The hall was filled with the murmurs of conflicting emotions.

“Only one man remained seated, immovable as a rock, and that one was myself.

“I ventured to reflect on the cause of such indifference (as that of Orleans) and I found that cause grounded on ambition, but this cannot justify the conduct of Orleans.  It is only thus that I could account for his action:  he seeks a throne, though without any right to it, and a throne cannot be won if the pretender renounces all claims to public respect and virtue.

“I will be brief, for to unfold a mournful story is not my business.  The king was sentenced to death; and if the 21st day of January does not inspire hatred for the name of France, a glorious name at least will have been added to the roll-call of her martyrs.

“What a city was Paris on that day!  The population seemed to be in a state of bewilderment; all seemed to exchange but gloomy looks, and one man hurried on to meet another without uttering a word.  The streets were deserted; houses and palaces were like graves.  The very air seemed to mirror the executioner.  In a word, the successor of St. Louis was led to the scaffold through the ranks of mourning automatons, that a short time before were his subjects.

“If any one is at your side, my friend, when you read this, conceal the following lines from him, even were he your father.  It is a stain on the stuff of which my character is made—­that Napoleon Bonaparte, for the sake of a human being’s destruction, should have been deeply moved and compelled to retire to his bed, is a thing barely credible, though it is true, and I cannot confess it without being ashamed of myself.