Theory which makes Fouquet the Man with the Iron Mask--Arguments
advanced by M. Lacroix--Some to be absolutely rejected and
some discussed--Fouquet not in possession of a dangerous State
Secret--Madame de Maintenon--Her Character--Her Youth--Her Relations
with Monsieur and Madame Fouquet--Her honourable Reserve--The Affair
of the Poisons--How Fouquet’s Name became mixed up in it--Probability
of his Death being caused by an attack of Apoplexy--Weakness of the
other Arguments advanced by M. Lacroix--Oblivion into which the
Surintendant had fallen--Two mysterious Arrests.
A writer of much knowledge and much imagination, M. Paul Lacroix, has
collected, in a very ingenious and cleverly written work,[443] all the
arguments that can be advanced in favour of the theory which makes
Fouquet the Man with the Iron Mask. He begins by reminding us of the
discovery, announced on August 13, 1789,[444] of a card found amongst
the papers of the Bastille, bearing these words: “Fouquet, arriving
from the Isles Sainte-Marguerite with an Iron Mask,” and signed with
three X’s and the name of Kersadion. Nevertheless, M. Lacroix very
properly abstains from counting amongst his proofs a paper, the
existence of which is not certified by any official document, and which
the wording, the strange manner in which it is said to have been found,
and the improbability of any note of this character having been made,
must equally cause to be rejected. The following are the more solid
bases of M. Lacroix’s argument:--
“The precautions employed in guarding Fouquet at Pignerol resemble in
every point,”[445] says he, “those adopted later for the Man with the
Iron Mask at the Bastille and at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite.
“The greater number of the traditions relating to the masked prisoner
appear to apply to Fouquet.
“The appearance of the Man with the Iron Mask followed almost
immediately upon the pretended death of Fouquet in 1680.
“This death of Fouquet in 1680 is far from being certain.
“Finally, political and private reasons may have determined Louis XIV.
to cause him to pass for dead, in preference to getting rid of him by
poison or in any other manner.”
These two last arguments are the only ones which need be discussed; for
the circumstantial care, excessive vigilance, and incessant precautions
of which Fouquet was the object at Pignerol were not peculiar to
this prisoner. Lauzun was treated in absolutely the same manner. The
instructions given to Saint-Mars every time a new prisoner, even the
most obscure, was confided to his care were identical. On July 19,
1669, when announcing the approaching arrival of that Eustache d’Auger,
who was to become Fouquet’s lackey, Louvois wrote to Saint-Mars as if
the fortune of the State was bound up with this man.[446] When, later,
some Protestant ministers, as unknown as they were harmless, are sent
to him at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, there are the same detailed
and complete precautions set forth at length, and equally dear to the
circumstantial Minister[447] who enjoined them, and the scrupulous
gaoler charged with their execution.
As to the “traditions relating to the masked prisoner,” which appear to
M. Lacroix “to apply to Fouquet,” we have seen[448] that the greater
number of them are legendary, and that the others, such as the episode
of the silver dish thrown from a window, concern several Protestant
ministers, confined at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite at almost the same
date as the Man with the Iron Mask.
Finally,--and we will establish this further on,--nothing whatever
proves that the appearance of the Man with the Iron Mask dates from the
year 1680.
But if Fouquet did not die in March, 1680,--if, above all, Louis XIV.
“had political and private motives for compassing the disappearance
of the Surintendant by a supposititious death,” it is incontestable
that the theory of M. Lacroix would have a strong chance of being
accepted, since it would show what had become of this personage while
it explained in a very probable manner the mystery, exaggerated by
tradition, but nevertheless true, by which the famous masked prisoner
was surrounded. This has been perfectly understood by M. Lacroix, who
has first applied himself to contest the death of Fouquet in 1680, and
then to seek out the different causes that may have determined Louis
XIV. to suddenly separate the Surintendant from the rest of the world,
and to make the prolongation of his life a mystery impenetrable to all
except Saint-Mars.
