His exculpation seems to have assumed a different and inconsistent character, according to the audience to whom it was stated. Among his intimate friends and followers, he appears to have represented the whole transaction as an affair not of his own device, but which was pressed upon him by surprise by his ministers. "I was seated," he said, "alone, and engaged in finishing my coffee, when they came to announce to me the discovery of some new machination. They represented it was time to put an end to such horrible attempts, by washing myself in the blood of one amongst the Bourbons; and they suggested the Duke d'Enghien as the most proper victim." Buonaparte proceeds to say, that he did not know exactly who the Duke d'Enghien was, far less that he resided so near France as to be only three leagues from the Rhine. This was explained. "In that case," said Napoleon, "he ought to be arrested." His prudent ministers had foreseen this conclusion. They had the whole scheme laid, and the orders ready drawn up for Buonaparte's signature; so that, according to this account, he was hurried into the enormity by the zeal of those about him, or perhaps in consequence of their private views and mysterious intrigues. He also charged Talleyrand with concealing from him a letter,[56] written by the unfortunate prisoner, in which he offered his services to Buonaparte, but which was intercepted by the minister. If this had reached him in time, he intimates that he would have spared the prince's life. To render this statement probable, he denies generally that Josephine had interested herself to the utmost to engage him to spare the duke; although this has been affirmed by the testimony of such as declared, that they received the fact from the Empress's own lips.[57]