The Emperor, turning towards me, added: "How is it, that the absurd fable of this man has not been contradicted?"--"Sire," I answered, "Gourgaud has often assured me, that all your officers had publicly avowed their sentiments on it; and that it had been the intention of several generals, and particularly of general Tirlet, to unmask this odious lie to the King; but...." "Enough," said the Emperor, "I make no account of intentions: send the order, and let me hear no more of him." I lost sight of this business: but I have since learned, that M. de Lascours was acquitted. If M. de Lascours had been so unfortunate, as to fall a victim to his zeal, the Emperor would have been accused of barbarity; yet he was neither cruel nor sanguinary, for cruelty must not be confounded with severity. I know but one single act, the result of the most fatal counsels, for which, alas! he may be reproached by posterity[102]. Who besides have been the victims of his pretended ferocity? Will the death of Georges, and his obscure accomplices, be considered as a judicial murder? Are the infernal machine and its terrible ravages forgotten? Georges, at the head of the Chouans, was a misled Frenchman, to be pitied, and to be spared. Georges, at the head of a band of assassins, was undeserving of pity, and the cause of morality, as well as of humanity, demanded his punishment. [Footnote 102: Napoleon, during the hundred days, entertained for a moment the design of issuing a demi-official note on the arrest and death of the Duke of Enghien. The following memorandums are taken from papers, from which the note was to have been compiled. Reports from the police had informed Napoleon, that there were conspiracies of the royalists beyond the Rhine, and that they were conducted and supported, 1st, by Messrs. Drake and Spencer Smith, the English ministers at Stutgard, and at Munich; 2dly, by the Duke d'Enghien and General Dumourier: The central point of the former was at Offenbourg; where were some emigrants, some English agents, and the Baroness de Reich, so noted for her political intrigues: The central point of the latter was given out to be at the castle of Ettenheim, where the Duke d'Enghien, Dumourier, an English colonel, and several agents of the Bourbons, resided. The hundred and twenty thousand francs given by the minister Drake to the Sieur Rosey, chef de bataillon, to excite an insurrection, The declarations of Mehee;