Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,263 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon.

Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 3,263 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon.

An anecdote to this effect was current about the period of the trial.  Coster St. Victor, it is related, being unable any longer to find a secure asylum in Paris, sought refuge for a single night in the house of a beautiful actress, formerly in the good graces of the First Consul; and it is added that Bonaparte, on the same night, having secretly arrived on a visit to the lady, found himself unexpectedly in the presence of Coster St. Victor, who might have taken his life; but that only an interchange of courtesy took place betwixt the rival gallants.

This ridiculous story was doubtless intended to throw additional odium on the First Consul, if Cosier St. Victor should be condemned and not obtain a pardon, in which case malignity would not fail to attribute his execution to the vengeance of a jealous lover.

I should blush to relate such stories, equally destitute of probability and truth, had they not obtained some credit at the time.  Whilst I was with Bonaparte he never went abroad during the night; and it was not surely at a moment when the saying of Fouche, “The air is full of poniards,” was fully explained that he would have risked such nocturnal adventures.

Wright was heard in the sixth sitting, on the 2d of June, as the hundred and thirty-fourth witness in support of the prosecution.  He, however, refused to answer any interrogatories put to him, declaring that, as a prisoner of war, he considered himself only amenable to his own Government.

The Procureur-General requested the President to order the examinations of Captain Wright on the 21st of May’ and at a later period to be read over to him; which heing done, the witness replied, that it was omitted to be stated that on these occasions the questions had been accompanied with the threat of transferring him to a military tribunal, in order to be shot, if he did not betray the secrets of his country.

In the course of the trial the most lively interest was felt for mm. de Polignac—­

—­[The eldest of the Polignacs, Armand (1771-1847), condemned to death, had that penalty remitted, but was imprisoned in Ham till permitted to escape m 1813.  He became Duc de Richelieu in 1817.  His younger brother, Jules (1780-1847) was also imprisoned and escaped.  In 1814 he was one of the first to display the white flag in Paris.  In 1829 he became Minister of Charles X. and was responsible for the ordinances which oust his master his throne in 1830.  Imprisoned, nominally for life, he was released in 1836, and after passing some time in England returned to France.  The remission of the sentence of death on Prince Armand was obtained by the Empress Josephine.  Time after time, urged on by Madame de Remusat, she implored mercy from Napoleon, who at last consented to see the wife of the Prince.  Unlike the Bourbon Louis XVIII., who could see Madame de Lavalette only to refuse the wretched woman’s prayer for her husband, for Napoleon to grant the interview
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