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I don't like the looks of him," said Athos to D'Artagnan in Spanish. "De Saint-Mars," replied the captain. "He is, then, I suppose, the prince's jailer?" "Eh! how can I tell? I may be kept at Sainte-Marguerite forever." "Oh! no, not you!" "My friend, I am in the situation of a man who finds a treasure in the midst of a desert.
They set out together, but at a short distance from the city were surrounded by a dozen horsemen, who carried off the secretary, 'disguised him, put a mask on him, and took him to Pignerol. He was not kept long in this fortress, as it was 'too near the Italian frontier, and although he was carefully guarded it was feared that the walls would speak'; so he was transferred to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, where he is at present in the custody of M. de Saint-Mars.
To all these details, which the marshal acknowledges to be correct, Voltaire adds a remarkable note: "What increases our wonder is, that when the unknown captive was sent to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite no personage of note disappeared from the European stage."
But the views of the Dutch scholars thus set forth met with little credence, and were soon forgotten in a new solution. The third historian to write about the prisoner of the Iles Sainte-Marguerite was Lagrange-Chancel.
"I also learned from a man called Dubuisson, cashier to the well-known Samuel Bernard, who, having been imprisoned for some years in the Bastile, was removed to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, where he was confined along with some others in a room exactly over the one occupied by the unknown prisoner.
"Malzac died at the beginning of 1694," citing Jung, p. 91. Now on p. 91 M. Jung writes, "At the beginning of 1694 Saint-Mars had six prisoners, of whom one Melzac, dies." M. Funck-Brentano must have overlooked M. Jung's change of opinion between his p. 91 and his pp. 269, 270. Mattioli, certainly, had a valet in December, 1693, at Pignerol. He went to Sainte-Marguerite in March, 1694.
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.
1st, that the precautions taken when Fouquet was sent to Pignerol resembled in every respect those employed later by the custodians of the Iron Mask, both at the Iles Sainte-Marguerite and at the Bastille; 2nd, that the majority of the traditions relative to the masked prisoner might apply to Fouquet;
"As you please, dear friend; but we will, at least, leave Sainte-Marguerite together; take advantage of the bark that will convey me back to Antibes." "With all my heart; we cannot too soon be at a distance from this fort, and from the spectacle that shocked us so just now."
"On Thursday, September the 8th, 1698, at three o'clock in the afternoon, M. de Saint-Mars, the new governor of the Bastille, entered upon his duties. He arrived from the islands of Sainte-Marguerite, bringing with him in a litter a prisoner whose name is a secret, and whom he had had under his charge there, and at Pignerol.
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