European indignation.
The hatred of the Cabinet of Berlin arose from the same origin: I have spoken of the noble letter of M. de Laforest, in which he told M. de Talleyrand of the effect which the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had produced at the Court of Potsdam. Madame de Staël was in Prussia when the news from Vincennes arrived:
"I was living in Berlin," he said, "on the Spree Quay, and my apartment was on the ground floor. At eight o'clock one morning, they woke me to tell me that Prince Louis Ferdinand[641] was under my windows on horse-back, and asked me to come and speak to him....
"'Do you know,' he asked, 'that the Duc d'Enghien has been kidnapped on Baden territory, handed over to a military commission, and shot within four-and-twenty hours after his arrival in Paris?'
"'What nonsense!' I replied. 'Do you not see that this can only be a rumour spread by the enemies of France?'
"In fact, I admit that my hatred of Bonaparte, strong as it was, did not go so far as to make me credit the possibility of his committing so great a crime.
"'As you doubt what I tell you,' replied Prince Louis, 'I will send you the Moniteur, in which you can read the sentence.'
"With these words he left me, and the expression of his face was the presage of vengeance or death. A quarter of an hour later, I had in my hands the Moniteur of the 21st of March (30 Pluviôse), which contained a sentence of death passed by the military commission, sitting at Vincennes, upon 'the man called Louis d'Enghien!' It was thus that Frenchmen described the descendant of heroes who were the glory of their country! Even if one were to abjure all the prejudices in favour of illustrious birth which the return of monarchical forms would necessarily recall, was it possible thus to blaspheme the memories of the Battle of Lens[642] and of Rocroi? This Bonaparte, who has won so many battles, does not even know how to respect them; for him there is neither past nor future; his imperious and scornful soul will recognise nothing for opinion to hold sacred; he admits only respect for the force in power. Prince Louis wrote to me, beginning his note with these words: 'The man called Louis of Prussia begs Madame de Staël,' etc. He felt the insult offered to the Blood Royal whence he sprang, to the memory of the heroes among whom he was longing to enroll himself. How, after this horrible deed, could a single king in Europe ally himself with such a man? Necessity, you will say. There is a sanctuary in the soul to which its empire may not penetrate; were this not so, what would virtue be upon this earth? A liberal amusement, suited only to the peaceful leisure of private men[643]."
This resentment on the part of the Prince, for which he was to pay with his life, was still lasting when the Prussian Campaign opened in 1806. Frederic William, in his manifesto of the 9th of October, said:
"The Germans have not revenged the death of the Duc d'Enghien; but the memory of that crime will never fade among them."
These historical particulars, rarely observed, deserved to be so; for they explain enmities of which one would be puzzled to discover the primary cause elsewhere, and at the same time they disclose the steps by which Providence leads a man's destiny from the crime to the expiation.
*
Happy, at least, my life, which was not troubled by fear, nor attacked by contagion, nor carried away by examples! The satisfaction which I experience to-day at what I did then is my warrant that my conscience is no illusion. More content than all those potentates, than all those nations fallen at the feet of the glorious soldier, I turn again with pardonable pride to this page, which I have retained as my only belonging and which I owe only to myself. In 1807, with my heart still moved by the murder which I have just related, I wrote the following lines; they caused the Mercure to be suppressed, and jeopardized my liberty once more:
I utter my protest.
"When, amid the silence of abjection, no sound is heard save that of the chains of the slave and the voice of the informer; when all tremble before the tyrant, and when it is as dangerous to incur his favour as to deserve his displeasure, the historian appears, entrusted with the vengeance of the nations. Nero prospers in vain, Tacitus already is born within the Empire; he grows up unknown beside the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just Providence has surrendered to an obscure child the glory of the master of the world. If the historian's part is fine, it is often dangerous; but there are altars such as that of honour which, although deserted, demand further sacrifices: the god is not annihilated because the temple is empty. Wherever there remains a chance for fortune, there is no heroism in trying it; magnanimous actions are those of which adversity and death are the foreseen result After all, what do reverses matter, if our name, pronounced by posterity, makes one generous heart beat two thousand years after our life[644]?"