Of these causes, those which date beyond 1680 must be peremptorily
rejected. They could not, in fact, have exercised any influence upon
Fouquet’s fate, since we have just seen this prisoner pass by degrees
from a very close and somewhat harsh confinement to a captivity much
softened by favours incessantly multiplied. From 1665 to 1672 he is
forbidden all communication, even with his relations; but from 1672
some occasional letters are first authorised, then a more regular
correspondence, next daily intercourse with the other prisoners, and,
finally, the visit and the prolonged stay of several members of his
family at Pignerol. This progress, slow, but continuous, incontestably
exists in the period extending from 1672 to 1680. It is, therefore,
only in this last year that the origin of the terrible royal anger
and of the frightful increase of punishment suddenly inflicted upon
Fouquet is to be sought for. M. Lacroix has neglected this essential
distinction, and has gathered together all the grievances, real or
pretended, of Louis XIV., without taking into consideration their
ancient date and the evident proofs of indulgent forgetfulness of the
past successively shown to the offender. It was, therefore, superfluous
to remind us[449] of the secret negotiations of the Surintendant with
England, of his projects for rendering himself independent, and of
retiring, in case of disgrace, to his principality of Belle-Isle, which
he caused to be fortified; of his eagerness to gain creatures, whom
he bought at any price, by appointing them to important offices and
giving them secret pensions; or of his pretended love for Madamoiselle
de la Vallière. With regard to all these faults the royal resentment
was appeased, and it cannot be admitted that their recollection may
have suddenly irritated Louis XIV., when for eight years he had
been manifesting towards the prisoner a clemency more obvious and
efficacious.
“Fouquet, a prisoner at Pignerol,” says M. Lacroix,[450] “still excited
hatred in Colbert and continual apprehensions in Louis XIV.: _one would
have said that he possessed some great secret, the disclosure of which
would be fatal to the_ _State_, or at least mortally wound the King’s
pride.” But upon this hypothesis, how was it that Louis XIV. authorised
the frequent intercourse of Fouquet with Lauzun, and afterwards with
the different members of his family? How was it that he was not afraid
lest these should become participators in and afterwards propagators
of this State secret? M. Lacroix enumerates all the precautions taken
by Saint-Mars during the first period of Fouquet’s detention, in order
to hinder him from imparting or receiving intelligence. But three
significant despatches show that these precautions, very minute indeed,
were only inspired by the fear of an escape, and not at all by the
apprehension of the spreading of a State secret. Three times, and for
different causes, Fouquet’s valets were dismissed. They were sent away,
one in 1665, another at the end of the following year, and the third in
1669--that is to say, when the Surintendant was in close confinement.
What became of these three persons, who for a long time had lived with
the prisoner and been in a position to receive his confidence? Were
they ever deprived of their liberty in order to bury with them this
secret, which they may have had the misfortune to become acquainted
with?
“I write you this letter,” says Louis XIV. to Saint-Mars,[451] “to tell
you that I deem it good that you should give the Sieur Fouquet another
valet, and that after the one who is ill is cured, you are to let him
go where he pleases, and the present letter being for no other end, I
pray God to take you into his holy keeping.”
“Your letter of the 28th of the past month,” writes Louvois to
Saint-Mars,[452] “has been delivered to me, and has informed me that
the valet of the Sieur Fouquet is afflicted with a very dangerous
illness. It is well to continue to have him nursed, and if, after his
cure, he does not wish to continue his services to the prisoner any
longer, prudence ordains that you should keep him in the donjon three
or four months, in order that if he has transgressed his duty, time may
fracture the measures he may have concerted with Monsieur Fouquet.”
“His Majesty leaves it to you,” he writes to Saint-Mars in 1669,[453]
“to act as you please with respect to La Rivière, that is to say, to
leave him with Monsieur Fouquet or to remove him; his Majesty counting
that, in case you remove him, you will only let him depart after an
imprisonment of from seven to eight months, in order that, if he had
taken measures to carry news from his master, it would be so stale by
that time, that it could cause no annoyance.”
We see from these despatches that if, during the sixteen years he
passed at Pignerol, Fouquet was the object of styles of treatment which
differed greatly, it was never impossible for him to render other
people depositaries of his secrets, and through them to communicate
these secrets to his friends, his relations, or foreign sovereigns,
as well as to the great lords of the court. He could have done this
in 1665, in 1666, and in 1669, by means of his servants detained only
a few months as prisoners and then dismissed without conditions. He
could have done it later still more easily through the medium either of
Lauzun or of all those who came to visit him. One must therefore reject
the idea that Fouquet was the possessor of a dangerous State secret,
and moreover, necessarily conclude from the much more humane conduct of
Louis XIV. towards the Surintendant, that the King’s former resentment
had disappeared, and that in 1680 he no longer saw in the prisoner
anything but an old man, very interesting both by his misfortunes and
his resignation.
