Not till June 15 did he make up his mind to offer a statement very near the truth, which was written down and sent at once to the king, who read it over several times and kept it in his pocket the whole day--a circumstance which indicates to what importance the affair had now swelled. Suspicions were not dispelled by the declaration of June 15. Danry had misrepresented the truth in his former examinations, and there was reason to believe that he was equally misrepresenting it in the third. Thus he owed his ruin to his silence and his self-contradictory depositions. Six months later, on October 7, 1749, when he was at Vincennes, Dr. Quesnay, who had shown much interest in the young surgeon, was sent to find out from him the name of the individual who had instigated the crime. On his return the doctor wrote to Berryer, "My journey has been utterly useless. I only saw a blockhead, who persisted nevertheless in adhering to his former declarations." Two years more had passed away when the lieutenant of police wrote to Quesnay:--"February 25, 1751. Danry would be very glad if you would pay him a visit, and your compliance might perhaps induce him to lay bare his secret soul, and make a frank confession to you of what up to the present he has obstinately concealed from me." Quesnay at once repaired to the Bastille, bearing with him a conditional promise of liberty. Working himself up into a frenzy, Danry swore that "all his answers to the lieutenant of police had been strictly true." When the doctor had taken his leave, Danry wrote to the minister: "M. Quesnay, who has been several times to see me in my wretchedness, tells me that your lordship is inclined to believe I had some accomplice in my fault whom I will not reveal, and that it is for this reason your lordship will not give me my liberty. I could wish, my lord, from the bottom of my heart, that your belief were true, for it would be much to my profit to put my guilt upon another, whether for having induced me to commit my sin or for not having prevented me from committing it." It was the opinion of the ministers that Danry had been the instrument of a plot against the life of the Marquise de Pompadour directed by some person of high rank, and that at the critical moment he had either taken fright, or else had made a clean breast of the matter at Versailles in the hope of reaping some advantage from both sides. These facts must be kept in mind if we are to understand the real cause of his confinement. Kept, then, in the Bastille, he was subjected to several examinations, the reports of which were regularly drawn up and signed by the lieutenant of police. Under the _ancien régime_, this officer was, as we have seen, a regular magistrate, indeed he has no other designation in the documents of the period; he pronounced sentence and awarded punishments in accordance with that body of customs which then, as to-day in England, constituted the law.