The Use of a Mask formerly very general--Frequently adopted for
Prisoners in Italy--Its Employment not difficult in the Case of
Matthioly--Origin of the Legend of the Man with the Iron Mask--As
to the Transmission of the Secret from King to King--Louis
XV. and Louis XVIII.--How it is that the Despatches which we
have quoted have remained unpublished--Concerning the Silence
of Saint-Simon--Dujonca--Taulès’ Objection--Louvois’ harsh
Language--Matthioly’s Age--Concerning the Name of Marchialy--Order for
Matthioly’s Arrest--Arrival of the Duke of Mantua in Paris--Conclusion.
But what about the mask? some one will say,--the mask, which is the
characteristic feature of the mysterious prisoner, a feature more
striking than all the others, because that whilst the latter are
only known to those people who read, the former is recalled by the
very name of the famous captive, which one cannot pronounce without
picturing him to oneself with a mask covering his face? Need we say
that the custom of wearing a mask was formerly very general among
the great? Need we quote the example of Marie de Medicis, whom the
exact Héroard[624] represents as going to see the young Louis XIII.,
“who kisses her beneath her mask?” Or the Duchess de Montpensier’s
ladies of honour whom she authorised to cover their faces with masks
of black velvet?[625] Or, again, the Maréchale de Clérambault, whom
Saint-Simon[626] describes “as always wearing a mask of black velvet on
the high road or in the galleries?” Need we recall Madame de Maintenon
concealing her face under a mask,[627] when she comes seven different
times to Versailles to seek the children just born of Madame de
Montespan and Louis XIV., and to take them mysteriously to Paris in a
_fiacre_. Or the wives of certain rich financiers who, in 1683, dared
to wear a mask even in the churches,[628] and thus provoked a severe
_ordonnance_ from La Reynie, the Lieutenant of Police?
But if at this period we find very frequent examples of the use of a
mask in the ordinary course of life, there is absolutely no authentic
example of the wearing of a mask being enforced upon a prisoner,
and such a measure is altogether peculiar to the famous captive.
It has been concluded from this that the prisoner so exceptionally
treated must have been of exceptional importance, and that there
was some especial interest in concealing his countenance. But, if
this were the case, why was he conducted to the Bastille, where a
moment of forgetfulness might cause him to be recognized by one of
his fellow-captives, and almost infallibly by one of the numerous
officers of the fortress? Would it not have been as prudent as it was
easy to have avoided this danger by leaving him at the Isles Sainte
Marguerite? In order to explain the removal, it has been said that
Louis XIV. desired to have the prisoner nearer himself. This is
altogether wrong. We have just given[629] the despatches which preceded
Saint-Mars’ departure for the Bastille. Do they contain an imperious
order, unanswerable, and founded on reasons of State? Far from it. The
Minister informs Saint-Mars that the governorship of the Bastille has
just become vacant, and inquires if he is willing to accept it. Far
from speaking to him of “his old prisoner” in this first despatch,[630]
he touches only upon his private affairs, and the evident gain he would
experience by accepting this very advantageous proposition; and it is
only when Saint-Mars decides upon doing so that the Minister charges
him to bring “his old prisoner” with him. If this “old prisoner” had
possessed in his features any resemblance “revealing his origin,” he
would not have been taken to Paris, or anyhow some mention would have
been made of him in the first despatch in which the new duties are
proposed to Saint-Mars.
In the case of an Italian like Matthioly, the use of the mask has a
very natural explanation. Indeed, it is only in Italy that we meet with
the custom of covering the face of a prisoner with a mask. Individuals
arrested in Venice by order of the State inquisitors were taken masked
to their dungeons. Moreover, we have seen Matthioly concealing himself
with a mask in his secret interviews with the Abbé d’Estrades, Louis
XIV.’s ambassador. This mask[631] the Minister of the Duke of Mantua
and the companion of his pleasures used always to carry about with him.
