“I profited by this opportunity to leave my carriage and servants at this spot, with the view that what I was about to do should be more secret, and we proceeded on foot along very bad roads to the place where we were expected. M. Catinat had so well arranged everything that no one but himself appeared; he made us enter a room, and during the conversation I insensibly made Mattioli state what he had avowed to me two days previously, that he possessed all the original papers that concerned our affair, viz.: M. de Mantua’s letter to the King, his Majesty’s answer to him, the full powers of this Prince, the treaty which you had put into writing, the Marquis de Louvois’ memorandum, and two signatures of M. de Mantua; one at the bottom of the treaty so as to serve for the ratification, and the other at the bottom of a sheet of blank paper, on which to write an order to the governor of Casale to receive his Majesty’s troops into his town whenever they might present themselves there; he added that this Prince had since done all that he could to oblige him to return these papers, but that he had never been willing to go and find them, that he had only sent him copies, and had deposited the originals with his wife in a convent of nuns at Bologna, called Saint-Louis; after having invited this confidence towards M. Catinat, I considered that my presence was no longer necessary, and when I had left he was arrested without disturbance.
“I returned here with the Abbé de Montesquieu, my cousin-german whom I had taken with me for two reasons, which I trust his Majesty will approve. The first because I could not leave Turin alone without its being believed that I was not going to pay a visit as I had stated two days previously, and because I had already experienced that I had been watched during two or three drives I had expressly taken outside the town, with the view that people should not find it extraordinary when I wished to carry off Mattioli. The second and the strongest was, that all the precautions I had adopted in order to see M. Catinat at the Capucins, whose convent is outside this town, on a mountain where there is no other house but theirs, not having prevented our interview from being known, and the Marquis de Saint-Maurice from speaking of it rather indiscreetly, I thought that I ought not to risk fresh conferences with him, and that it would be still more dangerous if I went to Pignerol; which the Abbé de Montesquieu can do without attracting attention. Nevertheless I should not have made use of the latter, if during a stay of three years that we have made together at Venice, I had not become acquainted with his discretion, his address, and especially his fidelity, sufficiently well to be able to answer for him as for myself; it is this therefore which has obliged me to make him come here. And I have sent him this morning to Pignerol in consequence of the information which M. Catinat has given me, that he had twice interrogated Mattioli,[518] who had proposed to get his father to come to the place where he had been arrested, so that he might oblige him to go and seek the papers which we demand and bring them to Pignerol. But since it is necessary to distrust everything that he says, and as he will doubtless not be able to sustain the sight of Giuliani when he is confronted with him, in consequence of all the knavery he has been guilty of, I have wished that he should accompany the Abbé de Montesquieu to Pignerol, so as to proceed from that place by M. Catinat’s orders wherever Mattioli might declare the papers to be concealed. And thus that he who should be charged with this commission might not only be a safe man, but also have a complete acquaintance with the country and know the language, so as to avoid any kind of accident.
“Two days after Mattioli had been taken to the donjon of Pignerol, I caused his valet to be conducted thither with all his clothing and valises by means of one of my servants whom I had already lent to M. Catinat during the journey which he made to Casale; for this I had taken the precaution to bear a letter from Mattioli which he had been made to write and in which he ordered this valet to come to him in a place where he was obliged to remain three or four days, and from which he was to depart without again passing through Turin; so that by this means one obtained all that Mattioli had brought here, without having recourse to violence. If I had made use of any other means, I should not have been able to obtain anything from him, since he would never have been willing of himself to give up to me papers which he has so much difficulty in resolving to surrender even while he is in a condition to fear the punishment of his perfidy; and if I had used towards him the least threat he would infallibly have left Turin the next day without its being possible to arrest him, except by causing a scandal which would have been very prejudicial.”
