"You know, sir," I said, "that I do not recognise your Government and that I protest against the violence which you are doing me; but, as I am not the stronger and as I have no wish to come to blows with you, I will get up and accompany you: pray take the trouble to be seated."
I dressed and, without taking anything with me, said to the venerable commissary:
"Sir, I am at your orders: are we going on foot?"
"No, sir, I took care to bring you a coach."
"You are very good, sir; let us start; but allow me to go to take leave of Madame de Chateaubriand. Will you permit me to enter my wife's room alone?"
"Sir, I will go with you to the door and wait for you."
"Very well, sir," and we went down.
Everywhere, on my road, I found sentries; a picket had been posted even on the boulevard, outside a little gate which opens at the bottom of my garden. I said to the leader:
"Those precautions were very useless; I have not the smallest wish to run away from you and escape."
The gentlemen had turned my papers topsy-turvy, but taken nothing. My big mameluke's sabre caught their attention; they whispered among themselves and ended by leaving the weapon under a heap of dusty folios, in the midst of which it lay beside a yellow-wood crucifix which I had brought from the Holy Land.