While they were attending to my commission, I clambered up on my table again and, changing my ideas on that tripod, set myself to compose strophes on the death of Eliza; but, when I was in the midst of my inspiration, at about three o'clock, behold tipstaffs entering my cell and bodily apprehending me on the banks of Permessus: they took me to the examining magistrate, who sat drawing out instruments in a gloomy office, opposite my prison, on the other side of the yard. The magistrate, a fatuous and pompous young limb of the law, put the usual questions to me as to my surname, Christian names, age and place of residence. I refused to answer or sign anything whatever, declining to recognise the political authority of a government which was able to point neither to the ancient hereditary right nor the election of the people, since France had not been consulted and no national congress summoned. I was taken back to my mouse-trap. At six o'clock, they brought me my dinner, and I continued to turn and turn over in my head the lines of my stanzas, at the same time improvising an air which I thought charming. Madame de Chateaubriand sent me a mattress, a bolster, sheets, a cotton blanket, candles and the books which I read at night. I arranged my room, and still humming: Il descend le cercueil et les roses sans taches[415], I found my ballad of the Young Girl and the Young Flower finished[416]. I began to undress; a sound of voices was heard; my door opened; and M. the Prefect of Police, accompanied by M. Nay,[417] appeared. He made a thousand apologies for the prolongation of my detention in custody at the police-station; he informed me that my friends, the Duc de Fitz-James and the Baron Hyde de Neuville, had been arrested like myself and that the Prefect's Offices were so full that they did not know where to put the persons who had to be examined by the justiciary. "But," he added, "you shall come to me, monsieur le vicomte, and choose in my apartment whatever suits you best."