[335] We think it unnecessary to demonstrate this after the circumstantial account we have given. It suffices to add:—1st. That Louis XIV. paid the expenses occasioned by the abduction, which for one consul alone amounted to 105 ounces of gold (unpublished despatches from Ferriol to Pontchartrain, June 25, 1706, and Nov. 8, 1707, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, section Turkey, 45). 2nd. That the first despatch addressed by the King to Ferriol, on October 17, 1706, after the news of the abduction had arrived at Versailles, far from conveying a reprimand, contains the following:—“Versailles, October 17, 1706.—I approve your attention in procuring for the Christian slaves in the Crimea the spiritual succours of which up to the present time they have been deprived, and as you know my sentiments concerning the protection which I wish on all occasions to accord to the Catholic religion throughout the Ottoman empire, you can render me no more agreeable service than to continue to make the effects of it manifest, either publicly or by secret ways, to all those who profess it and who find themselves oppressed by the officers of the Grand Seignior, whether they are his subjects, or of whatever nation they may be, and the more violent you remark the persecution against them on the part of the Vizier to be, the more attentive you ought to show yourself to procure them, with suitable caution, the assistance which they have a right to expect from you.”—(Ibid. Turkey, 43.) 3rd. That in the instructions sent to Count Desalleurs, Ferriol’s successor at Constantinople, Ferriol’s conduct is approved.—(Ibid. Turkey, 47). 4th. That Ferriol’s recall took place three years after the abduction, and was due solely to the proofs of insanity he had exhibited, and of which Louis XIV. had been informed by the chief officers of the embassy.
CHAPTER XV.
Description of Pignerol—Its Past, its Situation—Portrait of Saint-Mars—His Scruples and his Integrity—Fouquet’s Arrival at Pignerol—Brief Account of the Surintendant’s Career—His Error with regard to Louis XIV., whom he betrays—Causes of Fouquet’s Fall—His Arrest—His Trial—His Condemnation—No kind of Obscurity in this Affair.
Of the principal personages in whom people have seen the Man with the Iron Mask, we have first got rid of those imaginary beings, those pretended brothers of Louis XIV., whom it was necessary to banish to the domain of fiction. Afterwards entering into that of reality, we have studied the lives of several princes whom people have also covered with the mysterious mask,[336] but whom we have shown as dying elsewhere than at the Bastille; as Vermandois before Courtray, Monmouth on the scaffold, and Beaufort at the siege of Candia. These accounts have been followed by the story of a great State prisoner under Louis XIV., in whose favour very strong presumptions have been advanced, but who was incarcerated neither at Pignerol nor at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, and who ended his days in liberty. Let us now penetrate with Saint-Mars into Pignerol, and among the individuals confided to his care, let us seek which of them, confined for a long time in this fortress, next at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, and lastly conducted to the Bastille, where he died on November 19, 1703, is really the Man with the Iron Mask.
At the entrance to the valleys of the Chisone and the Lemina, on the slope of one of those hills in which by insensible gradations the great chain of the Alps terminates on the side of Piedmont, there arose in the form of an amphitheatre a little town which, from the twelfth century, the Princes of Savoy had caused to be fortified for the safety of their States, the approach to which it defended. At the summit of the hill, formerly covered with a forest of pines, whence the town received its name, a citadel, surrounded by fortifications, had been constructed, which was commanded on the north alone by the mountain of Sainte-Brigitte, soon to be itself covered with redoubts and entrenchments. Having thus become a military position of the greatest importance, and, as the key of Italy, able in turns to check or favour foreign invasions, the position of Pignerol, coveted by the Kings of France, and so precious to the Dukes of Piedmont, was long disputed by arms, or claimed by diplomacy. Captured in 1532 by Francis I. from the too feeble Duke Charles III., restored by Henry III. in 1574 to Philibert-Emmanuel,[337] attacked unsuccessfully in 1595 by the Duke de Lesdiguières, it ended in 1630 by falling into the power of Cardinal de Richelieu, who took possession of it at the head of 40,000 men, and placed it under the rule of the King of France, to whom it was destined to belong until the disasters of the latter years of Louis XIV. Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louvois contributed to render its fortifications formidable. To-day there remain only a few ruins of them, near to the cathedral of Saint-Maurice, whence there is a charming view.[338] Very different, however, was the appearance of Pignerol in 1664, the period at which Saint-Mars proceeded thither to take possession of the donjon of the citadel, converted into a State prison.[339] On the side of the hill were to be seen the houses of the town with their low red-tiled roofs, their slight-looking campaniles, and their chimneys in the form of turrets; here and there on certain houses, battlements and loop-holes might be detected, the remains of some old defence or a useful precaution against future attack. As one raised the eyes life and action were seen to gradually disappear, giving place to the dull monotonous service of a fortified post. On the summit wide ditches isolated the citadel from the town, whilst beyond, a double line of thick walls formed a vast parallelogram flanked by four lofty towers; along the breastworks, near the drawbridges and on the bastions, soldiers were on guard, and in the courtyards others were lounging about; lastly, in the centre of all these fortifications, was a large square donjon, silent yet appearing as though inhabited, and having its windows covered with iron bars. Sombre and sinister in aspect this black-looking mass towered to the skies. Such may we picture to ourselves, after the lapse of a couple of centuries, was the dwelling of those prisoners, some celebrated like Fouquet, others mysterious like the Iron Mask, who have rendered Pignerol for ever famous in history and legend.