It would certainly have formed part of the clothes and effects seized
near Turin in 1678, and which were sufficiently valuable for Louvois
to authorise Saint-Mars to take them with him.[632] In 1698, as at the
time of his arrest, Matthioly was always under the ban of that order of
absolute secrecy contained in a despatch which we shall shortly give;
and Saint-Mars, as we know, was as exact and as scrupulous in carrying
out his instructions, whether they were twenty years old or quite
recent. Moreover, in 1678 Matthioly had come to Paris, charged with an
official mission. He remained there a month. Supposing, as is probable,
that he ran no risk, after so long an absence, of being recognized by
the French whom he had visited, there was no reason why the Residents
of the Duke of Mantua and the other Italian Princes should not do so.
Lastly, an unpublished letter of Saint-Mars[633] and several despatches
of the Minister of Exterior Relations prove that there was then in the
Bastille a Count Boselli, an Italian, in whose detention the Marshal
de Tallard appears to have been interested, and who, on account of
his different missions, had travelled throughout the whole of Italy,
and had been brought into connection with many of the illustrious
families of Mantua and Bologna. He had doubtless known Matthioly’s,
and perhaps Matthioly himself. For all these reasons, therefore, it
was necessary to preserve the absolute secrecy to which the latter had
been condemned. Saint-Mars had the means at his disposal--a means
exceptional and extraordinary, but still very familiar to Matthioly.
His face was therefore covered with a mask, and if this peculiarity
was so striking to the people at the Bastille, it was principally on
account of the prisoner’s arriving there with the new governor, and
because their attention was already excited by the expected arrival of
Saint-Mars, preceded probably by a reputation for rigorous severity,
and awaited, anyhow, with that impatience to meet a new chief which all
subordinates display. It is this which has contributed to render so
strong in Dujonca the impression of surprise which we meet with in his
ingenuous journal. He has communicated this impression, thus received,
to other officers of the Bastille. The mysterious memory of it is
at first perpetuated within the walls of this formidable fortress.
It would still have been talked about during the first half of the
eighteenth century, when many men of letters were imprisoned there.
These last have certainly heard the tale which, after its passage from
one mouth to another, still contained a little of history and already
much of legend. They have preserved profoundly engraven on their minds
this story, so much more striking because it was told them on the very
scene of the events, and, once liberated, they have spread it abroad
amongst the public, and soon throughout the whole world. Imagination,
vividly excited, has had free play. Various explanations have been
proposed, supported, and contested. Great writers have taken part in
this controversy, and have lent it the lustre of their talents. With
the view of stimulating public curiosity, people have amused themselves
with adding to it much that was extraordinary and marvellous, and thus
the story of the Man with the Iron Mask has by degrees left the grave
domain of history to enter altogether into the seductive regions of
fiction.
Next, various episodes have been successively imagined and added as
so many embellishments to the life of the romantic prisoner: such
as--Louvois’ visit to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite; the silver dish
thrown out of the window and recovered by a fisherman, luckily for
himself, uneducated; and especially the transmission of the gloomy
secret “from King to King, and to no other.”[634] Louvois, as we
have already said,[635] never went to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite,
and it was a Protestant clergyman who threw out of the window a tin
dish, covered with a few lines of writing. As to the transmission
of the secret, which thus became, to a certain extent, an attribute
of royalty, nothing proves that this ever took place when it was
possible, and it is indisputable that it has not always been so. No
doubt Louis XIV., on his death-bed, had a private conversation with the
Duke d’Orléans.[636] That after having conversed with him concerning
grave affairs of State, he should have spoken to him of the only two
abductions of foreigners committed during his reign--those of Avedick
and Matthioly; that at this supreme hour this King, who did not at all
regret the persecutions inflicted upon his own subjects, because, even
at his last moment, he was artfully made to consider them necessary
for religion; that this King, I say, should have understood, at such a
time, that to carry off an Armenian Patriarch, and to cause a foreign
Minister to disappear, were two extreme acts, and manifest violations
of international law; and that, acting under this impression, he
should have recounted them to his nephew, may be admitted. Afterwards,
the question of the Man with the Iron Mask having been suddenly
mooted, it is probable the Duke d’Orléans or Cardinal Fleury may have
informed Louis XV. about it. All the replies of the latter, when
questioned, tend to confirm the opinion we have just established, by
the examination of the despatches and are perfectly applicable to
Matthioly.[637] That Louis XV. may have transmitted the secret to his
grandson is also possible, although there is nothing to establish the
fact of his having done so. But how was Louis XVIII. in a position
to have been acquainted with it, as he is said to have been? When,
as Count de Provence, he quitted Paris, Louis XVI. did not foresee
the catastrophe which was so near. Will it be said that in the depths
of his prison, the unhappy King may have remembered the necessary
transmission, and have therefore occupied himself with informing his
brother? But then, also, Louis XVII. was still living. If, therefore,
Louis XVIII. has, by means of skilfully obscured answers, given out
that he, too, was in the secret, it was only that he might not seem
to be deprived of a privilege which some persons still regarded as a
prerogative of the Crown.
