Maubreuil was led in. He had scarcely entered the prisoner's dock before he violently pushed away the guard and cried out, "You have no right to maltreat me like this, warders; you have made me suffer quite enough the three years I have been in prison. It is a dastardly wicked thing! We are here before justice and not before the police! Let me rather be shot immediately than delivered over longer to the tortures of which I have been the victim for three years! No, never was greater cruelty exercised in the Prussian fortresses, in the dungeons of the Inquisition under the foundations of Venice! I am cut off from the world; my complaints are hushed up; my lawyer is forbidden to print and distribute my defence. I here express before all, my gratitude for his zeal and his devotion; but I am in despair that he has not based his defence on the information I have given him: he has not dared to do so." Here silence was again imposed on the prisoner. The president then read the sentence, pronouncing that the _tribunal de police correctionnelle_ declared its incompetence, and sent the prisoner to the assizes, on the ground that if the facts which had been laid bare were proved, they constituted a crime, and not a simple misdemeanour. When the prisoner heard the sentence of incompetence to deal with the case pronounced he sighed deeply, and his face, changed by a long captivity, expressed dejection and despair. But he rallied his strength and cried-- "The blood of twenty-nine of my relations was shed for the Bourbons in Vendée and at Quiberon! I too am to be sacrificed to them in my turn! They wish to destroy me, my groans are to be stifled. I am to be made out a madman! It is a diabolical plot! No, I am not mad; no, I was not mad when my services were required by them! Frenchmen, I repeat to you what I told you at the last sitting: they asked me to take the life of Napoleon! Write to Vienna, to Munich, to St. Petersburg. Yes, yes,"--pushing away the warders, who sought to impose silence upon him,--"yes, they demanded of me the blood of Napoleon.... _M. le président_, they have handled me with violence! _M. le président_, they will maltreat me! _M. le président_, they will put my feet in irons! But, come what may, to the last moment I will proclaim it: they asked me to take Napoleon's life! the Bourbons are assassins!..." These last words were pronounced by the accused as he struggled with the police, while they led him away by force. Here the shorthand report concludes: I have not altered a word of the statement, a certified copy of which is under my eyes. On the 18th of the following December, Maubreuil was arraigned to appear before the Court of Assizes at Douai, and succeeded in escaping before the trial. On 6 May 1818, judgment was issued, condemning him to five years' imprisonment by default and to pay five hundred francs fine, for being a dishonest trustee.