The man with the iron mask

by Marius Topin

CHAPTER XVIII.

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.