"I am helpless," said the Count de Saint-Florentin, who countersigned the _lettre de cachet_, to Marmontel; "the Duke d'Aumont accuses you, and is determined to have you punished. It is a satisfaction he demands in recompense for his services and the services of his ancestors. The king has been pleased to grant him his wish. So you will go and find M. de Sartine; I am addressing to him the king's order; you will tell him that it was from my hand you received it." "I went to find M. de Sartine," writes Marmontel, "and I found with him the police officer who was to accompany me. M. de Sartine was intending that he should go to the Bastille in a separate carriage; but I myself declined this obliging offer, and we arrived at the Bastille, my introducer and myself, in the same hack.... The governor, M. d'Abadie, asked me if I wished my servant to be left with me.... They made a cursory inspection of my packets and books, and then sent me up to a large room furnished with two beds, two tables, a low cupboard, and three cane chairs. It was cold, but a jailer made us a good fire and brought me wood in abundance. At the same time they gave me pens, ink, and paper, on condition of my accounting for the use I made of them and the number of sheets they allowed me. "The jailer came back to ask if I was satisfied with my bed. After examining it I replied that the mattresses were bad and the coverlets dirty. In a minute all was changed. They sent to ask me what was my dinner hour. I replied, 'The same as everybody's.' The Bastille had a library: the governor sent me the catalogue, giving me free choice among the books. I merely thanked him for myself, but my servant asked for the romances of Prévost, and they were brought to him." Let us go on with Marmontel's story. "For my part," he says, "I had the means of escape from ennui. Having been for a long time impatient of the contempt shown by men of letters for Lucan's poem, which they had not read, and only knew in the barbarous fustian of Brébeuf's version, I had resolved to translate it more becomingly and faithfully into prose; and this work, which would occupy me without fatiguing my brain, was the best possible employment for the solitary leisure of my prison. So I had brought the _Pharsalia_ with me, and, to understand it the better, I had been careful to bring with it the _Commentaries_ of Cæsar. Behold me then at the corner of a good fire, pondering the quarrel of Cæsar and Pompey, and forgetting my own with the Duke d'Aumont. And there was Bury too (Marmontel's servant) as philosophical as myself, amusing himself by making our beds placed at two opposite corners of my room, which was at this moment lit up by the beams of a fine winter sun, in spite of the bars of two strong iron gratings which permitted me a view of the Suburb Saint-Antoine.