Such are the embellishments with which time has adorned the story of
the masked prisoner, and which, by transfiguring him, have rendered
him unrecognizable. But, as has often been said to us, how is it
that, reduced to his proper proportions, he has not been previously
recognized in a definitive manner? How is it, too, since he has been
the object of such long researches, that people have passed over so
many despatches concerning him, without even reading them? To this we
shall content ourselves with replying, that these despatches are in
existence, that their authenticity cannot be contested, and that any
one may take cognizance of them in the Archives of the Ministry of War
or of Foreign Affairs. If they have remained unpublished to the present
time, it is doubtless because they have escaped notice, containing, as
they do, mere indications, and no proof revealing in a direct manner
the identity of the Man with the Iron Mask. It is by bringing them
together, and comparing them, that light is thrown upon them. Isolated
they remain obscure; having no clearness of their own, they have not
attracted attention, and have remained buried in the heaps of documents
among which they are still to be found.
What objection yet remains to combat the result of this minute
inquiry carefully conducted among innumerable materials? Is it the
silence of Saint-Simon[639] in reference to this affair? But this
very silence tends to prove that the masked prisoner was the victim
of an intrigue concocted abroad. This immortal writer has, indeed,
thrown light into the most secret and obscure recesses of Louis XIV.’s
Court. None of its hidden wretchedness, none of its most secret
intrigues, nothing concerning the interior of the Kingdom, has escaped
this self-constituted observer. But, on the other hand, he was only
acquainted with the foreign affairs of the end of the reign, when his
friend, the Marquis de Torcy, had assumed the direction of them. He was
as completely ignorant about all the others as he was well-informed
concerning what passed within the Kingdom. His silence, therefore,
which would be very strange, if the Man with the Iron Mask had belonged
to a French family, is easily explained by the fact that this prisoner
was arrested outside France, and in 1678.
Will it still be maintained that the slight importance of a minister
of the Duke of Mantua is incompatible with the care that Dujonca[640]
took to prepare the chamber in the Bastille for the Man with the Iron
Mask, when in the curious manuscript notes[641] which we have found
in the Archives of the Arsenal, Dujonca himself states, “That on the
arrival of a prisoner, it is necessary to take care to have given and
brought to him all that is essential for the furnishing of his chamber,
paying very dearly for it to the Governor’s upholsterer, or else to the
_maîtresse d’autel_?”
Is it still possible to draw an objection from the silence concerning
Matthioly preserved in the despatches addressed by the Minister to
Saint-Mars during the years 1680 to 1698,[642] now that we know that
Matthioly, contrary to the opinion admitted up to the present time, had
remained at Pignerol, and was only restored to Saint-Mars a few years
before the latter’s departure for the Bastille?
