received orders, to blow up the powder magazine at Grenelle,
and refused to execute them. "I should be sorry," said he, "to
sacrifice by way of example a worthy man; but an impostor like this
deserves no pity. Write to the minister at war, to have him taken
before a military commission, and tried as an instigator to civil war,
and to the overturning of the established government."

The Emperor, turning towards me, added: "How is it, that the absurd
fable of this man has not been contradicted?"--"Sire," I answered,
"Gourgaud has often assured me, that all your officers had publicly
avowed their sentiments on it; and that it had been the intention of
several generals, and particularly of general Tirlet, to unmask this
odious lie to the King; but...." "Enough," said the Emperor, "I make
no account of intentions: send the order, and let me hear no more of
him."

I lost sight of this business: but I have since learned, that M. de
Lascours was acquitted.

If M. de Lascours had been so unfortunate, as to fall a victim to his
zeal, the Emperor would have been accused of barbarity; yet he was
neither cruel nor sanguinary, for cruelty must not be confounded with
severity. I know but one single act, the result of the most fatal
counsels, for which, alas! he may be reproached by posterity[102].
Who besides have been the victims of his pretended ferocity? Will the
death of Georges, and his obscure accomplices, be considered as a
judicial murder? Are the infernal machine and its terrible ravages
forgotten? Georges, at the head of the Chouans, was a misled
Frenchman, to be pitied, and to be spared. Georges, at the head of a
band of assassins, was undeserving of pity, and the cause of
morality, as well as of humanity, demanded his punishment.

[Footnote 102: Napoleon, during the hundred days,
entertained for a moment the design of issuing a
demi-official note on the arrest and death of the
Duke of Enghien.

The following memorandums are taken from papers,
from which the note was to have been compiled.

Reports from the police had informed Napoleon, that
there were conspiracies of the royalists beyond the
Rhine, and that they were conducted and supported,

1st, by Messrs. Drake and Spencer Smith, the
English ministers at S