Our task is ended. Can it be a matter for regret that the chief and necessary consequence of our researches has been to annihilate a creature of fantasy with a particularly handsome countenance, of lofty birth, and with an affecting destiny? Is not the charm of truth superior to all others, and if it has been vouchsafed to us to introduce it into these pages, if, into a question where, as we have seen, everything was uncertainty, we have succeeded in throwing a little fresh light, why should we fear to have finished by dissipating that creation of popular imagination, that dubious and fanciful being, who, it seems to us, ought not to excite so much interest as he who has really lived, and whose existence we can follow step by step? Whilst, in fact, an inevitable uncertainty must always be mingled with the attraction exercised by the former, whilst the pity and emotion experienced must ever be restrained by the impossibility of proving even his birth; in the second case we are concerned with a misfortune quite as great, and this time real, with an individual much less eminent, but who has indeed existed, and who, condemned like the former to an unjust punishment, has really lived, suffered, and been persecuted. Wherefore, too, should one measure one’s pity by the importance of those who deserve it? Are not all the victims of arbitrary power equally worthy of interest, and does not the persistence of misfortune raise the persecuted to the level of those who are great by birth and by splendour of position? Fouquet in the depths of his prison, separated from every one that he loves, but finding in his Christian sentiments sufficient strength to overcome his sorrow, seems to us a great deal more touching in his resignation than interesting from the recollection of the splendid part he had played in the court of Louis XIV. Matthioly also was torn from his family and held a high position, but in a much less important court; he too suffered the loneliness of captivity, and for him this loneliness was lasting. His wife took refuge in a convent, and thus withdrew from a world from which Louis XIV. had violently carried off her husband. His family was dispersed, powerless, and silent, feeling itself threatened as it were by the blow which had struck its chief. He dragged out his existence in various prisons, proceeding from Pignerol to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, from these islands to the Bastille, sometimes resigned, at others disordered by grief, and in his fits of madness calling himself a near relation of Louis XIV., and for this reason demanding his liberty. On November 19, 1703, his misfortunes terminated with his life.
By a strange coincidence, at the very moment of Matthioly’s death, his master, Charles IV., Duke of Mantua, arrived in Paris. But he—who had abandoned himself more and more to Louis XIV., to whom he had sold one of the keys of Italy, and had recently delivered up Mantua itself, besides having several times permitted him to pass through his States in order to invade the peninsula—was fêted as he deserved to be, and was received as a true Frenchman. He descended at the Palace of the Luxembourg, magnificently fitted up for him with the furniture of the Crown. Seven tables were constantly served at the King’s expense for the Duke and his suite, and brilliant fêtes were given him at Meudon and Versailles, where he received from Louis XIV. a splendid sword covered with diamonds.[651] It has been said[652] that it would have been extremely imprudent to have inscribed Matthioly’s real name upon the registers of Saint-Paul’s, at the date of the Duke’s arrival in Paris, since the latter might thus have become acquainted with his death. We know what kind of interest Charles IV. took in his ex-confidant, and we have seen that he only troubled himself with making sure of his positive disappearance. Instead, therefore, of the fact of this death being concealed from him, it is very possible that he was made acquainted with it, with the view of altogether dissipating his alarms. However this may be, history presents some singular meetings, and reality often surpasses in interest the most romantic fancies of the imagination. Of the two individuals who had played the principal part in the cession of Casale to Louis XIV., the Prince who had agreed to it contrary to his duty, in order to obtain a little money and satisfy his prodigality, was the object of gorgeous fêtes; while at the same moment, in the same town, and only a short distance off, his ex-Minister, whom he had created Senator and Count, who was allied to the most illustrious families of his country, and who had once also been magnificently received by Louis XIV. at Versailles, but who had afterwards for an instant arrested the monarch’s overwhelming ambition and delayed the servitude of Mantua, was dying far away from his friends, in a little chamber of the Bastille, after a captivity of four-and-twenty years; and the next day, at the fall of night, was obscurely borne to the neighbouring church, followed only by two subordinate officials belonging to the fortress.
FOOTNOTES:
[624] Journal, vol. i. p. 133.
[625] Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier, vol. iii. p. 225.
[626] Mémoires de Saint-Simon, vol. xiii. p. 16.
[627] Souvenirs de Madame de Caylus.
[628] Correspondance Administrative sous Louis XIV., vol. ii. p. 571. See also M. P. Clément, La Police sous Louis XIV., p. 89.
[629] Chapter XXIII., pp. [347, 348], ante.
[630] See Chap. XXIII., note 29, pp. [346, 347], ante.