About the middle of February everything was ready and Moreau was arrested. On examination he weakly protested too much, and, being convicted from his own papers of inconsistency, was imprisoned. A few weeks later Pichegru was discovered by the aid of an informer, and he too was thrown into prison. Finally on March ninth Georges himself was seized in the streets of Paris after a desperate and bloody resistance. Soon the most popular picture in the shop windows of the city was a colored print representing the fifty "scoundrels" who had been found to be implicated in the conspiracy against the First Consul, and among the faces was an unmistakable likeness of Moreau. After a long trial, Georges and his accomplices were condemned and shot. Pichegru was found dead in his cell: although royalists confined in that adjoining afterward declared that they had heard a scuffle during the fatal night, there is no reasonable doubt that the prisoner committed suicide. The suspicions cast upon Moreau had utterly destroyed his popularity, and numerous addresses were sent in both from the army and by civilians denouncing him. Just before his trial he made the terrible mistake of sending to Bonaparte an exculpatory letter. This he did, instigated by his silly, ambitious wife, who seems in turn to have received the suggestion from Mme. Récamier. Rumor said that the notion originated with Fouché. The fact and nature of the appeal suggested guilt, but the first decision of the court was for acquittal. Popular feeling, however, ran so high that the First Consul compelled a reconsideration of the verdict, and the prisoner was sentenced to imprisonment for two years. Bonaparte, furious at this leniency, commuted the penalty to banishment. Moreau withdrew to America, where he remained until 1813, when he returned to take up arms against Napoleon before Dresden and was killed.