People have often spoken of the severe treatment of which Matthioly was
the object, and the harsh expressions used with reference to him by the
Minister. But if there was indeed, for a long time, a certain harshness
in Louvois’ language, the despatches of the Abbé d’Estrades explain
it. This harshness was caused by the cruel disappointment experienced
by the Minister, when, notwithstanding Matthioly’s promises, the
original of the ratification of the treaty of Casale could not be found
among his papers. Previously to this, Catinat had written to Louvois:
“Monsieur de Saint-Mars treats the S. de Lestang[643] very kindly so
far as regards cleanliness and food, but very strictly in preventing
him holding intercourse with any one.”[644]
Later, especially after the execution of the treaty, the old grievances
disappeared, and if an incessant surveillance was maintained, useless
severity was dispensed with. Moreover, these harsh, coarse, and painful
expressions were only too familiar to Louvois, and in some of his
despatches he has scarcely shown himself milder with reference to
Fouquet and De Lauzun.
Lastly, Voltaire declares that he had heard “from the Sieur Marsolan,
the son-in-law of the apothecary of the Bastille, that the latter,
a short time previous to the death of the masked prisoner, learnt
from him that _he believed himself to be about sixty years old_.” Now
Matthioly, born in 1640, was, in reality, sixty-three years of age when
he died.
He died, and the registers of the Church of Saint-Paul[645] bear
the name of _Marchialy_. The dissertations on this name have been
as numerous as ingenious. Some persons--Father Griffet,[646] for
instance--have discovered in it the letters forming the words _hic
amiral_ (Vermandois and Beaufort were Admirals of France), as if
the employment of an anagram was probable under such circumstances!
Others[647] have beheld in it the word _mar_, which in the Armenian
tongue signifies _Saint_, and in the East would be applied to the
patriarchs, and the word _Kialy_, the Armenian diminutive of _Michael_,
which was Avedick’s Christian name. Is it not more simple and natural
to regard this word as standing for Matthioly’s name itself, which
in several despatches Louvois writes Marthioly?[648] No one can
be ignorant of the negligence with which proper names were then
spelt?[649] Here there is only one letter changed; how many examples do
we not come across of much more important modifications? No one could
have any suspicion of the date of Count Matthioly’s death. People were
ignorant that Dujonca kept a journal, and it was only afterwards, that
guided by its statements they thought of searching among the registers
of the Church of Saint-Paul for the date of November 20, 1703, which
he had assigned for the burial of the masked prisoner. But it must at
least be admitted that at the time of this burial there was nothing
which could serve to attract attention towards the registration of
November 20. Moreover, all danger of his imparting any confidence, all
fear of a revelation of an odious violation of international law, had
disappeared with the possessor of Louis XIV.’s secret, with the victim
of this violation. To inscribe his name upon the register of an obscure
church, where no one had the means of seeking for it, was therefore
natural, and presented no danger. Everything that was essential or
indispensable had been done. The abduction was accomplished with the
greatest mystery; Matthioly’s presence at Pignerol, and afterwards at
the Islands, was known only to his gaoler; his name merely mentioned
in despatches which might be presumed to be placed for ever beyond
investigations, then this name disappearing in its turn, and every
trace of the prisoner, as was believed, effaced by these means; his
changes of prison taking place with extraordinary precautions; all
this would have sufficed to have rendered any researches useless, and
to have prevented the complete identification of Matthioly, if the
archives at Versailles had remained impenetrable. Louis XIV.’s order
was scrupulously executed, as will be seen from the despatch,[650]
which it is now time to give, and in which the King of France caused
to be accorded to the Abbé d’Estrades, the authorisation which he had
solicited.
“Versailles, April 28, 1679.
“The King has seen in your letter the confidence that Madame la
Duchesse de Savoye had imparted to you concerning Count Matthioly’s
perfidy. It is rather strange that, feeling himself guilty to such a
degree towards his Majesty, he dares to trust himself in your hands.
So the King thinks that it is good that he should not do so with
impunity. _Since you believe you can get him carried off without
the thing causing any scandal_, his Majesty desires that you should
execute the idea that you have, and that you should have him taken
secretly to Pignerol. An order is sent there to receive him, _and to
have him kept there without any person knowing about it_. It will
depend upon your skill to arrange a meeting, in order to speak with
him in an unfrequented spot, and if possible, in the country. But in
any case, if it is true that he has had the ratification of the Duke
of Mantua, and should have it in his possession, it would be good to
take him and make sure of him. It is not necessary that you should
inform Madame la Duchesse de Savoye of this order which his Majesty
gives you, and NO ONE MUST KNOW WHAT HAS BECOME OF THIS MAN.”
