Examination of the captive.
"At the lodge we met again. M. de Querelles, pressing my hand, said to me in a loud voice, 'Prince, notwithstanding our defeat, I am still proud of what we have done.' They subjected me to an interrogation. I was calm and resigned. My part was taken. The following questions were proposed to me:
"'What has induced you to act as you have done?'
"'My political opinions,' I replied, 'and my desire to return to my country, from which a foreign invasion has exiled me. In 1830, I demanded to be treated as a simple citizen. They treated me as a pretender. Well, I have acted as a pretender.'
"'Did you wish,' it was asked, 'to establish a military government?'
"'I wished,' was my reply, 'to establish a government based on popular election.'
"'What would you have done if successful?'
"'I would have assembled a national Congress.'
Anxiety of Louis Napoleon for his companions.
"I declared then, that I alone having organized every thing, that I alone having induced others to join me, the whole responsibility should fall upon my head alone. Reconducted to prison, I threw myself upon a bed which had been prepared for me, and, notwithstanding my torments, sleep, which soothes suffering, in giving repose to the anguish of the soul, came to calm my senses. Repose does not fly from the couch of the unfortunate. It only avoids those who are consumed by remorse. But how frightful was my awaking. I thought that I had had a dreadful nightmare. The fate of the persons who were compromised caused me the greatest grief and anxiety. I wrote to General Voirol, to say to him that his honor obliged him to interest himself in behalf of Colonel Vaudrey; for it was, perhaps, the attachment of the colonel for him, and the regard with which he had treated him, which were the causes of the failure of my enterprise. I closed in beseeching him that all the rigor of the law might fall upon me, saying that I was the most guilty, and the only one to be feared.