But M. Lacroix invokes something else besides reasons of State;
according to him, the last and the most powerful of Louis XIV.’s
favourites was interested in the Surintendant’s disappearance. Formerly
the latter’s mistress, when she was the wife of Scarron, at the moment
of her marriage with the King she had exacted from him an increase of
rigour towards this troublesome Surintendant, that awkward witness of
her former weaknesses.
Will that which Madame de Sévigné calls “the first volume of Madame
de Maintenon’s life,”[454] always remain a mystery? and shall we
never know the exact beginning of this illustrious _parvenue_ who
desired to be an enigma for posterity?[455] Like all those who have
had the honour to meet with eager detractors, she has found defenders,
unreasonable without doubt, but who have shown the injustice[456] of
the passions excited against the ex-Huguenot converted to Catholicism,
and afterwards wife of Louis XIV., at the moment of the Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes and the persecution of the Jansenists. It is the
exaggeration of the attack, it is the violence of Saint-Simon, of the
Princess Palatine, and of La Fare, rather than any sudden attraction,
that has produced this change in public opinion, this current, general
to-day and highly favourable to Madame de Maintenon. Her rehabilitation
was so necessary that every one has given his adhesion, but only from
a feeling of justice. In learning to know her better one has ceased to
despise her, without loving her any the more, and one has conceived
much more esteem for her mind than inclination for her person. Never,
in fact, even when looking back through ages, does one experience
very powerful feelings on behalf of those who were deficient in
them, and dry, cold virtue, without the passion that animates, and
the struggle that vivifies it, will always lack admirers. Madame de
Maintenon not only appears austere and inflexible, but everything
with her is conventional and calculated. Her piety is not ardent in
its outbursts, like La Vallière’s, but restrained and deliberate, and
her scruples always turn to the advantage of her fortune. Not false,
but of consummate prudence; not perfidious, but always ready, if not
to sacrifice, at least to abandon her friends; loving the appearance
of good as much as good itself; without imagination, and consequently
without illusions, this woman, superior by the intellect much more
than by the heart, was armed against all allurements, and the fear of
compromising her reputation placed her beyond all perils. “There is
nothing more clever than an irreproachable conduct,” said she. This
sentence paints her perfectly, and allows one to penetrate to the
bottom of her soul. It explains and enlightens the whole of her life,
and by its aid one can understand how this woman managed to live amidst
the dangers of a light and frivolous society without succumbing,
traverse youth without experiencing its temptations, undergo poverty
with honour, hold her own at court, be constant mistress of herself,
and end by irrevocably securing in the heart of the King a place which
neither La Vallière, despite her disinterested devotion, Fontanges,
despite her powers of fascination, nor Montespan, despite her
legitimated children, had known how to preserve. To a sound judgment,
to a dignity imposing, but devoid of arrogance, to that marvellous art
of being queen without appearing to pretend to it, and of receiving
the homage of the court with quite a Christian humility; to all these
qualities, by which, as Louis XIV.’s wife, she showed herself worthy
of her destiny, Madame de Maintenon had added, from her most tender
infancy, that proud desire “for a good reputation,” in which lay her
strength. “This was my hobby,” she said later.[457] “I did not trouble
myself about riches; I was infinitely above interest. But I wished for
honour. I did not seek to be loved privately by any one whatever. I
wanted to be loved by everybody.”
