"I proceeded to examine the prisoner; I must say that he stood up to us with a noble confidence, spurned the accusation that he had been directly or indirectly implicated in a plot to assassinate the First Consul; but also admitted that he had borne arms against France, saying, with a courage and a pride which did not for a moment permit us, in his own interest, to shake him on this point, 'that he had supported the rights of his family, and that a Condé could never re-enter France without arms in his hands. My birth and convictions,' he added, 'make me for ever the enemy of your government.'
"His resolute confessions distressed his judges to the utmost. Ten times did we give him the opportunity to revise his statements, but throughout he persisted unshaken:
"'I perceive,' he said at intervals, 'the honourable intentions of the members of the commission; but I cannot avail myself of the terms they offer me.'
"And on being warned that military commissions judged without appeal:
"'I know that,' he replied, 'and I am quite aware of the danger which I am running; I only wish to have an interview with the First Consul.'"
Does the whole of our history contain a more pathetic page? New France sitting in judgment upon Old France, doing homage to her, presenting arms to her, saluting her colours, even while condemning her; the tribunal set up in the fortress in which the great Condé, when a prisoner, cultivated flowers; the General of the Grenadiers of Bonaparte's Guard seated face to face with the last descendant of the victor of Rocroi, feeling himself moved with admiration before the prisoner left without a defender and abandoned by the world, questioning him while the sound of the gravedigger digging the grave mingled with the young soldier's firm replies! A few days after the execution, General Hulin exclaimed:
"Oh, the brave young man! What courage! I should like to die like that!"
General Hulin, after speaking of the "minutes" and of the "second edition" of the judgment, says:
"As to the second edition, the only true one, as it did not convey the order for immediate execution, but only for the immediate reading of the judgment to the condemned man, the immediate execution could not have been the act of the commission, but only of those who took upon themselves the responsibility of hastening the fatal execution.
"Alas, our thoughts were engaged elsewhere! The judgment was scarcely signed when I began to write a letter in which, with the unanimous consent of the commission, I wrote to inform the First Consul of the desire which the Prince had expressed to have an interview with him, and also to entreat him to remit a penalty which the difficulty of our position did not permit us to elude.
"At that moment a man, who had never left the council-hall, and whom I would name at once did I not consider that, even when defending myself, I ought not to become an accuser, approached me and asked:
"'What are you doing there?'
"'I am writing to the First Consul,' I replied, 'to convey to him the wishes of the council and of the condemned man.'
"'Your business is done,' said he, taking the pen; 'this is now my affair.'
"I protest that I thought, as did several of my colleagues, that he meant to say, 'This is my affair, to inform the First Consul.' Taken in this sense, the reply left us the hope that the information would be none the less conveyed. And how could it have occurred to us that there was any one among us that had orders to neglect the formalities prescribed by law?"
The whole secret of this mournful catastrophe lies in this deposition. The veteran who, in daily expectation of dying on the battlefield, had learned from death the language of truth, concludes with these final words:
"I was talking of what had just happened, in the lobby adjoining the hall in which we had deliberated. Separate conversations were going forward; I was waiting for my carriage, which had not been allowed to drive into the inner court-yard, nor had those of the other members, thus delaying my departure and theirs. We were closed in, none of us having means to communicate with the outside, when an explosion was heard: a terrible noise that resounded at the bottom of our souls and froze them with terror and affright.
"Yes, I swear, in the name of all my colleagues, that this execution was not authorized by us: our judgment stated that a copy of it should be sent to the Minister for War, to the Chief Judge the Minister for Justice, and to the General-in-Chief the Governor of Paris.
"The order of execution could be given regularly only by the last-named; the copies had not yet been dispatched; they could not be finished before a portion of the day had elapsed. On my return to Paris I should have gone in search of the Governor, the First Consul, anybody! And suddenly a dreadful sound comes to reveal to us that the Prince no longer lives!
"We did not know whether he who so cruelly hastened on this fatal execution had orders: if he had none, he alone was responsible; if he had orders, the commission, knowing nothing of those orders, the commission, forcibly and illegally detained, the commission, whose last wish was for the Prince's safety, could neither foresee nor prevent their effect. It cannot be accused of the result.
"The lapse of twenty years has not allayed the bitterness of my regret!... Let me be accused of ignorance, of error, I acquiesce; let me be reproached with an obedience from which to-day, under similar circumstances, I should certainly know how to escape; with my attachment to a man whom I thought destined to promote the happiness of my country; with my loyalty to a government which I then considered lawful, and which had received my oath; but let some allowance be made to me, and also to my colleagues, for the fatal circumstances under which we were summoned to decide."
A weak defense, but you repent, general: peace be with you! If your sentence became the marching-orders of the last of the Condés, you will join the last conscript of our old mother-land in the advance-guard of the dead. The young soldier will gladly share his couch with the grenadier of the Old Guard: the France of Freiburg[622] and the France of Marengo will sleep together.
Enter the Duc de Rovigo.