Steeped in the maxims of the imperial government, the Duc de Rovigo thought that those maxims could be as well applied to the legitimate throne; he felt convinced that his pamphlet[623] would reopen the doors of the Tuileries to him. It is partly by the light of this publication that posterity will trace the outlines of the phantoms of grief. I offered to hide the suspect who had come to ask shelter of me during the night; he did not accept the protection of my house. M. de Rovigo tells the story of the departure of M. de Caulaincourt[624], whom he does not mention by name: he speaks of the kidnapping at Ettenheim, the prisoner's passing through Strasburg, and his arrival at Vincennes. After an expedition on the coast of Normandy, General Savary had returned to the Malmaison. He was summoned, at five o'clock in the evening of the 19th of March 1804, to the closet of the First Consul, who handed him a sealed letter to be carried to General Murat, the Governor of Paris. He flew to the general, crossing with the Minister of Foreign Relations on his way, and received the order to take the Gendarmerie d'Élite and go to Vincennes. He went there at eight o'clock in the evening, in time to see the members of the commission arrive. He soon made his way into the hall where the Prince was being tried, at one o'clock in the morning of the 21st, and took a seat behind the president. He gives the Duc d'Enghien's replies in about the same terms as they are given in the report of the one sitting. He told me that the Prince, after making his final explanations, with a quick movement took off his cap, laid it on the table and, with the air of a man resigning his life, said to the president: [Sidenote: His pitiful defense.] "I have nothing more to say, sir." M. de Rovigo insists upon it that this sitting was in no way secret: "The doors of the hall," he declares, "were open and free to any who cared to attend _at that hour._" M. Dupin had already pointed out the confusion of this argument. In this connection M. Achille Roche[625], who appears to write for M. de Talleyrand, exclaims: "The sitting was in no way secret! At midnight! Held in the inhabited portion of the castle, in the inhabited portion of a prison! Who, then, was present at this sitting? Gaolers, soldiers, executioners!" * No one was in a position to give more exact details concerning the moment and place of the thunder-clap than M. le Duc de Rovigo; let us hear what he says: "After sentence had been pronounced, I withdrew with the officers of my corps, who like myself had been present during the proceedings, and joined the troops stationed on the esplanade of the castle. The officer who commanded the infantry of my legion came and told me, with deep emotion, that a piquet of men was required of him to execute the sentence of the military commission: "'Give it,' I replied. "'But where am I to post it?' "'Where you may be sure to hurt nobody.'