Our task is ended. Can it be a matter for regret that the chief and
necessary consequence of our researches has been to annihilate a
creature of fantasy with a particularly handsome countenance, of
lofty birth, and with an affecting destiny? Is not the charm of
truth superior to all others, and if it has been vouchsafed to us to
introduce it into these pages, if, into a question where, as we have
seen, everything was uncertainty, we have succeeded in throwing a
little fresh light, why should we fear to have finished by dissipating
that creation of popular imagination, that dubious and fanciful
being, who, it seems to us, ought not to excite so much interest
as he who has really lived, and whose existence we can follow step
by step? Whilst, in fact, an inevitable uncertainty must always be
mingled with the attraction exercised by the former, whilst the pity
and emotion experienced must ever be restrained by the impossibility
of proving even his birth; in the second case we are concerned with
a misfortune quite as great, and this time real, with an individual
much less eminent, but who has indeed existed, and who, condemned
like the former to an unjust punishment, has really lived, suffered,
and been persecuted. Wherefore, too, should one measure one’s pity
by the importance of those who deserve it? Are not all the victims
of arbitrary power equally worthy of interest, and does not the
persistence of misfortune raise the persecuted to the level of those
who are great by birth and by splendour of position? Fouquet in the
depths of his prison, separated from every one that he loves, but
finding in his Christian sentiments sufficient strength to overcome his
sorrow, seems to us a great deal more touching in his resignation than
interesting from the recollection of the splendid part he had played
in the court of Louis XIV. Matthioly also was torn from his family
and held a high position, but in a much less important court; he too
suffered the loneliness of captivity, and for him this loneliness was
lasting. His wife took refuge in a convent, and thus withdrew from a
world from which Louis XIV. had violently carried off her husband. His
family was dispersed, powerless, and silent, feeling itself threatened
as it were by the blow which had struck its chief. He dragged out
his existence in various prisons, proceeding from Pignerol to the
Isles Sainte-Marguerite, from these islands to the Bastille, sometimes
resigned, at others disordered by grief, and in his fits of madness
calling himself a near relation of Louis XIV., and for this reason
demanding his liberty. On November 19, 1703, his misfortunes terminated
with his life.
By a strange coincidence, at the very moment of Matthioly’s death, his
master, Charles IV., Duke of Mantua, arrived in Paris. But he--who had
abandoned himself more and more to Louis XIV., to whom he had sold one
of the keys of Italy, and had recently delivered up Mantua itself,
besides having several times permitted him to pass through his States
in order to invade the peninsula--was fêted as he deserved to be, and
was received as a true Frenchman. He descended at the Palace of the
Luxembourg, magnificently fitted up for him with the furniture of
the Crown. Seven tables were constantly served at the King’s expense
for the Duke and his suite, and brilliant fêtes were given him at
Meudon and Versailles, where he received from Louis XIV. a splendid
sword covered with diamonds.[651] It has been said[652] that it would
have been extremely imprudent to have inscribed Matthioly’s real
name upon the registers of Saint-Paul’s, at the date of the Duke’s
arrival in Paris, since the latter might thus have become acquainted
with his death. We know what kind of interest Charles IV. took in his
ex-confidant, and we have seen that he only troubled himself with
making sure of his positive disappearance. Instead, therefore, of the
fact of this death being concealed from him, it is very possible that he was made acquainted with it,
with the view of altogether dissipating his alarms. However this
may be, history presents some singular meetings, and reality often
surpasses in interest the most romantic fancies of the imagination. Of
the two individuals who had played the principal part in the cession of
Casale to Louis XIV., the Prince who had agreed to it contrary to his
duty, in order to obtain a little money and satisfy his prodigality,
was the object of gorgeous fêtes; while at the same moment, in the
same town, and only a short distance off, his ex-Minister, whom he
had created Senator and Count, who was allied to the most illustrious
families of his country, and who had once also been magnificently
received by Louis XIV. at Versailles, but who had afterwards for an
instant arrested the monarch’s overwhelming ambition and delayed
the servitude of Mantua, was dying far away from his friends, in a
little chamber of the Bastille, after a captivity of four-and-twenty
years; and the next day, at the fall of night, was obscurely borne to
the neighbouring church, followed only by two subordinate officials
belonging to the fortress.
