CHAPTER XXXIII.
AFTER LONG WANDERINGS.
For the city of Paris the 16th of February, 1804, was a day of terror. The gates remained closed the whole day, military patrols passed through the streets, at whose corners the proclamations were posted, by which Murat, the governor of Paris, announced to the city that fifty assassins were within the walls, intent on taking the life of the First Consul.
The condemned surgeon, Querolle, had, meantime, made his confession, and named the heads of the conspiracy and their accomplices, and, only after all the persons mentioned by him were arrested, were the gates of the city opened.
A great trial then commenced of the men who had been sent by the
Bourbons for this nefarious purpose. Among the accused were General
Pichegru, the abettor of Georges, and General Moreau, the most
prominent of all.
The history of this trial was enveloped in obscurity, and it was faintly whispered that Pichegru had taken his own life in prison, and more faintly yet was it rumored that he was secretly dispatched in prison. And then, on one of these days, there were to be seen through all Paris only pale, sad faces, and a murmur of horror ran through all the streets and all the houses.
The story was current that the Duke d'Enghien, the grandson of the Prince de Conde, had been arrested by French soldiers at Baden, beyond the frontier, and had been brought to Vincennes; that he was accused there that same night of being an accomplice in a plot to take the life of the First Consul, and to disturb the peace of the republic; that he was quickly condemned by a court-martial, and shot before morning within the fortress of Vincennes.
The report was only too true. Bonaparte had kept his word; he had sacrificed a royal victim to the threatened cause of the republic; he would, by one deed of horror, fill the conspirators with fear, and cause them to abandon their bloody plans.
The means employed were cruel, but the end was reached which Bonaparte hoped to attain, and thenceforth there were no more conspiracies against the life of the First Consul, who, on the 18th of May, that same year, declared himself emperor.
A few days after this, the public trial of the accused began, which Fouche attended as the reinstalled minister of police, and over which Regnier presided in his new capacity of chief judge.