these details, and destroy
for ever an error, which malevolence and the spirit
of party have laid hold of, in order to tarnish the
political life of one of the men, who do the
greatest honour to the imperial government and to
France.

M. de Caulincourt would not have been less
irreproachable, had he committed the fatal seizure
ascribed to him: he would have done his duty, as
General Ord** did his. A soldier is not the judge
of the orders he is to execute. The great Conde,
covered with the laurels of Rocroy, Fribourg,
Norlinguen, and Lenz, was arrested, in spite of the
faith pledged to him, in the apartments of the
King; yet neither his contemporaries, nor
posterity, have charged Marshal d'Albret with this
arrest as a crime.]

Will it be said, that Pichegru was strangled by his orders? The
designs of Pichegru were so clearly substantiated, and the laws so
clear, that he could not escape the scaffold: why, then, should he
cause him to be murdered? The greatest criminals themselves do not
commit useless crimes. Were apprehensions entertained of the
disclosures he might make?... What could he disclose to the French
people? That Napoleon aspired to the throne? Of this no one was
ignorant.

A man, that Napoleon had reason to dread, was Moreau: was his life
attempted? Yet it was less dangerous, to assassinate him, than to send
to a tribunal, where guilt presided, a warrior at that time so dear to
France and to the army.

No, Napoleon was not cruel, he was not sanguinary. If he were
sometimes inexorable, it was because there are circumstances, in which
the monarch must shut his heart to compassion, and leave the law free
to act: but, if he knew how to punish, he was also capable of
pardoning; and, at the moment when he gave up Georges[103] to the
sword of justice, he spared the lives of Messrs. de Polignac and the
Marquis de Riviere, whose courage and zeal he respected.

[Footnote 103: I have been assured, that Georges
was three times offered his pardon by Napoleon, if
he would promise, not to engage in any conspiracy
again; and that it was not til