Between the severe aspect of this donjon and the character of its new commandant, there was a perfect similarity, and no one united in himself more completely than Saint-Mars the necessary qualities for fulfilling the duties confided to him. Bénigne d’Auvergne, Seigneur de Saint-Mars, was a petty gentleman of Champagne, from the neighbourhood of Montfort-l’Amaury, when he entered the first company of the King’s Musketeers.[340] At thirty-four years of age, he had just attained the rank of quartermaster,[341] when Fouquet was arrested at Nantes in 1661. In this affair he shared the royal confidence with his lieutenant, D’Artagnan, and whilst the latter was charged with the arrest of the Surintendant, Saint-Mars had confided to him the mission of arresting Pellisson and conducting him to Angers.[342] Selected by Louis XIV., in 1664, as being capable of securely guarding Fouquet at Pignerol, he was named Commandant of the donjon of this place, and Captain of a free company.[343] He immediately proceeded to Pignerol, and from that time devoted himself to those weighty duties of gaoler with which he was to be occupied in various prisons, and last of all at the Bastille, until his death, always with the same overpowering sense of his responsibility which made him in reality the chief of Louis XIV.’s State prisoners. He possessed the gaoler’s two principal qualifications: a discretion which was proof against everything, combined with a distrust such as the suspicious Louvois himself had occasionally to restrain while he had but rarely to put him on the alert. He was not, like D’Artagnan, an intelligent, generous, and frank executer of the royal will. With a somewhat narrow and extremely timid disposition, alike taciturn and restless, one thought alone possessed and ruled him,—the servile accomplishment of the King’s orders. To discuss them would have seemed a crime to him; to seek to interpret them appeared superfluous. He answered for the prisoners confided to his care. The height of the walls, the depth and width of the moats, the vigilance of the sentinels, the carefulness of the watchmen, the strength of the iron gratings, did not suffice to calm the inquietude of his suspicious mind. In endeavouring to dissipate it, he did not content himself with informing Louvois of the most minute details, the most puerile circumstances; his scruples and uneasiness were everlastingly reviving. Everything was in his eyes a matter for suspicion, and his troubled imagination never ceased to foresee pretended plans of flight. A stranger visiting Pignerol, and regarding the citadel with a little attention, immediately became an object of suspicion to him and was arrested, subjected to a long examination, and imprisoned for a length of time.[344] Every month he had a list drawn up of strangers arriving in the town,[345] with the view of noticing the names which appeared in it too frequently. The linen of his prisoners before leaving the donjon was carefully plunged into a tub of water, and then dried at a fire in the presence of officers charged in rotation to assure themselves of the absence of all writing upon it.[346] The least change observed in the habits of the prisoners was a source of painful worry to Saint-Mars, appearing to him in the light of a mysterious signal designed to expedite a criminal attempt; and one day, after his usual visit and long search in the rooms of Fouquet and De Lauzun, not having been able to discover the slightest sign of anything abnormal,[347] he was at first surprised and then very much alarmed. This absence of signals doubtless seemed to him a signal of itself. For the rest, an honest man,[348] greedy of gain,[349] but seeking it only by legitimate means, insensible to the reproaches of his prisoners, finding in the sentiment of having done his duty sufficient strength to be able to disdain their abuse, and acting humanely on the very rare occasions when their safety did not seem to be compromised. After having perused his frank and unaffected correspondence, in which one has a complete portrait of him, one is almost tempted to pity Saint-Mars as much as his prisoners, because, while enjoying as little liberty as they did, he was to some extent their victim, being secretly preyed upon by the incessant and painful fear of their escape. The continual inquietude by which he was agitated rendered him a prematurely old man, and contemporaries represent him as bent in figure, very thin, his head, hands, and entire body[350] trembling; in a word, overwhelmed by the heavy burden of the responsibility which weighed him down.