Nothing indicates that her firm and decided will ever failed in
carrying out this proud engagement, undertaken in early life with
coolness and resolution. For a Saint-Simon and for a Ninon de
Lenclos, who incriminate her conduct, there are many less suspicious
witnesses who come forward in her favour. “We were all surprised,”
says the Intendant Basville, “that any one could unite such virtues,
such poverty, and such charms.” M. Lacroix[458] invokes that note
transcribed by Conrart, said to have been found in Fouquet’s casket,
and to have been written to him by Madame de Maintenon: “I do not
know you enough to love you, and if I knew you perhaps I should love
you less. I have always avoided vice, and I naturally hate sin. But I
confess to you that I hate poverty still more. I have received your
ten thousand crowns. If you will bring me another ten thousand in two
days, then I will see what I have to do.” But besides the fact that
Conrart ascribes to Madame de la Baulme this letter, the terms of
which also contrast singularly with Madame de Maintenon’s style,[459]
we know from positive proofs what were the relations both of Scarron
and his wife with the family of Fouquet. If some doubts may exist with
respect to Villarceaux, whom Saint-Simon and Ninon de Lenclos make
Madame de Maintenon’s lover, no one can fail to recognize the perfect
propriety and the dignity she exhibited in accepting the benefits of
the Surintendant. It is always to Madame Fouquet that she addresses
herself; and when the latter, charmed by so much intelligence, wishes
to have the wife of Scarron near her, she rejects with marvellous tact
a proposition full of perils both to her virtue, and, above all, to
her good fame.[460] One day, however, she was obliged, on account of
Scarron’s infirmities, to go herself to solicit Fouquet “But,” says
Madame de Caylus (and Mademoiselle d’Aumale confirms the accuracy of
this account), “she affected to go there in such great negligence that
her friends were ashamed of taking her. Every one knows what M. Fouquet
was then, his weakness for women, and how much the highest sought to
please him. This conduct, and the just admiration that it excited,
reached even the Queen’s ears.”[461]
Extreme reserve towards the Surintendant, and affectionate gratitude
towards Madame Fouquet, such were, we see, the sentiments of Scarron’s
widow; and far from having to cause a weakness to be forgotten, Madame
de Maintenon had, on the contrary, to remember the kindnesses of this
family, and for her part to contribute to the alleviation of the
prisoner’s lot.
Afterwards, in a very vague manner, and without furnishing any positive
proofs, M. Lacroix reminds us that Fouquet was mixed up in those
famous poisoning trials which revealed so many monstrous scandals and
implicated certain great personages of the court, in which, too, we see
the audacity of the crimes still further increased by the revolting
cynicism of the avowals, and which produced a profound commotion
throughout the whole of France and even abroad.
That Fouquet’s name may have been pronounced during the discussions,
one is not prepared either to contest or feel surprised at. As his
enemy, Colbert, was one of the appointed victims, and as a conspiracy
seemed to have been formed to poison him, it is very natural that
the accused persons should have invoked the recollection of the
Surintendant. But how many other names, such as those of La Fontaine
and Racine, were indicated to the lieutenant of police without their
reputations being tarnished by it! M. Lacroix, with reason, regrets
that most of the papers relating to this dark business have not been
published. They are about to be, and not one of the innumerable
documents relating to these various trials authorises us to accuse the
Surintendant.[462] As for those which have already been published,
and which include some declarations concerning Fouquet, an attentive
examination of the period at which they have been made proves that they
could have exercised no influence upon the fate of the prisoner of
Pignerol. “The woman Filastre said at the torture, that she had written
a contract by which the Duchess de Vivonne desired the restoration
of M. Fouquet and the death of M. Colbert.” But this declaration was
made some months after the Surintendant’s death.[463] We have a letter
from Louvois to the lieutenant of police, La Reynie, in which the
latter is thanked for having informed the King “what one named Debray
has said of the solicitation that was made to him by a man dependent
on Fouquet;”[464] but this letter is dated June 17, 1681, fifteen
months after the death, or, if it is preferred, the period at which
Louis XIV. had determined upon causing the Surintendant to disappear.
Would the revelations of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers be relied
upon by preference? But her trial dates from 1676, and if Fouquet had
been seriously compromised at that time, wherefore those successive
alleviations of his punishment during a period of four years?
In any case, if on such interested and doubtful depositions it be
admitted that Fouquet’s friends were the counsellors and accomplices of
a crime,[465] I can understand that, struck with the coincidence,--not
precisely exact, as we have just seen--between these accusations and
the Surintendant’s death, the suspicion might arise that the latter
was not a natural one. M. Pierre Clement, in his work, _La Police sous
Louis XIV._, has expressed this idea with extreme circumspection, and
has contented himself with uttering a doubt. He accuses no one, as he
is especially careful to declare. But he observes that the period at
which Fouquet’s death occurred rendered it an untoward[466] event. He
succumbed to an attack of apoplexy, and the nature of this complaint
would go far to accredit the theory of poison; but there conjectures
ought to stop. Let people hesitate to believe that he was really
seized with an attack of this nature: I can conceive their doing so,
although numerous reasons combine to make us place credence in it. But
everything is entirely opposed to the hypothesis of his death[467]
being simulated by Louis XIV.’s orders; and whether it was natural, or
whether it was hastened by a crime, it is unquestionably true that it
really took place in the month of March of the year 1680.