FOOTNOTES:
[624] _Journal_, vol. i. p. 133.
[625] _Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier_, vol. iii. p. 225.
[626] _Mémoires de Saint-Simon_, vol. xiii. p. 16.
[627] _Souvenirs de Madame de Caylus_.
[628] _Correspondance Administrative sous Louis XIV._, vol. ii. p. 571.
See also M. P. Clément, _La Police sous Louis XIV._, p. 89.
[629] Chapter XXIII., pp. 347, 348, _ante_.
[630] See Chap. XXIII., note 29, pp. 346, 347, _ante_.
[631] This mask would, however, have been of a different kind to that
which Matthioly was afterwards compelled to wear. The latter was
no doubt secured in such a way that it could not be removed by the
wearer.--_Trans._
[632] Despatch from Louvois to Saint-Mars, June 9, 1681.
[633] Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, section Mantua,
27-29.
[634] Michelet.
[635] Chapter V., p. 62, _ante_.
[636] _Mémoires de Saint-Simon_, vol. viii. p. 66.
[637] Dutens, in his _Correspondance Interceptée_, relates that “Louis
XV. said one day to the Duke de Choiseul, that he was acquainted with
the story of the masked prisoner. The Duke begged the King to tell
him what it was. But he could obtain no other reply save _that all
the conjectures as yet formed concerning this prisoner were mistaken
ones_.” As Madame Dubarry caused the Duke de Choiseul to be disgraced
in 1770, the conversation narrated must have taken place previous to
this date. Now it was only on June 28, 1770, that Baron d’Heiss was the
first person in France to advance, in a letter addressed to the authors
of the _Journal Encyclopédique_, as we have stated in Chapter xxi., p.
295, _ante_, the theory which makes Matthioly the Man with the Iron
Mask, and this letter was inserted in the part for August 15, 1770.
The abduction of Matthioly had been narrated at Leyden in 1687,[638]
but it was only in August, 1770, that the theory began to be known and
debated. Louis XV.’s reply to the Duke de Choiseul can therefore be
very well reconciled with the theory.
Dutens adds that some time afterwards Madame de Pompadour pressed the
King to give an explanation with reference to this subject, and that
Louis XV. told her that he believed _it was a minister of an Italian
prince_.
M. Giraud (of the Institute) has often heard Madame de Boigne relate
the following anecdote which he has given me authority to publish.
Madame de Boigne was the daughter of the Marquis d’Osmond, who held a
high position at the court of Louis XVI. In one of her conversations
with the Marquis, Madame Adelaide related the check which her curiosity
had received with reference to the Iron Mask. She had persuaded her
brother the Dauphin to question the King concerning this famous
prisoner, so that he might tell her the secret afterwards. The Dauphin
was then very young, and at the first word that he uttered, Louis XV.
inquired, smiling: “Who has charged you to ask me this question?” The
Dauphin acknowledged that it was his sister. The King refused to give a
complete answer, but observed that the secret had never been of great
importance, and at that time no longer possessed any interest.
The same anecdote has been related to us in almost identical words by
M. Guillaume Guizot, who also had it from Madame de Boigne.
In page 47 of the _Souvenirs du Baron de Gleichen_ recently published
by M. Grimblot, we read that the Duke de Choiseul had vainly made
researches among the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in
order to discover the secret of the Iron Mask. There is nothing very
surprising in this. These Archives contain all the documents that we
have reproduced or quoted, treating of Matthioly’s abduction. They also
contain, spread among a number of series and volumes, the despatches
which prove the evident interest that the Duke of Mantua had in the
definitive disappearance of his ex-confidant. But if these documents,
of which the greater portion were unpublished, have furnished me with
arguments for the support of the Matthioly theory, it is not in these
Archives but in those of the Ministry of War that I have discovered the
despatches which have enabled me to establish the complete agreement
between the individual carried off May 2, 1679, and the prisoner who
arrived at the Bastille with Saint-Mars, September 18, 1698, and died
there November 19, 1703. Researches made solely in the Archives of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, would have led to nothing. It was
necessary to make them in all the collections, and afterwards to
compare the various results, the combination of which alone enables us
to obtain a solution of the problem.