It was under the care of this man that Fouquet was to pass the last sixteen years of his life. It was with him that the imprisonment of the Surintendant was in reality about to commence. From the day of his arrest, indeed, until his arrival at Pignerol, a thousand intrigues had been brewing around him. The threats of his enemies, the pressing exertions of his friends, by turns the danger of capital punishment and the hope of being saved, with constant changes of prison[351] and the preoccupations of the trial, had absorbed his existence and abridged the length of the four years which had elapsed. But when he found himself at Pignerol in a chamber into which the light penetrated only through osier-screens fixed on enormous bars of iron, waited upon by unknown individuals who were removed so soon as he endeavoured to interest them in his misfortunes, and who were continued in his service if they consented to act as spies over him; when the only visits he received were those of his gaoler coming every day to carefully examine his furniture, rummage over his effects, consult his countenance, and surprise his thoughts; when all correspondence was forbidden him, and when he might believe himself for ever separated from those who were dearest to him; then, and then alone, there appeared to him in all its reality the horror of his lot, rendered still more bitter by the recollection of past splendours. How often in his isolation did he invoke the dazzling picture of his unprecedented fortune! How many times did he recount to himself the great part he had played during the Fronde, the legitimate influence acquired over Anne of Austria and Mazarin, whose devoted auxiliary he had been, so many and such high functions united in his own person, a great part of the court at his feet, friends like Corneille and Molière, Madame de Sévigné, Pellisson, and La Fontaine, dwellings much more splendid than the King’s,[352] a formidable fortified place for refuge,[353] an island in America for an asylum,[354] the right of sovereignty over many towns,[355] joined to immense riches, the most ardent passions satiated, and the most unbridled ambition satisfied: then a thunderbolt overwhelming in an instant all this greatness and precipitating the daring man into the abyss! “There is no greater sorrow,” says Dante, “than to recall when in misery our time of happiness.”[356] But how much greater still, when the eyes, at length seeing distinctly, can perceive the imprudences and the faults committed! Rendered more clear-sighted by adversity, Fouquet might remember with bitterness Louis XIV.’s generous conduct towards him on his taking possession of power after the death of Mazarin. “I knew,” says the King in his Mémoires,[357] “that he possessed intelligence, and had a great knowledge of the home affairs of the State, which made me imagine that, provided he would avow his past faults and promise amendment, he might render me good service.” Louis XIV. sincerely desired to continue to employ Fouquet. He conferred with him a long time, begged that he might be informed of everything, and that nothing of the true state of the finances might be concealed from him. On these conditions he consented to forget the past, and in future to consider only the services rendered by the Surintendant entering on a legal and regular course of proceeding and foregoing further peculations.[358]
But, like many others at the court, Fouquet had deceived himself as to the character of the young King. The latter had announced his resolution to govern by himself, to preside in person over the Council, to sign everything after having seen everything, and to gradually enlighten himself upon the administration of his kingdom, with the view of always being able to direct it properly.[359] Very few had believed in the permanence of this resolution of a young King of two-and-twenty, to which, however, he was faithful till his death, and even Anne of Austria herself had derided it.[360] Conceiving himself master of the King’s mind through those who surrounded him, and imagining that, thanks to his numerous spies, he was acquainted with every one of his plans; convinced, moreover, that his master, occupied with his pleasures, would be quickly repelled by irksome labour, Fouquet had persisted in his criminal conduct, and had remained deaf to the warnings of his friends.[361] But whilst he daily presented Louis XIV. with falsified accounts, in which the expenses were increased and the receipts diminished, Colbert, to whom they were sent every evening, examined them carefully, indicated the embezzlements, and enlightened the King upon the persevering audacity of his Minister. At the same time Fouquet continued to fortify his towns, to extend his influence, to fabricate loans to the King, to secure for himself under other names the farming of several taxes, and to appoint his creatures to the most important offices, which he secretly bought for them in the hope of soon rendering himself the sovereign ruler of the State.[362] This was not all. This individual, who aspired to replace Mazarin, to whom he was so inferior, because, unlike him, he was not prompted by true national interests, possessed moreover only the lofty aims of the ambitious, but neither tact nor clear-sightedness. With a keen mind and quick understanding, he very rapidly discerned the surface of things, but was wanting in the Cardinal’s penetrating sagacity and depth of vision, and whilst the latter, with a less vulgar ambition, occupied himself much more with the reality than with the semblance of power, Fouquet, vain and frivolous, could not resist the puerile satisfaction of making a parade of his authority and wealth. We are acquainted with the scandalous pomp of the fête given in the Château of Vaux, “that anticipated Versailles,”[363] with its magnificent galleries, its splendid gardens, and its shameless luxury. We have this example, the most striking perhaps which history affords, of a man possessed with that folly which precedes great falls, and accelerating by his insolence a catastrophe already rendered inevitable by so many other faults.[364]
There is, indeed, nothing obscure in the causes of this catastrophe, whatever may have been said respecting it. How it came to pass, the circumstances which accompanied it, every one of the incidents of a trial which lasted three years, the accusations of the prosecution, as well as the arguments of the defence, have all been brought to light,[365] and it is impossible not to feel convinced that Saint-Mars’ first prisoner was justly punished for acknowledged and indisputable faults, and not for the possession of a State secret,[366] or for I know not what hidden crime which he would have mysteriously expiated by wearing, until his death, a velvet mask. It has been pretended, without any authentic proof being furnished, that Louis XIV. not only discovered in him a powerful and wealthy rival, but that the arrest of the Surintendant was simply a piece of revenge on the part of the royal lover of La Vallière.[367] Owing to the steadfast friendship of La Fontaine, and Madame de Sévigné, to their persistence in their illusions and to the eloquent sincerity of their complaints, Fouquet must always have many partisans. Even among his contemporaries, the touching devotion of his friends, the passionate attacks of some of his adversaries, and the length of his trial, induced a reaction; and while at first the indignant populace showed their exasperation against him by imprecations and threats,[368] by degrees, as often happens, public opinion changed into sympathy for the victim,[369] and to regarding his judges as persecutors. Lastly, that mysterious legend of the Man with the Iron Mask, which some persons wish to make the climax of Fouquet’s career, commences, according to them, from his arrest, and the minute precautions then taken by the King at once indicate and explain all those of which the famous masked prisoner was later to be the object.
