"What can I do? I am nobody here now. Everything is done without my orders or participation: another man is in command here."
It was ten o'clock at night when General Hulin was relieved from his uncertainty by the communication of the documents. The hearing was opened at midnight, when the examination of the prisoner by the judge-advocate had been finished.
"The reading of the documents," says the president of the commission, "gave rise to an incident. We observed that, at the end of his examination before the judge-advocate, the Prince, before signing, wrote with his own hand some lines in which he expressed a wish to have an explanation with the First Consul. One of the members proposed that this request should be forwarded to the Government. The commission agreed; but at the same moment General ————, who had come and placed himself behind my chair, pointed out to us that this request was 'inopportune.' Moreover, we found no provision in the law authorizing us to suspend judgment. The commission therefore proceeded, reserving to itself the right to satisfy the prisoner's wishes after the trial."
*
So far General Hulin. Now, in a pamphlet by the Duc de Rovigo we read the following passage:
"There were, indeed, so many people that, as I arrived among the last, I found it difficult to make my way to the back of the president's chair, where I ultimately placed myself."
And so it was the Duc de Rovigo who had "placed himself behind the chair" of the president? But had he, or any other not forming one of the commission, the right to interfere in the proceedings of the commission, and to point out that a request was "inopportune"?
Let us hear the commander of the Grenadiers of the Old Guard speak of the courage of the young son of the Condés; he was a judge of it:
The Duc D'Enghien's courage.