Fouquet from the kingdom for life. "But the king was of the opinion that
it would be dangerous to let the said Fouquet leave the country, in
consideration of his intimate knowledge of the most important matters of
state. Consequently the sentence of perpetual banishment was commuted
into that of perpetual imprisonment." ['Receuil des defenses de M.
Fouquet'). The instructions signed by the king and remitted to
Saint-Mars forbid him to permit Fouquet to hold any spoken or written
communication with anyone whatsoever, or to leave his apartments for any
cause, not even for exercise. The great mistrust felt by Louvois
pervades all his letters to Saint-Mars. The precautions which he ordered
to be kept up were quite as stringent as in the case of the Iron Mask.
The report of the discovery of a shirt covered with writing, by a friar,
which Abbe Papon mentions, may perhaps be traced to the following
extracts from two letters written by Louvois to Saint-Mars: "Your letter
has come to hand with the new handkerchief on which M. Fouquet has
written" (18th Dec. 1665 ); "You can tell him that if he continues too
employ his table-linen as note-paper he must not be surprised if you
refuse to supply him with any more" ( 21st Nov. 1667).
Pere Papon asserts that a valet who served the masked prisoner died in
his master's room. Now the man who waited on Fouquet, and who like him
was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, died in February 1680 (see
letter of Louvois to Saint-Mars, 12th March 1680). Echoes of incidents
which took place at Pignerol might have reached the Iles
Sainte-Marguerite when Saint-Mars transferred his "former prisoner" from
one fortress to the other. The fine clothes and linen, the books, all
those luxuries in fact that were lavished on the masked prisoner, were
not withheld from Fouquet. The furniture of a second room at Pignerol
cost over 1200 livres (see letters of Louvois, 12th Dec. 1665, and 22nd
Feb, 1666).
It is also known that until the year 1680 Saint-Mars had only two
important prisoners at Pignerol, Fouquet and Lauzun. However, his
"former prisoner of Pignerol," according to Du Junca's diary, must have
reached the latter fortress before the end of August 1681, when
Saint-Mars went to Exilles as governor. So that it was in the interval
between the 23rd March 1680, the alleged date of Fouquet's death, and
the 1st September 1681, that the Iron Mask appeared at Pignerol, and yet
Saint-Mars took only two prisoners to Exilles. One of these was probably
the Man in the Iron Mask; the other, who must have been Matthioli, died
before the year 1687, for when Saint-Mars took over the governorship in
the month of January of that year of the Iles Sainte-Marguerite he
brought only ONE prisoner thither with him. "I have taken such good
measures to guard my prisoner that I can answer to you for his safety"
['Lettres de Saint-Mars a Louvois', 20th January 1687).
In the correspondence of Louvois with Saint-Mars we find, it is true,
mention of the death of Fouquet on March 23rd, 1680, but in his later
correspondence Louvois never says "the late M. Fouquet," but speaks of
him, as usual, as "M. Fouquet" simply. Most historians have given as a
fact that Fouquet was interred in the same vault as his father in the
chapel of Saint-Francois de Sales in the convent church belonging to the
Sisters of the Order of the Visitation-Sainte-Marie, founded in the
beginning of the seventeenth century by Madame de Chantal. But proof to
the contrary exists; for the subterranean portion of St. Francis's
chapel was closed in 1786, the last person interred there being Adelaide
Felicite Brulard, with whom ended the house of Sillery. The convent was
shut up in 1790, and the church given over to the Protestants in 1802;
who continued to respect the tombs. In 1836 the Cathedral chapter of
Bourges claimed the remains of one of their archbishops buried there in
the time of the Sisters of Sainte-Marie. On this occasion all the
coffins were examined and all the inscriptions carefully copied, but the
name of Nicolas Fouquet is absent.
Voltaire says in his 'Dictionnaire philosophique', article "Ana," "It is
most remarkable that no one knows where the celebrated Fouquet was
buried."
But in spite of all these coincidences, this carefully constructed
theory was wrecked on the same point on which the theory that the
prisoner was either the Duke of Monmouth or the Comte de Vermandois came
to grief, viz. a letter from Barbezieux, dated 13th August 1691, in
which occur the words, "THE PRISONER WHOM YOU HAVE HAD IN CHARGE FOR
TWENTY YEARS." According to this testimony, which Jacob had successfully
used against his predecessors, the prisoner referred to could not have
been Fouquet, who completed his twenty-seventh year of captivity in
1691, if still alive.
We have now impartially set before our readers all the opinions which
have been held in regard to the solution of this formidable enigma. For
ourselves, we hold the belief that the Man in the Iron Mask stood on the
steps of the throne. Although the mystery cannot be said to be
definitely cleared up, one thing stands out firmly established among the
mass of conjecture we have collected together, and that is, that
wherever the prisoner appeared he was ordered to wear a mask on pain of
death. His features, therefore, might during half a century have brought
about his recognition from one end of France to the other; consequently,
during the same space of time there existed in France a face resembling
the prisoner's known through all her provinces, even to her most
secluded isle.
Whose face could this be, if not that of Louis XVI, twin-brother of the
Man in the Iron Mask?
To nullify this simple and natural conclusion strong evidence will be
required.
Our task has been limited to that of an examining judge at a trial, and
we feel sure that our readers will not be sorry that we have left them
to choose amid all the conflicting explanations of the puzzle. No
consistent narrative that we might have concocted would, it seems to us,
have been half as interesting to them as to allow them to follow the
devious paths opened up by those who entered on the search for the heart
of the mystery. Everything connected with the masked prisoner arouses
the most vivid curiosity. And what end had we in view? Was it not to
denounce a crime and to brand the perpetrator thereof? The facts as they
stand are sufficient for our object, and speak more eloquently than if
used to adorn a tale or to prove an ingenious theory.
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