“I did not travel at all in France, and I have not been in Paris since the year when the Directoire was installed. I can furnish the clearest proofs of this fact. I was warned two years ago that the French police were watching me, and that they accused me of a number of intrigues, the greater part of which I had nothing whatever to do with, for I declare most solemnly that since the July or September of 1799 I have taken no part in any matter against France. I challenge the world to allege a single proceeding of mine, or a single line, against the interests of the French Government. The person who warned me that the French were watching me was the late Abbe Desmares, who lived in Offenburg; the warning was conveyed in an anonymous letter, to which he never owned up, but which I am convinced came from him.” As regards his sudden flight from Baden at the time of the approach of the French armies, the Baron explained that it was due to his desire to appease the fears of his mother-in-law, Madame de Gelb. Besides, they had only to question the authorities of Rothenburg, of Ulm, and of Nuremberg, and to obtain from them the counterfoils of his passports, in order to find an absolute confirmation of his statements. Then there was the question of his connection with Bourcard. What could the accused reply to that? Was it not at Ulm itself that he had met “Monsieur Bourcard, the father, who was an official from the Canton of Basle?” D’Auerweck’s answer was ready:-- “I have not spent more than twenty-four hours in Ulm. I had my dinner and supper there. The Austrian army had not at that time been forced back upon the town, which was being fortified. I only saw three officers at the _table d’hôte_, two of them Croatians and one German captain. I had no kind of business with any one. The man called Bourcard, a Swiss official, is quite unknown to me.” All his denials were very precise--and they were easily to be verified by the means he had suggested--so that there was now very little left of the terrible evidence which weighed so heavily upon the “little Baron,” or of “the crime of conspiracy against the security of the State,” with which he was charged. The slight clue, indicated by Bourcard’s arrest, but damaged by the papers seized at Elgersweier, was completely destroyed when the latter was declared to be mentally afflicted. In short, the tragic adventure which had overtaken d’Auerweck seemed to have been the result of the most vexatious misunderstanding; at least, that is what his cross-examiner expressed to him when he left him. “You can now consider your case to be finished, and you can see how it is possible to find one’s self compromised by unfortunate coincidences, _without any one being to blame_.”