Was it, in truth, a man in a good state of health who suddenly
succumbed? It was an old man, who had been ailing for the last sixteen
years--a man unsettled by excess of blood[468]--a man whom the absence
of every kind of exercise had rendered plethoric, and who, from a busy
life and one given up for a long time to pleasure, had suddenly passed
to the privations and the inaction of captivity.
Was it a prisoner, malignant and full of strong resentment, who was
suspected of having instigated his friends to poison Colbert? No,
indeed. It was the most patient and the most resigned of captives,
who had expiated his faults by the most admirable behaviour, who had
pardoned his enemies, and whose mind, detached from the good things
of the world, was raised to the contemplation of things divine,
and who, offering his own life as an example, had devoted his long
leisure to erecting a monument of his piety for the edification of his
fellow-creatures.
Did he die mysteriously, without witnesses, save a gaoler capable of
a crime? It was in the presence of the Count de Vaux, his son, and
of his daughter,[469]--it was in their arms that he yielded up his
breath. Saint-Mars, whom all his contemporaries represent to us as
a perfectly upright man, was the sole intermediary between the King
and his prisoners. Lastly, when the news of his death arrives at the
court, Louis XIV. immediately causes an order to be transmitted to his
representatives at Pignerol “to give up Fouquet’s corpse to his family,
in order that they may have it transported whither it may seem good to
them.”[470]
These are decisive and material considerations, the value of which
cannot be destroyed by that crowd of secondary arguments which M.
Lacroix has gathered up into a heap, and put forward with very great
skill. But will even these resist a strict investigation? Can one
be astonished that the accounts of Fouquet’s death furnished by his
friends, separated from him for so long a time,[471] should differ
from one another? Is it astonishing that some should attribute his
death to suffocation, others to a fit, when we know that pulmonary
apoplexy is always accompanied by suffocation? Must we consider
as significant the uselessness of the researches made at Pignerol
by a learned Piedmontese,[472] when he himself explains it by the
suppression of the convent of Sainte-Claire, in which the body of
Fouquet was placed for the time being, by the alterations which have
taken place in the church,[473] and the dispersion of papers[474]
belonging to this monastery? Lastly, is there anything strange in
the silence of La Fontaine, in the laconism with which the _Gazette_
and _Le Mercure_ announce Fouquet’s death, and in the absence of an
ostentatious inscription in the chapel of the Convent des Filles de
la Visitation, to which his body was carried? Twenty years had passed
away since the fall of the Surintendant. But in how much shorter space
of time are services forgotten! In the especially fruitful period
from 1660 to 1680, other and more illustrious names had filled the
world’s stage and usurped fame. In that court which he had dazzled
with his splendour, Fouquet had long since been forgotten, and only a
few friends sympathized with his misfortunes. If he who has lent such
touching language to the nymphs of Vaux was silent, if the death of his
benefactor inspired him with no theme, it was not because he declined
to believe in it. But rather than suppose him insensible to it, will it
not be better to explain his silence as the result of indolence, and
abandon the thought that La Fontaine was indifferent to Fouquet’s death?
If the real sentiments experienced under these circumstances by the
fabulist are unknown to us, if the end of him who for so long kept a
portion of the court at his feet occurred almost unperceived, he had at
least the honour of being mourned by Madame de Sévigné, who was always
faithful,[475] and the consolation of being surrounded by his family on
his death-bed; while even Saint-Mars himself must have regretted this
inoffensive and resigned prisoner. A short time after Fouquet’s death
Lauzun was liberated.
But a year previous to this a few dragoons, commanded by an officer
mysteriously despatched to Pignerol, had left the citadel during the
night and taken the road to Turin. Halting at an isolated inn, far
from any other habitation, and situated a short distance from the
little river Chisola, they penetrated inside the house and concealed
themselves with such care that their presence could not be detected.
