At first this despatch appears insignificant enough. It seems to furnish but one proof more of Louvois’ kindly interest for Saint-Mars, an interest which was due to the Minister’s intense affection for his mistress, Madame Dufresnoy, sister-in-law to Saint-Mars, and also, which is perhaps a more legitimate reason, to the perfect devotion and tried fidelity of the gaoler of Fouquet and Lauzun. However, on reading it over again, I asked myself how Saint-Mars could dream, if Matthioly was one of his prisoners, of soliciting to be sent to Casale, to a town altogether Italian and even Mantuan, where Matthioly might certainly have succeeded, if not in escaping (we know that Saint-Mars’ prisoners could scarcely indulge in that hope), at least in giving information concerning himself, and revealing his situation. But the sole motive of Louvois’ refusal is, as we have just seen, the smallness of the salary given to the commandant of Casale. If Saint-Mars, to suppose what could never have happened, had misconceived the danger likely to be caused by Matthioly’s presence at Casale, even as a prisoner, it is beyond doubt that Louvois, naturally cautious (and here caution would have been a duty) would have written to him in something like the following words: “I am astonished that you should have formed the design of removing to Casale. It is necessary to give it up entirely.” But on the contrary, Louvois finds no other inconvenience in this plan than that of the inferiority of the salary attached to the duties of Casale, and he concludes with these words: “I do not advise you to think of it.” It is the friend full of solicitude who speaks, and not the Minister energetically rejecting a proposal so contrary to the interests confided to him.
It was this despatch which first suggested to me the idea that, contrary to the general opinion, Matthioly was not taken by Saint-Mars from Pignerol to Exiles. As yet this was, it is true, but a very weak presumption, which was destroyed by proofs that were apparently irrefutable and had been accepted as such up to the present. We have, in fact, seen that Matthioly, a short time after his arrest, was placed in the lower Tower at Pignerol, and it was the prisoners of this tower whom Saint-Mars was ordered to conduct to Exiles. Louvois’ despatch[574] of June 9, 1681, concludes with these words: “With regard to the effects belonging to the Sieur Matthioly, which are in your possession, you will have them taken to Exiles, in order to be able to give them back to him if his Majesty should ever order him to be set at liberty.” This is an explicit statement, and has naturally confirmed every one in the opinion that Matthioly was removed from Pignerol to Exiles. But the doubt which the despatch of January 5, 1682, had made me conceive, was changed into certainty when I read the following letter, written by Saint-Mars, to the Abbé d’Estrades, June 25, 1681, and to be found in minute among the Estrades’ manuscripts in the Imperial Library:—
“June 25, 1681.
“Sir, I should not deserve your pardon if I was certain of having the government of Exiles without doing myself the honour to inform you of it, and besides the respect which I have for you, Sir, I am indebted to you to such a degree that I should be an ungrateful and dishonest man if, during the whole of my life, I did not honour you with the utmost affection and respect. Rely on me, Sir, as being the most devoted person in the world towards yourself and bound for the remainder of my days with heart and love to your service. I only received yesterday my supplies as governor of Exiles with two thousand livres of salary; my free company is preserved to me as well as two of my lieutenants, and I shall also have in custody two crows, whom I have here, who have no other names than Messieurs of the lower Tower; Matthioli will remain here with two other prisoners. One of my lieutenants named Villebois will look after them, and he has a warrant to command either in the citadel or in the donjon during my absence, and until M. de Rissan returns, or his Majesty shall have provided for this office of Lieutenant of the King by naming some other person. The Chevalier de Saint-Martin has been appointed Major of Montlouis with a salary of seven hundred crowns, and Blainvilliers, his comrade, Major of the citadel of Metz, with the same pay. I do not expect to leave here before the end of next month. I could if I chose go there from time to time in order to have the repairs made which are necessary for the good of the service, as I have received my orders to go into this place of exile whenever I please; but as nothing presses, and as it will be necessary to take up my residence in this place in order to pass the winter there with the whole of my family and the bears, it will take time for me to accommodate myself as well as possible. What consoles me is that I shall have the honour of being near to the States of their Royal Highnesses, to whom I am as much a debtor as a very respectful and humble servant.”
Consequently, Matthioly was not the prisoner who died at Exiles, the commencement of January, 1687.[575] He was therefore left at Pignerol, where we shall soon meet with him again in charge of the Sieur de Villebois. Louis XIV. at first had the idea of having him removed to Exiles, as is proved by Louvois’ despatch of June 9, 1681, the last sentence of which we have quoted. But it is none the less certain that this first design was abandoned, and that Matthioly was left at Pignerol.
There is also another remarkable expression in Saint-Mars’ letter. He writes, “I shall also have in custody two crows” (merles). Now even in our own time the word “crow” (merle) is applied only to common and insignificant persons, of as little notoriety as importance. Up to the present, however, it is in one of these two “crows” that people have seen the Man with the Iron Mask. Is it objected that one proof alone is not sufficient to establish the entire obscurity of these two prisoners of Saint Mars? But this is confirmed also by all we have said concerning the treatment of which Saint-Mars’ prisoners at Pignerol were the objects, with the exception of Fouquet, Lauzun, and Matthioly.[576] Is additional testimony required? “You can have clothes made for your prisoners,” writes Louvois to Saint-Mars at Exiles, December 14, 1681; “but it is necessary that the clothes of people like these should last three or four years.”[577] As usual, the Minister’s orders were punctually executed by his representative, and when Saint-Mars left Exiles to proceed to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, he wrote to Versailles “that the prisoner’s bed was so old and worn out” (we have previously seen that one of the prisoners was still alive in 1687, the other having died in the early part of January of the same year), “as well as everything he made use of, both table-linen and furniture, that it was not worth while to bring them here; they only sold for thirteen crowns.”[578] Assuredly if this is the Man with the Iron Mask, and if he had that delicate taste for fine linen, of which so much has been said, he must have found considerable difficulty in gratifying it.
Saint-Mars arrives at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, which as yet had not been used as a State Prison, as they are at present.[579] Obeying Louvois’ orders he causes some new buildings to be erected,[580] in which he receives in turns various prisoners, especially Protestant ministers.[581] Does the gaoler’s behaviour change at this period? Is it then that we find a trace of those peculiarities which are so abundantly proved, and which form one of the characteristic features of the story of the Man with the Iron Mask? The following despatch from Barbézieux to Saint-Mars will furnish us with an answer:—
“At the Camp before Namur, June 29, 1692.[582]
“I have received your letter of the fourth of this month. When any of the prisoners confided to your care will not do what you order them, or cause a mutiny, you have only to[583] punish them as you may think proper.”
It has been unceasingly repeated that Saint-Mars never quitted his famous prisoner from the moment that he received him in charge. This is again one of the features characterizing the mysterious captive, and the two men are in some degree always represented as the prisoners of one another. Do we find, either at Exiles or during the first years of Saint-Mars’ residence at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, this significant peculiarity? We are about to see:—