Meanwhile the Due d'Enghien was at Ettenheim, indulging in hope rather
than plotting conspiracies. It is well known that an individual made an
offer to the Prince de Conde to assassinate the First Consul, but the
Prince indignantly rejected the proposition, and nobly refused to recover
the rights of the Bourbons at the price of such a crime. The individual
above-mentioned was afterwards discovered to be an agent of the Paris
police, who had been commissioned to draw the Princes into a plot which
would have ruined them, for public feeling revolts at assassination under
any circumstances.

It has been alleged that Louis XVIII.'s refusal to treat with Bonaparte
led to the fatal catastrophe of the Due d'Enghien's death. The first
correspondence between Louis XVIII. and the First Consul, which has been
given in these Memoirs, clearly proves the contrary. It is certainly
probable that Louis XVIII.'s refusal to renounce his rights should have
irritated Bonaparte. But it was rather late to take his revenge two
years after, and that too on a Prince totally ignorant of those
overtures. It is needless to comment on such absurdities. It is equally
unnecessary to speak of the mysterious being who often appeared at
meetings in the Faubourg St. Germain, and who was afterwards discovered
to be Pichegru.

A further light is thrown on this melancholy catastrophe by a
conversation Napoleon had, a few days after his elevation to the imperial
throne, with M. Masaias, the French Minister at the Court of the Grand
Duke of Baden. This conversation took place at Aix-la-Chapelle. After
some remarks on the intrigues of the emigrants Bonaparte observed, "You
ought at least to have prevented the plots which the Due d'Enghien was
hatching at Ettenheim."--"Sire, I am too old to learn to tell a