Louis XIV. was naturally inclined to dissimulation. Mazarin not only set him the example of “this cunning and necessary virtue,”[370] but advised him to practise it,[371] and never, it must be remembered, was this counsel more strictly followed than during the few months which preceded Fouquet’s fall. From the time it was resolved upon, Louis XIV., aided by Colbert and Le Tellier, prepared in detail and in secret everything that could assure the punctual execution of his orders and anticipate the slightest difficulty. It cannot be denied that he lulled the Surintendant into security, and cradled him with deceptive hopes, and that with infinite art he never treated him more graciously than after he had decided upon his ruin. Fouquet, as Procureur-général to the Parliament, could only be judged by that body. His acquittal would thus have been nearly certain, since he had a great number of partisans in it. It was therefore essential that he should resign this position[372] in order that he might be brought before a chamber of justice. It was Colbert, his ardent enemy, who ventured to give him this pernicious advice, and who, with a skill inspired by hatred, prevailed on the Surintendant without exciting his mistrust. Louis XIV. facilitated Colbert’s task by hinting to the vain-glorious Fouquet that the collar of the order and the dignity of Prime Minister would be irreconcilable with the functions of Procureur-général.[373] At the same time he exhibited towards him an unusual confidence, often called him into his presence, followed his advice, and overwhelmed his brother, the Bishop of Agde, with favours. The grand blow of the arrest was to be struck in Brittany, as it was thought that the presence of the King there would render resistance on the part of the fortified places in the Surintendant’s power more difficult, and the idea of advising this journey was suggested to him. The minute precautions taken at the time of the arrest;[374] those musketeers assembled under the pretext of a royal hunt and placed at the disposal of D’Artagnan; the troops occupying the roads and allowing no one but the royal couriers to pass; those long private interviews of Louis XIV., first with Le Tellier and then with D’Artagnan;[375] the most improbable obstacles foreseen and the care taken to leave nothing to chance: all this offers, it is true, the singular spectacle of an absolute monarch conspiring the fall of one of his subjects. But how can one be astonished at it when this subject is Fouquet, alone able to dispose of immense wealth in the midst of general distress, and counting devoted pensioners even amongst the officers surrounding the King? How can one be astonished, moreover, when Louis XIV. could not even place confidence in the captain of his guards?[376] when we know that Fouquet could do as he pleased with the Mediterranean fleets through the Marquis de Créqui, general of the galleys,[377] and with those of the Ocean through the Admiral de Neuchèse,[378] when Brittany had in some degree become his kingdom,[379] and most of the places in the North had his creatures for commandants? How can one be astonished, above all things, after having read the famous plan of resistance found among the Saint-Mandé papers,[380] a veritable plan of a civil war long meditated, written entirely by Fouquet, and one in which he braves and defies the authority of his sovereign? The parts to be played in the revolt are distributed among his friends; the chiefs are designated; the places of refuge indicated. Fouquet makes known what arms are to be employed, what hostages it will be necessary to secure; all the means of agitation are advised. Through his two brothers, the coadjutor of Narbonne and the bishop of Agde, the clergy are to be stirred up. By means of certain members of the Parliament, disturbances are to be excited in Paris, and the war of pamphlets kindled anew. By means of the Governors, the public treasures are to be seized, and the garrisons are to be sent forth on to the highways. Lastly, supreme treason, foreign help is not to be lost sight of, and Lorraine, as well as Spain, is to be summoned to enter France.[381]