The court then passed sentence, and, “in accordance with article (blank) of the law (blank) to the following effect (blank) condemned him to suffer death.”  Ashamed, as it would seem, of this clumsy condemnation, Hulin was writing to Bonaparte to request for the condemned man the personal interview which he craved, when Savary took the pen from his hands, with the words:  “Your work is done:  the rest is my business."[302] The duke was forthwith led out into the moat of the castle, where a few torches shed their light on the final scene of this sombre tragedy:  he asked for a priest, but this was denied him:  he then bowed his head in prayer, lifted those noble features towards the soldiers, begged them not to miss their aim, and fell, shot through the heart.  Hard by was a grave, which, in accordance with orders received on the previous day, the governor had caused to be made ready; into this the body was thrown pell-mell, and the earth closed over the remains of the last scion of the warlike House of Conde.

Twelve years later loving hands disinterred the bones and placed them in the chapel of the castle.  But even then the world knew not all the enormity of the crime.  It was reserved for clumsy apologists like Savary to provoke replies and further investigations.  The various excuses which throw the blame on Talleyrand, and on everyone but the chief actor, are sufficiently disposed of by the ex-Emperor’s will.  In that document Napoleon brushed away the excuses which had previously been offered to the credulity or malice of his courtiers, and took on himself the responsibility for the execution: 

“I caused the Duc d’Enghien to be arrested and judged, because it was necessary for the safety, the interest, and the honour of the French people when the Comte d’Artois, by his own confession, was supporting sixty assassins at Paris.  In similar circumstances I would act in the same way again."[303]

The execution of the Duc d’Enghien is one of the most important incidents of this period, so crowded with momentous events.  The sensation of horror which it caused can be gauged by the mental agony of Madame de Remusat and of others who had hitherto looked on Bonaparte as the hero of the age and the saviour of the country.  His mother hotly upbraided him, saying it was an atrocious act, the stain of which could never be wiped out, and that he had yielded to the advice of enemies’ eager to tarnish his fame.[304] Napoleon said nothing, but shut himself up in his cabinet, revolving these terrible words, which doubtless bore fruit in the bitter reproaches later to be heaped upon Talleyrand for his share in the tragedy.  Many royalists who had begun to rally to his side now showed their indignation at the deed.  Chateaubriand, who was about to proceed as the envoy of France to the Republic of Valais, at once offered his resignation and assumed an attitude of covert defiance.  And that was the conduct of all royalists who were not dazzled by the glamour of success or cajoled by Napoleon’s favours.  Many of his friends ventured to show their horror of this Corsican vendetta; and a mot which was plausibly, but it seems wrongly, attributed to Fouche, well sums up the general opinion of that callous society:  “It was worse than a crime—­it was a blunder.”