Among the papers seized on Matthioly’s person, there were none of those which emanated from the Government of Versailles, such as the treaty signed by Pomponne, the instructions given by Louvois, the letter from Louis XIV. to the Duke of Mantua, and the latter’s ratification. It was essential to obtain possession of these, so as to deprive the other powers of the irrefutable testimony of the King of France’s attempt and failure. Matthioly at first gave incorrect information respecting the place where they were to be found. But having been threatened with torture,[519] and then with death, the unfortunate Count finished by avowing that the famous papers were at Padua in a place which his father alone knew of. A letter was dictated to the prisoner, in which, without even allowing his lot to be suspected, he begged his father to give all the documents relating to the negotiation to the Sieur Giuliani, the bearer of the letter.[520] Matthioly’s father, ignorant that Giuliani was a spy, delivered everything to him, and the astute messenger confided to M. de Pinchesne, the representative of the King of France at Venice, the precious originals,[521] which were immediately forwarded to Versailles under cover of the embassy.[522]
Louis XIV. was avenged. Arrived at the zenith of his power, arbiter of the destinies of Europe, which was submissive and mute, audacious and mighty enough to arbitrarily annex vast territories to France in time of peace, having, as yet, broken through all obstacles and triumphed over all resistance, this potentate had just been tricked by a petty minister of a petty Italian court. That one of his projects, which seemed likely to succeed the best—thanks to the weakness as much as to the division or ignorance of his adversaries—that one of his projects, on the execution of which so many important consequences depended, and which he had long dreamed over and prepared with infinite precaution and care, suddenly failed through the most unforeseen of accidents—the disaffection of the principal agent of the matter. What a natural subject of raillery for Europe was so great an enterprise as this, resulting in an issue that was almost grotesque—the first check experienced by the King of France, produced by so insignificant a cause—such disproportion between the importance of the preparations and their complete inutility—the fear of so grave a peril replaced by the certainty of being delivered from it! Louis XIV. endeavoured to save himself by destroying for ever the official proofs of his attempt and failure, by causing the chief culprit to disappear, and by recalling his troops in as secret a manner as he had assembled them at Briançon. He renounced his enterprise with such promptitude, that in some degree he seemed never to have commenced it. It was in vain that D’Estrades, who was so interested in the success of the negotiation, and caught at everything in order to prolong it, begged the Government of Versailles to leave him completely at liberty in this respect.[523] The Minister’s refusal was formal, and tinged both with pride and bitterness. “It is not his Majesty’s intention,” writes Pomponne to D’Estrades, August 4, 1679, “to follow the course you propose in this affair, nor to commit so great an enterprise to the measures you might be able to take. If he ever forms the design of pursuing it, you may be assured that those of which he may make use will not fail him. So you need not venture to attempt anything in this matter.”[524] No doubt the Court of Savoy was fully aware of the intrigue, but Louis XIV. was master at Turin. No doubt Matthioly’s voice had made itself heard at Venice and Milan, but it was now stifled for ever; and with the recollection of his warnings was to be mingled that of his mysterious disappearance, and a salutary fear caused by the strangeness of his fate. Moreover, however humiliated Louis XIV. may have been, he still employed most haughty language towards Madrid. He exacted and obtained from Spain the immediate release of Baron d’Asfeld, who was a prisoner at Milan, and also a formal disavowal of the governor who had ordered his arrest. For Louis XIV. it was then a check, but a check in part repaired by the prompt abandonment of his projects, and compensated for by the satisfaction of having rendered powerless and carried off, as it were, from the world, of having extinguished the only being who could bear witness to the first humiliation of a great King. The report was spread abroad that Matthioly had died, the victim of an accident encountered on a journey. Those who were most entitled to doubt this appeared to believe in it. Charles IV., suspected, if not convicted, by the other princes of having wished to sell one of the keys of Italy to Louis XIV., sought to forget in fresh pleasures the shame of the enterprise. Matthioly’s family, silent and overwhelmed, became dispersed. Did it believe in his death? No one knows. On its genealogical tree the date of Ercole Matthioly’s end has been left blank.[525] His wife, the widow of a husband who was to survive her, shut herself up with her sorrow in the convent of the Filles de Saint-Louis at Bologna, the same place whither, seventeen years previously, Matthioly had come to espouse her.[526] His father, who received no further intelligence after the letter brought by Giuliani, dragged on his unhappy existence for some time yet at Padua, ignorant whether he ought to lament the death of a beloved son, or to flatter himself that he was still alive. Among the members of this family, thus plunged in the most cruel uncertainty, no one dared to use any exertions, which, however, would have been useless, in order to endeavour to clear it up. Feeling themselves menaced by the mysterious blow which had fallen upon one of them, they were silent and submissive, assured of their want of power, and certain that their inquiries would be useless, and possibly not unattended with peril.
FOOTNOTES:
[497] Matthioly first addressed himself to President Truccki, ex-Minister of Finance to the Regent, then to the latter.
[498] Archives of the Ministry of War, 686; Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, section Mantua, 4; Instructions given to M. de Gomont, ambassador to the Duke of Mantua.
[499] Letter from M. de Gomont to Louis XIV., May 14, 1680; copy of Letter from Matthioly to the Empress Eleonora of Austria:—Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, section Mantua, 5 and 11.
[500] The following is the only document which establishes the fact that Matthioly received payment from the Spaniards and Venetians. It will be remarked that the information given by D’Estrades reached him very indirectly:—