f the
midnight trial, the sentence, and the execution. From the death-warrant
that came down ready filled from Paris, to the grave dug while the
victim was yet sleeping--he forgot nothing; and I own that my very blood
ran cold at the terrible atrocity of that dark murder. It was already
growing dusk when he had finished, and we parted hurriedly, as he was
obliged to be at a distant quarter of Paris by eight o'clock, again
agreeing to meet, as before, on the Quai Voltaire.

From that moment till we met the following day, the Duc d'Enghien was
never out of my thoughts, and I was impatient for the priest's presence
that I might tell him every little incident of our daily life at
Ettenheim, the topics we used to discuss, and the opinions he expressed
on various subjects. The eagerness of the cure to listen stimulated me
to talk on, and I not only narrated all that I was myself a witness
of, but various other circumstances which were told to me by the prince
himself; in particular, an incident he mentioned to me one day of being
visited by a stranger who came, introduced by a letter from a very
valued friend; his business being to propose to the duke a scheme for
the assassination of Bonaparte. At first the prince suspected the whole
as a plot against himself, but on further questioning he discovered that
the man's intentions were really such as he professed them, and offered
his services in the conviction that no price could be deemed too high
to reward him. It is needless to say that the offer was rejected with
indignation, and the prince dismissed the fellow with the threat of
delivering him up to the Government of the First Consul. The pastor
heard this anecdote with deep attention, and, for the first time,
diverging from his line of cautious reserve, he asked me various
questions as to when the occurrence had taken place, and where--if the
prince had communicated the circumstance to any other than myself, and
whether he had made it the subject of any correspondence. I knew little
more than I had already told him: that the offer was made while residing
at Ettenheim, and during the preceding year, were facts, however, that I
could remember.

'You are surprised, perhaps,' said he, 'at the interest I feel in all
this; but, strangely enough, there is here in Paris at this moment one
of the great 'Seigneurs' of the Ardeche; he has come up to the capital
for medical advice, and he was a great, perhaps the greatest friend of