Von der Sulhn travelled to
assassinate the Emperor. Like Scaevola and Brutus, he, no doubt,
imagined the crime would hand down his name to posterity. In youth,
all of us have erred in judgment more or less. Sulhn thought the
Emperor ought to be slain. Unfortunately for him, the Duke of Rovigo,
the then minister of police, entertained a different opinion. He
thought, in point of fact, that the Emperor ought not to be killed:
hence it was that the young Saxon found himself in chains, and that
the Duke went to ask the Emperor what he should do with him. We ought,
however, to mention that the young man, in his character of an
enlightened German, testified his regret that he had not succeeded in
carrying out his project, and protested that, in the event of
regaining his liberty, he would renew the attempt. "Never mind," said
the Emperor to the duke, "the young man's age is his excuse. Do not
make the affair public, for, if it is bruited about, I must punish the
headstrong youth, which I have no wish to do. I should be sorry to
plunge a worthy family into grief by immolating such a scapegrace.
Send him to Vincennes, give him some books to read, and write to his
mother." In 1814, the young man obtained his liberty, his family, and
his Germany, and it is to be hoped that he afterwards became a
respectable pater-familias, a sort of Aulic councillor, and that,
during the troublesome times in the land of Sauerkraut, he was before,
and not behind, the barricades of his darling patria.
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