Perfect tranquillity prevailed among those who remained in Paris, but on Sunday night, October 25, just before one o’clock, as Montagu was stepping into bed with, as he says, ‘that security that ought to attend innocence,’ a commissary of police, backed by an armed force, entered his room, and, despite all protest, carried him off to the Châtelet. Before they locked him up for the night, the gaolers would scarcely utter a word save a rough one, and he could not get even a cup of water. The night was cold, and a small bit of candle enabled him the better to see the horrors of his cell. ‘The walls were scrawled over,’ he says in the memoir he published, ‘with the vows and prayers of the vilest malefactors before they went to the axe or the gibbet.’ Under one of the inscriptions were the words: ‘These verses were written by the priest who was hanged and burned, in the year 1717, for stealing a chalice of the Holy Sacrament.’ On November 2 the charge made by Roberts--namely, that Montagu’s party had made him half drunk, the better to cheat him at dice, and had subsequently plundered his rooms--was made known to him. ‘I answered,’ he says, ‘in a manner that ought to have cleared my own innocence, and to have covered my antagonist with confusion.’ But he was remanded to prison. Some amelioration of his condition was permitted, and he was allowed to be visited. Consequently it was the fashion to go and look at him, but the solaces of his friends could not compensate for the cruel wit, jeers, and sarcasms cast at him by curious strangers. Influential persons interested themselves in this notorious case. The English ambassador interfered with effect. The king, on being moved, replied that he could not meddle in a private case; but a king can do many things without appearing to meddle. The charge was again looked into, and the method of examination may be seen in the result. The sentence of the court, delivered on January 25, 1752, was to the effect that the accused be discharged; that Roberts be compelled to confess the accusation to be false, also to pay 20,000 livres damages to Montagu and Taafe; and pay all the costs of suit on both sides, including the expense of publishing the judgment.