In prison Latude wrote memoirs which he filled with calumnies on the ministers and the court. These memoirs are composed in the most dramatic style, with an inimitable accent of sincerity. It was known that the prisoner found a thousand means of sending them outside the walls, and it was feared that they might be circulated among the populace, whose minds--the year is 1775--were beginning to ferment. Latude had just been flung into a cell in consequence of a fresh outbreak against his jailers. "On March 19, 1775, the king's lieutenant entered, accompanied by the major and three warders, and said to me: 'I have obtained leave to let you out of the cell, but on one condition: that you hand over your papers.' "'Hand over my papers! I tell you, sir, I'd rather be done to death in this cell than show the white feather so!' "'Your trunk is upstairs in your room: I've only to say the word and the seals would be broken and your papers taken out.' "I replied: 'Sir, justice has formalities to which you are bound to conform, and you are not allowed to commit such outrages.' "He took five or six steps out of the cell, and as I did not call him back, he came back himself and said: 'Just hand them to me for ten days to examine them, and I give you my word of honour that at the end of that time I will have them returned to your room.' "I replied: 'I will not let you have them for two hours even.' "'All right,' he said; 'as you won't entrust them to me, you have only to stay where you are.'" Latude relates in his _Memoirs_ with great indignation the story of a flute he had made, on which he used to play, his sole diversion during the long hours of solitude; his jailers had the barbarity to take it from him. The governor of the fortress, out of compassion, offered to restore it. "But it will only be on condition that you play by day only, and not at night." At this stipulation, writes Latude in his _Rêveries_, "I could not refrain from bantering him, saying, 'Why, don't you know, sir, that forbidding a thing is just the way to make me eager for it?'" And so at Vincennes as at Paris they came to consider Danry as a madman. Among the books given him for his amusement there were some dealing with sorcery. These he read and re-read, and from that time onward he saw in all the incidents of his life nothing but the perpetual intervention of devils evoked by the witch Madame de Pompadour and her brother the magician, the Marquis de Marigny.