The grenadier Geoffroy, in his evidence, characterises in these words the attempt made on his mess by an officer and a sergeant who were in the plot: "The sergeant had a bottle in his hand, and the officer a sabre." In these few words is the whole 2nd of December.
Let us proceed:—
"Next day, June 17, the commandant, Mésonan, who I thought had gone, entered my room, announced by my aide-de-camp. I said to him, 'Commandant, I thought you were gone!'—'No, general, I am not gone. I have a letter to give you.'—'A letter? And from whom?'—'Read it, general.'
"I asked him to take a seat; I took the letter, but as I was opening it, I saw that the address was—à M. le Commandant Mésonan. I said to him: 'But, my dear Commandant, this is for you, not for me.'—'Read it, General!'—I opened the letter and read thus:—
"'My dear Commandant, it is most essential that you should immediately see the general in question; you know he is a man of resolution, on whom one may rely. You know also that he is a man whom I have put down to be one day a marshal of France. You will offer him, from me, 100,000 francs; and you will ask him into what banker's or notary's hands I shall pay 300,000 francs for him, in the event of his losing his command.'
"I stopped here, overcome with indignation; I turned over the leaf, and I saw that the letter was signed, 'Louis Napoleon.'
"I handed the letter back to the commandant, saying that it was a ridiculous and abortive affair."
Who speaks thus? General Magnan. Where? In the open Court of Peers. Before whom? Who is the man seated on the prisoners' bench, the man whom Magnan covers with "scorn," the man towards whom Magnan turns his "indignant" face? Louis Bonaparte.
Money, and with money gross debauchery: such were his means of action in his three enterprises at Strasburg, at Boulogne, at Paris. Two failures and a success. Magnan, who refused at Boulogne, sold himself at Paris. If Louis Bonaparte had been defeated on the 2nd of December, just as there were found on him, at Boulogne, the 500,000 francs he had brought from London, so there would have been found at the Élysée, the twenty-five millions taken from the Bank.
There has, then, been in France,—one must needs speak of these things coolly,—in France, that land of the sword, that land of cavaliers, the land of Hoche, of Drouot, and of Bayard—there has been a day, when a man, surrounded by five or six political sharpers, experts in ambuscades, and grooms of coups d'état, lolling in a gilded office, his feet on the fire-dogs, a cigar in his mouth, placed a price upon military honour, weighed it in the scales like a commodity, a thing buyable and sellable, put down the general at a million, the private at a louis, and said of the conscience of the French army: "That is worth so much."