Bonaparte's first intention had been to seize Charles of Artois on his arrival in France; but a thorough supervision of the shore made it evident that the prince's caution had again got the better of his courage. Disappointed in this quarter, the police agents began to develop an intense activity on the German frontier. They professed to have discovered in Offenburg, with which the Duc d'Enghien was in constant communication, the existence of a body of emigrants who were not there. They reported that the young prince sometimes came down to Strasburg to attend the theater; they represented two harmless visitors at Ettenheim to be officers of the Prince of Condé arrived from England; still worse, they declared an emigrant friend of the duke who lived near by--the aged Marquis of Thuméry, whose name in German mouths had a remote resemblance to that of Dumouriez--to be that dangerous general himself. This occurred a few days before March ninth, and almost simultaneously Bonaparte received from an agent in Naples an extract from one of Dumouriez's letters to Nelson, urging a concerted plan not merely of defense, but of offense. No one then doubted that Dumouriez himself was on the Rhine, busy with Enghien in perfecting this very plan. Rumors of every sort became rife. It was known that the old intriguer General Willot was again in the South. Men declared that Berry was coming to Brittany, that Charles of Artois was perhaps already in Paris, that Enghien and Dumouriez were on the eastern frontier. It was a perfect investment of plots. When Georges was captured he asserted that he was the associate of princes, and then relapsed into a profound silence which he did not again break. His servant deposed that he had seen his master in communication with a distinguished-looking youth in the suburb of Chaillot. The police remembered that in January the Duc d'Enghien had solicited from the French ambassador at Vienna a passport to cross France, and, recalling the festivities at Ettenheim, believed they were but a pretext to cover the host's absence in Paris at a time which would coincide with the mysterious interview asserted to have taken place between Georges and the unknown stranger. This was the chain of evidence which convinced Bonaparte of Enghien's participation in the plot for his assassination. True, he had not been in actual danger, for the police had been alert; but did that alter the enormity of the Bourbon intrigues against his life? It was only too natural that the terror, hate, and fury accumulated in the mind of the First Consul should concentrate on an object within his reach.