As may be imagined, this was a terrible blow to a man of his active temperament and especially at this time when his enemy the Comte de la Blache was capable of using the advantage thus acquired to complete his ruin. Nevertheless his first letter from prison shows his usual serenity of mind. He wrote to Gudin: “In virtue of a _lettre sans cachet_ called _lettre de cachet_ signed Louis and below Philippeaux, recommended--Sartine, executed--Buchot, and submitted Beaumarchais, I am lodged, my friend, since this morning at For-l’Evêque, in an unfurnished room at 2160 livres rent where I am led to hope that, except what is necessary I shall lack nothing. Is it the family of the duke whom I have saved a criminal suit who have imprisoned me? Is it the ministry whose orders I have constantly followed or anticipated? Is it the dukes and peers of the realm with whom I am in no way connected? This is what I do not know, but the sacred name of ‘King’ is so beautiful a thing that one cannot multiply it or employ it too frequently _àpropos_. It is thus that in every country which is governed by police they torment by authority those whom they cannot inculpate with justice. Wherever mankind is to be found, odious things happen and the great wrong of being in the right is always a crime in the eyes of power, which wishes to punish unceasingly, but never to judge.” The two rivals were thus very securely lodged for the present and Mademoiselle Ménard, the unwilling pretext of all the trouble, was quite safe from her tormentor. Before the rendering of the sentence, however, which confined the duc de Chaulnes to the prison of Vincennes, in the fear which the violence of his character inspired, this “beautiful Helen,” says Loménie, “went and threw herself at the feet of M. de Sartine, imploring his protection.” The next day she wrote a letter communicating her fixed resolve to retire to a convent. Other letters follow and four days after the terrible scene which has been described, Mademoiselle Ménard entered the _couvent des Cordelières, faubourg Saint-Marceau, Paris_. M. de Sartine had entrusted the very delicate, not to say hazardous mission of seeing the young woman in question safely lodged in a convent, to a worthy priest, l’abbé Dugué. This very respectable, very good and very _naïf_ abbé, wrote the same evening a lengthy letter to the lieutenant-general of police in which he showed himself very anxious not to compromise his own dignity as well as not to incur the enmity of a great duke still at liberty, whose character was universally known.