“I decided therefore to withdraw into the enclosure of the Temple. This castle, ... so scandalously taken by Philipp the Bel from the Templars, and since ceded to the Chevaliers of Malta, was at this time, owing to the privileges of that order, an asylum, not for criminals, but for any person, who, without having given serious offense, found himself in difficulty, as for instance, a debt, a challenge, in a word, an affair like the present. (The Temple, famous for being the stronghold in which a few years later the royal family was imprisoned, and from which Louis XVI was led to execution, was subsequently destroyed by Napoleon. It stood near the present Place de la République. Much of its site is now occupied by the _Magasins du Temple_, the great second-hand shops of Paris.) “The custom was to inscribe one’s name upon the bailiff’s register on entering the Temple; he asked me why I had come to claim the privileges of the place. “‘Is it debts?’ “‘I have none.’ “‘An attack?’ “‘My enemies, if I have any, have never used any weapon against me except their pen.’ “‘A quarrel at cards, or an affair with a woman?’ “‘I never play cards, and I have never caused either disorder in a family, nor scandal in a house of joy.’ “‘But why then?’ “‘For verses, which grave personages do not find to be good, verses printed I don’t know how in London, denounced, I don’t know why in Paris, and which the grand council, who has not the control of books and is in no way judge of what takes place in England, pretends to be injurious to a tribunal which no longer exists.’” “Beaumarchais, on his return to Paris, learned of my adventure, and was justly angry. He came and took me from my retreat. ‘Be sure,’ he said, ‘they will not dare to arrest you in my carriage or in my house.’” “At the end of several days,” says Loménie, “Beaumarchais had succeeded in liberating his friend; nothing could paint better his situation at this period than the tone of his letters to the ministers, especially to the keeper of the seals: “‘Monseigneur,’ he wrote, ‘I have the honor to address to you the petition to the council of the King, of my friend Gudin de la Brenellerie, who unites to the most attractive genius the simplicity of a child, and who, in your quality of protector of the letters of France, you would judge worthy of your protection if he had in addition the honor of being known to you.’”