“I am lost, then!” exclaimed Murat. There were tears in his eyes, and Nunziante himself was unable to speak for emotion, but he brought his prisoner pen and paper.
“My dear Caroline,” wrote Murat. “My last hour has struck. Within a few moments I shall have ceased to live and you will have lost your husband. Do not forget me! My life has never been stained by an act of injustice. Adieu, my Achilles, my Letitia, my Lucian, and my Louisa. Show yourselves worthy of me. I leave you without a kingdom, without wealth, in the midst of many enemies. Be united and rise above misfortune. Look upon yourselves as you are, not as you might be, and God will bless your humility. Do not curse my memory. Know that my greatest misery in this last hour of my life is to die far from my children. Receive your father’s blessing—receive my embraces and my tears. May the memory of your unhappy father be ever present with you.
“Joachim.”
In the letter he placed some locks of hair.
With infamous cynicism, a defender had been appointed for him before the court, but Murat, rising above his misery, rejected the melancholy foolery with a contempt the expression of which must have cut into the horny feelings of his judges and left them sore for many a long day.
He was their King, he told them, but went on to observe: “If I am to be tried in the light of a Marshal of France, I may be tried by a Council of Marshals; if as a General, by Generals. But before I descend so low as to submit to the decision of the judges who have been selected many pages must be torn from the history of Europe!”
To Storace, who had been appointed to defend him, and who now begged to be allowed to do what he could, Joachim replied: “You cannot save my life. Allow me to save my dignity. I forbid you to speak in my defence.”
Storace, who, with Stratti and Nunziante, appears as one of the three rays of human light in the whole horrid affair, left him sadly, as the magistrate entered and with gusto proceeded to torment the victim with questions. But he did not get very far before Joachim turned upon him.
“I am Joachim Murat,” he replied, “King of the Two Sicilies and your King. Leave me and relieve my prison of your presence!”
It seems to have occurred to him that possibly Ferdinand was revenging himself now for the murder of the Duc d’Enghien—for he mentioned the tragedy and swore to Stratti that he had had no hand in it. He had been Governor of Paris when the young Duke was kidnapped and shot, but he could have done nothing to save him. Murat was speaking the truth. The Duc d’Enghien was murdered by Talleyrand, who devised the whole affair and drove Napoleon into giving the order by suggesting the result of it upon the Royalists, who had, then, made several attempts upon the First Consul’s life.