"The blood of twenty-nine of my relations was shed for the Bourbons in Vendée and at Quiberon! I too am to be sacrificed to them in my turn! They wish to destroy me, my groans are to be stifled. I am to be made out a madman! It is a diabolical plot! No, I am not mad; no, I was not mad when my services were required by them! Frenchmen, I repeat to you what I told you at the last sitting: they asked me to take the life of Napoleon! Write to Vienna, to Munich, to St. Petersburg. Yes, yes,"—pushing away the warders, who sought to impose silence upon him,—"yes, they demanded of me the blood of Napoleon.... M. le président, they have handled me with violence! M. le président, they will maltreat me! M. le président, they will put my feet in irons! But, come what may, to the last moment I will proclaim it: they asked me to take Napoleon's life! the Bourbons are assassins!..."
These last words were pronounced by the accused as he struggled with the police, while they led him away by force.
Here the shorthand report concludes: I have not altered a word of the statement, a certified copy of which is under my eyes.
On the 18th of the following December, Maubreuil was arraigned to appear before the Court of Assizes at Douai, and succeeded in escaping before the trial. On 6 May 1818, judgment was issued, condemning him to five years' imprisonment by default and to pay five hundred francs fine, for being a dishonest trustee.
Maubreuil, having taken refuge in England, returned on purpose to deal M. de Talleyrand the terrible blow which struck him down, on the steps of the church of Saint-Denis, during the funeral procession of Louis XVIII.
"Oh! what a cuff!" exclaimed the prince, as he picked himself up.
How can people deny M. de Talleyrand's presence of mind after that! M. Dupin could not have done better.
This obscure, strange, mysterious Maubreuil affair did the Bourbons of the Restoration the greatest possible harm. To the Count d'Artois and M. de Talleyrand it was what the affair of the necklace was to Marie-Antoinette and the Cardinal de Rohan—that is to say, one of those hidden springs from which revolutions derive power for the future; one of those weapons the more dangerous and terrible and deadly for being dipped so long in the poison of calumny.
[1] We see by this that, according to Maubreuil, it was M. de Talleyrand himself with whom he had had to deal. We have not wished to endorse the accusation blindly and, in our account, we have accepted the intermediate agency of Roux-Laborie.