Very early the next morning a carriage containing three persons, two of
whom were priests, hastily set out from Turin. Arrived at the banks of
the stream, which was swollen by the rains, the travellers were obliged
to dismount and traverse the torrent by means of some planks hurriedly
put together. They then entered a room of the inn. Not long afterwards
the armed dragoons made their way into this room and seized one of the
travellers. An hour subsequently a carriage, surrounded by a cavalry
escort, quitted the inn and conducted the prisoner to Pignerol. Three
days later another stranger arrived in his turn at this fatal house.
Immediately surrounded and seized by the same dragoons, posted in the
same spot, he was also thrown into a carriage and rapidly whirled off
to Pignerol.
FOOTNOTES:
[443] _Histoire de l’Homme au Masque de Fer_, by M. Paul Lacroix
(Bibliophile Jacob). Paris, 1840.
[444] _Loisirs d’un Patriote Français_, number of August 13, 1789. This
card found amongst the papers of the Bastille, and which the journalist
attests having seen, also bore the number 64,389,000.
[445] _Histoire de l’Homme au Masque de Fer_, p. 175.
[446] “The King having ordered me to have one Eustache d’Auger taken to
Pignerol, it is of the utmost importance that on his arrival he should
be guarded with great security, and not allowed to give information of
his whereabouts in any manner whatever. I give you notice of this in
advance in order that you may prepare a cell in which you will confine
him securely, taking care to arrange that the openings for light of the
place, in which he will be, may not look upon places where any one may
come, and that there be enough closed doors so that our sentinels may
not be able to hear anything:”--Letter from Louvois to Saint-Mars, July
19, 1669.
These infinite precautions were indeed a form of style. They are to
be found in the orders given to Marshal d’Estrades, in those which
are contained in the Registers of the Secretary’s Office of the
King’s Household, and in those which are found in the _Correspondance
Administrative sous Louis XIV._ See this correspondence published by
Depping in the collection of the _Documents inédits pour l’Histoire de
France_. See also, Imperial Library, manuscripts, _Papiers d’Estrades_,
vol. xii., and Registers of the Secretary’s Office, 6653.
[447] M. Camille Rousset gives a number of proofs of the extreme
pleasure that Louvois found in a combination and excess of precautions.
(See notably vol. iii. p. 38, _et seq._ of his _Histoire de Louvois_.)
[448] Chapter V. of the present work. See pp. 62, 63, _ante_.
[449] _Histoire de l’Homme au Masque de Fer_, p. 233.
[450] _Ibid._, p. 229.
[451] Order of Louis XIV., dated October 11, 1665.
[452] Letter of Louvois to Saint-Mars, September 23, 1666.
[453] _Ibid._, September 17, 1669.
[454] Letter of Madame de Sévigné, July 7, 1680.
[455] _Correspondance Générale_, Lavallée’s edition, vol. i. p. 1.
[456] Let us cite amongst others, the fine _Histoire de Madame de
Maintenon_, of the Duke de Noailles, unhappily still unfinished; the
labours of M. Théophile Lavallée and Chapter I. Period iii. of the
curious volumes of M. Chéruel, _Saint-Simon considéré comme Historien_,
which is the necessary complement of his edition of the _Mémoires_.
[457] _Lettres Historiques et Édifiantes de Madame de Maintenon_, vol.
ii. p. 213.
[458] _Histoire de l’Homme au Masque de Fer_, p. 244.
[459] Conrart, _Manuscripts_, vol. xi. p. 151:--Archives of the
Arsenal. The same observations apply to this other letter, likewise
ascribed by M. Lacroix to Madame de Maintenon, and with as little
ground: “Until now I was so thoroughly persuaded of my strength, that I
would have defied all the earth. But I confess that the last interview
I had with you charmed me. I found in your conversation a thousand
pleasures which I had not expected; in short, if I ever see you alone,
I do not know what will happen.”
[460] _Mémoires sur Nicolas Fouquet_, vol. i. pp. 448, 449.
[461] _Souvenirs de Madame de Caylus_, pp. 10 and 11; M. Feuillet
de Conches, _Causeries d’un Curieux_, vol. ii. p. 515; M. Chéruel,
_Saint-Simon considéré comme Historien_, p. 504, _et seq._
[462] This is what I have several times been assured of by M.
Ravaisson, who, in publishing the documents relating to the Bastille,
has come across the _affaire des poisons_.
[463] M. Pierre Clément, _La Police sous Louis XIV._, p. 221.
[464] _Ibid._ p. 222.