[638] In a work entitled _Histoire abrégée de l’Europe_, which, after
speaking of Matthioly’s proceedings with reference to the treaty for
the surrender of Casale and describing his capture and imprisonment,
goes on to say: “At Pignerol he was thought to be too near Italy,
and, though he was guarded very carefully, it was feared that the
walls might tell tales; he was therefore removed thence to the Isles
Sainte-Marguerite, where he is at present, under the care of M. de
Saint-Mars, the governor.”--_Trans._
[639] This objection has often been made.
[640] This is one of the points on which Father Griffet relies most of
all in order to prove the excessive importance of this prisoner. The
quotation which we have given from Dujonca’s notes, establishes the
fact that he was obliged to act thus for all the prisoners. But besides
these notes, as yet unpublished, the _Journal de Dujonca_ furnishes
several proofs of what we advance.
[641] We have given these notes in Chapter XIII. pp. 167-169, _ante_.
[642] Taulès was the first to put forward this objection.
[643] The reader will remember that this was Matthioly’s supposititious
name.
[644] Despatch from Catinat to Louvois, May 6, 1679. Given by Delort,
p. 214.
[645] The following is a literal translation of the entry in the
Register in question, a facsimile of which forms the frontispiece to
the present volume:--
“The 19th Marchialy aged forty-five years or about has died in the
bastile, whose body has been buried in the cemetery of st. Paul his
parish the 20th of the present [month] in the presence of Monsieur
Rosage major of the bastile and Mr. Reglhe surgeon-major of the bastile
who have signed.
“ROSARGES.” “REILHE.”
In _La Bastille Dévoilée_, a work of doubtful authenticity, as also in
the _Mélanges d’Histoire et de Littérature_ of Mr. Quintin Craufurd,
who professes to make the statement on the authority of M. Delaunay,
the unfortunate governor of the Bastille in the reign of Louis XVI.,
it is asserted that the prisoner “was buried in a winding-sheet of new
linen; and for the most part everything that was found in his chamber
was burnt, such as every part of his bed, including the mattresses, his
tables, chairs, and other utensils, which were all reduced to powder
and to cinders, and thrown into the drains. The rest of the things,
such as the silver, copper, and pewter, were melted. This prisoner
was lodged in the third chamber of the tower Bertaudière, which room
was scraped and filed quite to the stone, and fresh whitewashed from
the top to the bottom. The doors and windows were burnt like the
rest.”--_Trans._
[646] Dissertation on the Man with the Iron Mask, in his _Traité des
Différentes Sortes de Preuves_.
[647] _Mémoires de Mallet du Pan._
[648] The name is written in several ways. I have chosen the
orthography most generally adopted in the despatches. We find Matioli,
Matheoli, and Marthioly. [Also Mattioli, Matioly, and Matthioli. Louis
XIV. writes it indiscriminately Mathioly, Matthioli, and Matthioly--in
different ways even in the same despatch.--_Trans._]
[649] M. P. Clément quotes a curious example of this negligence in
his _Police sous Louis XIV._, p. 102, note 1. The correct name of the
Italian, accomplice of Sainte-Croix in the _Affaire des Poisons_, was
Egidio, but in the documents he is called Exili.
[650] Unpublished despatch:--Archives of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, section Savoy, 68. It is from this despatch that the motto of
the present work has been taken.
[651] _Mémoires de Saint-Simon_, vol. iii. pp. 70, 108, 109.
[652] M. Jules Loiseleur, _Revue Contemporaine_, p. 236.
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