"I entered the palace," Joseph writes in his dispatch to Talleyrand; "the walks were covered with blood, with the dying, dragging themselves along, and with the wounded, loudly groaning. We closed the three gates fronting upon the street. The lamentations of the betrothed of Duphot, that young hero who, constantly in the advance-guard of the armies of the Pyrenees and of Italy, had always been victorious, butchered by cowardly brigands; the absence of her mother and of her brother, whom curiosity had drawn from the palace to see the monuments of Rome; the fusillade which continued in the streets, and against the gates of the palace; the outer apartments of the vast palace of Corsini, which I inhabited, thronged with people of whose intentions we were ignorant: these circumstances and many others rendered the scene inconceivably cruel." Joseph immediately summoned the servants of the household around him. Three had been wounded. The French officers, impelled by an instinct of national pride, heroically emerged from the palace, with the aid of these domestics, to rescue the body of their unfortunate general. Taking a circuitous route, notwithstanding the fusillade which was still continued, they succeeded in reaching the spot of his cowardly assassination. There they found the remains of this truly noble young man, despoiled, pierced with bullets, clotted with blood, and covered with stones which had been thrown upon him. It was six o'clock in the evening. Two hours had elapsed since the assassination of Duphot; and yet not a member of the Roman Government had appeared at the palace to bring protection or to restore order. Joseph was, properly, very indignant, and resolved at once to call for his passports and leave the city. He wrote a brief note to the Secretary of State, and sent it by a faithful domestic, who succeeded in the darkness in passing through the crowd of soldiers. As the firing was still continued, Joseph and his friends anxiously watched the messenger from the attic windows of the palace till he was lost from sight.