M.
d'Agoult, aide-major of the Body Guard, afterwards took him into custody, and conducted him to his hotel, and thence to the Bastille.

But while the Cardinal had with him only the young lieutenant of the Body Guard, who was much embarrassed at having such an order to execute, his Eminence met his heyduc at the door of the Salon of Hercules; he spoke to him in German and then asked the lieutenant if he could lend him a pencil; the officer gave him that which he carried about him, and the Cardinal wrote to the Abbe Georgel, his grand vicar and friend, instantly to burn all Madame de Lamotte's correspondence, and all his other letters.
[The Abbe Georgel thus relates the circumstance: "The Cardinal, at that trying moment, gave an astonishing proof of his presence of mind; notwithstanding the escort which surrounded him, favoured by the attendant crowd, he stopped, and stooping down with his face towards the wall, as if to fasten his buckle, snatched out his pencil and hastily wrote a few words upon a scrap of paper placed under his hand in his square red cap.
He rose again and proceeded.

On entering his house, his people formed a lane; he slipped this paper, unperceived, into the hand of a confidential valet de chambre, who waited for him at the door of his apartment." This story is scarcely credible; it is not at the moment of a prisoner's arrest, when an inquisitive crowd surrounds and watches him, that he can stop and write secret messages.

However, the valet de chambre posts off to Paris.

He arrives at the palace of the Cardinal between twelve and one o'clock; and his horse falls dead in the stable.