But Mallet, who had himself gone to obtain possession of the headquarters in the place Vendôme, was unexpectedly resisted by General Hullin. Prepared for every circumstance, the desperado fired a pistol at the head of the general, and wounded him grievously; but in the meanwhile, he was himself recognised by Laborde, chief of the military police, who, incredulous that his late captive would have been selected by the Senate for the important duty which he was assuming, threw himself on Mallet, and made him prisoner. Thus ended the conspiracy.[240] The soldiers, who had been its blind instruments, were marched back to the barracks. Mallet, with twenty-four of his associates, most of them military men, were tried by a military tribunal, and twelve of them were shot in the plain of Grenelle, 30th of October. He met his death with the utmost firmness.[241] The sun was rising on the Hospital of Invalids, and the workmen were employed in gilding that splendid dome, for which Buonaparte had given express orders, in imitation, it was said, of those which he had seen in Moscow. The prisoner made some remarks upon the improvement which this would be to the capital. As he stepped towards the fatal ground, he said, mysteriously, but sternly, "You have got the tail, but you will not get the head." From this expression it has been gathered, that, as the conspiracy of the infernal machine, formed originally among the Jacobins, was executed by the Royalists, so this plot was the device of the Royalists, though committed to the execution of republican hands.[242] The truth, though it must be known to some now alive, has never been made public. This was the news which reached Buonaparte on the fatal 6th of November, betwixt Wiazma and Smolensk, and which determined his retreat from the army at Smorgoni, and his rapid journey to Paris. It was not so much the conspiracy which alarmed him, as the supineness or levity with which the nation, at least Paris, its capital, seemed ready to abandon the dynasty which he had hoped to render perpetual. He was even startled by the number of executions, and exclaimed against the indiscriminate severity with which so many officers had been led to death, although rather dupes than accomplices of the principal conspirator. "It is a massacre," he said; "a fusillade! What impression will it make on France?" [Sidenote: PARIS.]