In close confinement? Were they mocking him?  In secret, he, Lissac?  Evidently, they wanted to make fun; it was absurd, it was unlikely, such things only happened in operettas.  He would heartily relish it at the Cafe Riche presently, when he went to dine. In close confinement? He was no longer annoyed at the jest, so amusing had it become.  For an old Parisian like him, it was a facetious romance and almost amusing.

“A climax!”

Evening passed and night came.  They brought Lissac a meal, and the jest, as he called it, in no way came to an end.  He did not close his eyes for the whole night.  He was stifled, and grew angry within the narrow cage in which they had locked him.  All sorts of wild projects of revenge passed through his brain.  He would send his seconds to Monsieur Jouvenet, he would protest in the papers.  He would have public opinion in his favor.

Then his scepticism came to his aid, and shrugging his shoulders, he said: 

“Bah! public opinion!  It will ridicule me, that’s all!  It will accuse me of desiring to make a stir, to cut off my dog’s tail.  To-day, Alcibiades would thus cut off his, but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would bring an action against him.”

He waited for the next morning with the feverish anxiety of those who cannot sleep.  Certainly he would be examined at the first moment.  They did so in the case of the vagabonds gathered in during the night and dumped into the lions’ den.  The whole day passed without Lissac’s seeing any other faces than those of his turnkeys, and these men were almost mutes.  Then his irritation was renewed.  He turned his useless anger against himself, as he could not insult the walls.

Night came round, and spite of himself, he slept for a short time on the wretched prison pallet.  He began to find the facetious affair too prolonged and too gloomy.  They took him just in time, the second day after his arrest, before a kind of magistrate or police judge, who, after having reminded him that the law was clear in respect of the wearing of foreign orders, announced that the matter was settled by a decree of nolle prosequi.

“That is to say,” said Lissac, in anger, “that two nights passed in close confinement is regarded as ample punishment?  If I am guilty of a crime, I deserve much more than that.  But, if only a mere peccadillo is attributable to me, I consider it too much; and I swear to you that I intend, in my turn, to summon to justice for illegal arrest—­”

“Keep quiet,” curtly interrupted the magistrate.  “That is the best thing you can do!”

Lissac, meantime, felt a sort of physical delight in leaving those cold passages and that stone dwelling.

The fresh breeze of a gray November day appeared to him to be as gentle as in spring.  It seemed that he had lived in that den for weeks.  He flung himself into a carriage, had himself driven home, and was received by his concierge with stupefied amazement.