Two days later, on the 21st of March[587], I rose early, for the sake of a memory that was sad and dear to me. M. de Montmorin had built himself a house at the corner of the Rue Plumet, on the new Boulevard des Invalides. In the garden of that house, which was sold during the Revolution, Madame de Beaumont, then almost a child, had planted a cypress-tree, and she had sometimes taken pleasure in showing it to me as we passed: it was to this cypress-tree, of which I alone knew the origin and the history, that I went to bid adieu. It still exists, but it is pining away, and scarce rises to the level of the casement beneath which a hand which has vanished loved to tend it. I distinguish that poor tree from among three or four others of its species; it seems to know me and to rejoice when I approach; mournful breezes bend its yellowed head a little towards me, and it murmurs at the window of the deserted room: a mysterious intelligence reigns between us, which will cease when one or the other shall have fallen. Having paid my pious tribute, I went down the Boulevard and Esplanade des Invalides, crossed the Pont Louis XV. and the Tuileries Gardens, which I left, near the Pavilion Marsan, by the gate which now opens into the Rue de Rivoli. There, between eleven and twelve o'clock in the morning, I heard a man and a woman crying official news; passers-by were stopping, suddenly petrified by these words: "Verdict of the special military commission summoned at Vincennes, condemning to pain of death THE MAN KNOWN AS LOUIS ANTOINE HENRI DE BOURBON, BORN ON THE 2ND OF AUGUST 1772 AT CHANTILLY." [Sidenote: Death of the Duc D'Enghien.] This cry fell upon me like a thunderbolt; it changed my life, as it changed Napoleon's. I returned home; I said to Madame Chateaubriand: "The Duc d'Enghien has been shot." I sat down to a table and began to write my resignation[588]. Madame de Chateaubriand raised no objection, and with great courage watched me writing. She did not blind herself to my danger: General Moreau and Georges Cadoudal were being prosecuted[589]; the lion had tasted blood, this was not the moment to irritate him.