At the prefecture, they would doubtless inform Guy as to the cause of the attack:  in questioning him, he would himself certainly be permitted to interrogate.  He was stunned on arriving at the clerk’s office to find that they took his description, just as they would that of a common offender, a night-walker or a rascal.  He wished to enter a protest and became annoyed.  He flew into a rage for a moment, then he reflected that there was nothing to be done but to submit to the bites of the iron teeth of the police routine in which he was suddenly entangled.  They searched his pockets and he felt their vile hands graze his skin.  He experienced a strongly rebellious sentiment and notwithstanding his present enforced calm, from time to time he demanded to see the Prefect of Police, the Chief of the Municipal Police, the Juge d’Instruction, he did not know whom, but at least some one who was responsible.

“You have my card, send my card to Monsieur Jouvenet; he knows me!”

They made no reply.

The Commissioner who had arrested him was not there.  Guy found himself in the presence of what were as pieces of human machinery, working silently, without noise of wheels, and caring for his protests no more than they did for the wind that blew through the corridors.

“See, on my honor, I am not a rascal!” he said.  “What have I done?  I have stupidly passed this bit of red ribbon into my buttonhole.  Well! that is an offence, it is not a crime!  People are not arrested for that!  I will pay the fine, if fine there is!  You are not going to keep me here with thieves?”

In that jail, he endeavored to preserve his appearance as a fashionable elegant and an ironical man of the world, treating his misadventure in a spirit of haughty disdain; but his overstrained nerves led him to act with a sort of cold fury that gave him the desire to openly oppose, as in a duel, his many adversaries.

“I beg you to remain calm,” one of these men repeated to him from time to time in a passionless way.

“Oh! that is easy enough for you to say,” cried Lissac.  “I ask you once more, where is Monsieur Jouvenet?—­I wish to see Monsieur Jouvenet!”

“Monsieur le Prefect cannot be seen in this way,” was the reply.  “Moreover, you haven’t to see any one; you have only to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

They led Guy de Lissac through the passages to the door of a new cell, which they opened before him.

“Then,” he said, as he tried to force a troubled smile, “I am a prisoner?  Quite seriously?  As in melodrama?  This is high comedy!”

He asked if he would soon be examined, at least.  They didn’t know.  They hardly replied to him.  Could he write, at any rate?  Notify any one?  Protest?  What should he do?  He heard from the lips of a keeper who had the appearance of a very honest man, the information, crushing as a verdict:  “You are in close confinement, as it is called!”