On the day of execution, I wished to accompany my comrade on his last battle-field; I found no carriage, and hastened on foot to the Plaine de Grenelle. I arrived, all perspiring, a second too late: Armand had been shot against the surrounding wall of Paris. His skull was fractured; a butcher's dog was licking up his blood and his brains. I followed the cart which took the bodies of Armand and his two companions, plebeian and noble, Quintal and Goyon, to the Vaugirard Cemetery, where I had buried M. de La Harpe. I saw my cousin for the last time without being able to recognise him: the lead had disfigured him, he had no face left; I could not remark the ravages of years in it, nor even see death within its shapeless and bleeding orb; he remained young in my memory as at the time of the Siege of Thionville. He was shot on Good Friday: the crucifix appears to me at the extremity of all my misfortunes. When I walk on the rampart of the Plaine de Grenelle, I stop to look at the imprint of the firing, still marked upon the wall. If Bonaparte's bullets had left no other traces, he would no longer be spoken of. Strange concatenation of destinies! General Hulin, the Military Commander of Paris, appointed the commission which ordered Armand's brains to be blown out; he had, in former days, been appointed president of the commission which shattered the head of the Duc d'Enghien. Ought he not to have abstained, after his first misfortune, from all connection with courts-martial? And I have spoken of the death of the descendant of the Great Condé, without reminding General Hulin of the part which he played in the execution of the humble soldier, my kinsman. No doubt I, in my turn, had received from Heaven my commission to judge the judges of the tribunal of Vincennes. * The year 1811 was one of the most remarkable in my literary career[29]. I published the _Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem_[30], I accepted M. de Chénier's place at the Institute, and I began to write the Memoirs which I am now finishing. [Sidenote: The _Itinéraire._]