t's vessel hove in sight, he used his
utmost arts to imitate the signals that invited a landing. But the
crew were not to be lured to shore; and after fruitless endeavours he
returned to Paris--in time to take part in the murder of the Duc
d'Enghien.

Meanwhile the police were on the tracks of Pichegru and Georges. On
the last day of February the general was seized in bed in the house of
a treacherous friend: but not until the gates of Paris had been
closed, and domiciliary visits made, was Georges taken, and then only
after a desperate affray (March 9th). The arrest of the two Polignacs
and the Marquis de Riviere speedily followed.

Hitherto Napoleon had completely outwitted his foes. He knew well
enough that he was in no danger.

"I have run no real risks," he wrote to Melzi, "for the police had
its eyes on all these machinations, and I have the consolation of
not finding reason to complain of a single man among all those I
have placed in this huge administration, Moreau stands alone."
[295]

But now, at the moment of victory, when France was swelling with rage
against royalist assassins, English gold, and Moreau's treachery, the
First Consul was hurried into an enterprise which gained him an
imperial crown and flecked the purple with innocent blood.

There was living at Ettenheim, in Baden, not far from the Rhine, a
young prince of the House of Conde, the Duc d'Enghien. Since the
disbanding of the corps of Conde he had been tranquilly enjoying the
society of the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, to whom he had been
secretly married. Her charms, the attractions of the chase, the
society of a small circle of French _emigres_, and an occasional
secret visit to the theatre at Strassburg, formed the chief diversions
to an otherwise monotonous life, until he was fired with the hope of a
speedy declaration of war by Austria and Russia against Napoleon.
Report accused him of having indiscreetly ventured in disguise far
into France; but he indignantly denied it. His other letters also
prove that he was not an accomplice of the Cadoudal-Pichegru
conspiracy. But Napoleon's spies gave information which seemed to
implicate him in that enterprise. Chief among them was Mehee, who, at
the close of February, hovered about Ettenheim and heard that the duke
was often absent for many days at a time.

Napoleon received this news on March 1st, and ordered the closest
investigation to be made. One of his spies report