[465] A councillor to the Parliament named Pinon-Dumartray, a relation
of Fouquet’s, was suspected of having been connected with the Sieur
Damy, who was accused of a plot against Colbert’s life.
[466] M. Pierre Clément, _La Police sous Louis XIV._, p. 221.
[467] In support of this opinion, M. Lacroix (in the work already
referred to, pp. 251, 252) speaks of a letter written by Louis XIV.
to Pope Clement X., in which he requested him “to grant him a secret
dispensation in order that he might rid himself, without form of trial,
of a man, dangerous and hurtful to his government.” M. Lacroix adds
that “Clement X. was probably opposed to the death of the prisoner at
Pignerol.” But M. Lacroix does not give this very strange letter of
Louis XIV.’s, which he terms the keystone of his theory, contenting
himself with observing: “This letter, so strange that people would wish
to deny its existence, is among the manuscripts in the _Bibliothèque du
Roi_. M. Champollion-Figeac, who discovered it three years ago among
the _papiers de Bouillaud_, told me the tenour of it at that time, at
the very moment I was setting off on a long journey. But unfortunately
he forgot to take a note of the volume containing this singular paper,
and since my return he has in vain sought to find it again. The learned
M. Libri also remembers having seen this precious document.”
The following is the truth about this letter and the origin of the
remarks of MM. Champollion-Figeac and Libri. It is in the _recueil
Bouillaud_, Manuscripts of the Imperial Library, SF 997, vol. xxxiii.,
catalogue, that this seventeenth-century collector speaks of a letter
“in which the Cardinal de Richelieu begged the King to demand from the
Pope a brief allowing him to put to death, without any form of trial,
those whom he considered deserving of it, a request which Pope Urban
VIII. refused.” M. P. Clément has already quoted this extract in note
2, p. 222 of his _Police sous Louis XIV._
M. Lacroix will thus see that his letter does not concern Louis XIV.,
Clement X., and Fouquet, but rather Louis XIII., Urban VIII., and some
unknown victims.
[468] Most of the complaints that Fouquet mentions in his letters are
due to a too great abundance of blood.
[469] Letters from Louvois to Saint-Mars, April 3 and May 4, 1680.
[470] _Ibid._, April 9, 1680.
[471] M. Chéruel, who arrives at the conclusion that Fouquet died in
March, 1680, observes, with reason, that a passage from the _Mémoires
de Gourville_ is alone in contradiction with other contemporary
testimony, but that the contradiction is only apparent. According to
Bussy-Rabutin, Fouquet was authorised in 1680 to go to the waters
of Bourbon. We have not referred to this authorisation, because no
document makes mention of it. But the report was spread about at Paris,
and it is not surprising that Gourville, writing his recollections long
after the events, should have confounded the authorisation with the
realization of this journey, and have said: “M. Fouquet having been set
at liberty----.” It is nevertheless in reference to this passage that
Voltaire writes in his _Siècle de Louis XIV._, “Hence it is not known
where this unfortunate man died, whose most insignificant actions were
of importance while he was powerful.” Voltaire has sacrificed truth to
effect of style. Madame de Sévigné knew of it: “Poor Monsieur Fouquet
is dead, I regret it; I have never lost so many friends.” Bussy knew of
it: “You know, I think of the death of Fouquet by apoplexy at the time
he was permitted to take the Bourbon waters.” The family knew of it,
since several of its members were at Pignerol in March, 1680. Gourville
was the only one who was not correctly informed; but we have just seen
in what manner and why he differs from other contemporaries.
[472] Paroletti, _Sur la Mort du Surintendant Fouquet, notes
receuillies à Pignerol_, quarto, 24 pages. Turin, 1812.
[473] _Ibid._, p. 20. Paroletti also concluded that the death of
Fouquet took place in March, 1680. There are equally the conclusions
of a work in preparation by M. Gaultier de Claubry on this special
question, and which will form part of that beautiful historical series
to which for some years past we have been indebted to the city of Paris.
[474] The ancient convent of Ste.-Claire is now a home for beggars. M.
Jacopo Bernardi, honorary grand vicar of the Bishop of Pignerol, writes
to me that in the country the death of Fouquet in 1680 is still a
tradition. I take this opportunity of thanking my obliging and learned
correspondent for the information with which he has been good enough to
furnish me about Pignerol.
[475] See especially Letters of Madame Sévigné, April 3 and 5, 1680.