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The brother of the officer whom I mentioned above was partly in the confidence of M. de Saint-Mars, and he often told how he was summoned to the prison once at midnight and ordered to remove a corpse, and that he carried it on his shoulders to the burial-place, feeling certain it was the prisoner who was dead; but it was only his servant, and it was then that an effort was made to supply his place by a female attendant."
Saint-Mars replies to the minister: "I have charged Blainvilliers to show him a cudgel and tell him that with its aid we can make the froward meek." Again Louvois writes: "The clothes of such people must be made to last three or four years."
All very true; but this jail-bird and his mate, by the direct statement of Louvois, are "the prisoners too important to be intrusted to other hands than yours" the hands of Saint-Mars while Mattioli is so unimportant that he may be left at Pignerol under Villebois. The truth is, that the offense and the punishment of Mattioli were well known to European diplomatists and readers of books.
Saint-Mars also let it be understood that whoever found out the secret would share the same fate. This threat to murder both the prisoner and those who showed too much curiosity about him made such an impression, that during the lifetime of the late king people only spoke of the mystery below their breath.
Mattioli had been a prisoner only for twelve years, and lay in Pignerol, not in Sainte-Marguerite, where Saint-Mars now was. Saint-Mars replied: "I can assure you that NOBODY HAS SEEN HIM BUT MYSELF." By the beginning of March, 1694, Pignerol had been bombarded by the enemies of France; presently Louis XIV. had to cede it to Savoy. The prisoners there must be removed.
By February 14, 1680, Mattioli was daily conversing with God and his angels. "I believe his brain is turned," says Saint-Mars. In March, 1680, as we saw, Fouquet died. These two, being employed as valets, kept their wits. On the death of Fouquet, Louvois wrote to Saint-Mars about the two valets.
One day, as M. de Saint-Mars was conversing with him, standing outside his door, in a kind of corridor, so as to be able to see from a distance everyone who approached, the son of one of the governor's friends, hearing the voices, came up; Saint-Mars quickly closed the door of the room, and, rushing to meet the young man, asked him with an air of great anxiety if he had overheard anything that was said.
Here, then, by July, 1680, are the two valets locked in one dungeon of the "Tour d'en bas." By September Saint-Mars had placed Mattioli, with the mad monk, in another chamber of the same tower. He writes: "Mattioli is almost as mad as the monk," who arose from bed and preached naked.
He had for an instant the idea not daring to renew the request which he had made the day before, to have news of him sent to his ward of imitating the man with the iron mask, who had thrown a silver plate from the window of his prison on to the shore, by throwing a letter from his balcony into the courtyard of the Palais Royal; but he knew what a fatal result this infraction of the will of Monsieur de Saint-Mars had had for the unfortunate prisoner, so that he feared, by such an action, to increase the rigors of his captivity, which at present seemed to him tolerable.
While I was showing him the way to his room, I was accompanied by M. Rosarges, who had also arrived along with M. de Saint-Mars, and whose office it was to wait on the said prisoner, whose table is to be supplied by the governor." Du Jonca's diary records the death of the prisoner in the following terms: "Monday, 19th November 1703.
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