And so the truth came to light.
The Duchess-Regent of Savoy wrote, herself, to Louis XIV, to tell him that Mattioli had shown her the documents relating to the negotiations for Casale, and that she had in her possession copies of them. Her minister, Signor Trucci, had had an interview with Mattioli on the subject at Turin. It afterwards transpired, through Mattioli’s own admission to Catinat, that he had betrayed the whole affair to the Conde de Melgar, the Spanish Governor of Milan, and that Melgar had provided him with a cipher for their communications on the subject; and that he, Mattioli, had had secret interviews in regard to it with one of the Inquisitors of State at Venice.
Personally, I find it hard to believe with Mr. Hopkins that Mattioli acted throughout without the knowledge and consent of the Duke of Mantua. In the first place, he had no certainty of any commensurate gain to be derived from his betrayal of Louis XIV to that monarch’s adversaries—for responsible ministers of state do not generally pay largely for information before that information has been shown to be not merely negatively, but positively valuable. And Mattioli would naturally have required a very large sum in each instance to compensate him for the inevitable loss of Duke Charles’ favour when Duke Charles (always supposing the two men to have been working at cross purposes, and that the duke was in ignorance of Mattioli’s subterranean intrigues) should discover that Mattioli had disloyally wrecked his pet project of military glory, and had kept him as well out of the enjoyment of twelve thousand pounds or so.
Again, consider the duke’s own behaviour throughout—his first keenness and then his amazing apathy just at the moment when his cherished desire and a large sum of money to boot were within his reach—the “sort of carousal” put forward by him as an excuse for not going to Casale to meet the troops of which he was to have been the generalissimo—was such the conduct of any but a man anxious to evade the fulfilment of his bargain?
The fury of Louis XIV at being thus exhibited to the world in his true character of intriguer and brigand—and a feeble one at that—together with the explanations and personal untruths in which he now found himself involved (neither explanations nor personal untruths being at all to his proud taste) may be more easily imagined than described. Also his wrath with D’Estrades and Pinchesne for letting themselves be made fools of by Mattioli. The former of these, however, instantly took steps to assuage his master’s anger by submitting a plan of revenge; he proposed that Mattioli should be kidnapped and imprisoned for so long or so short a time as the King might please.
To this Louis consented, insisting only that the thing should be done with the utmost secrecy; Mattioli was to be lured on to French soil beyond the frontier of Piedmont and incarcerated in a dungeon at Pinerolo. Except his gaoler there—one Saint-Mars, baptised Benignant—and Catinat, no one was to know the prisoner’s name. As the offended Louis put it to D’Estrades, “Look to it that no one knows what becomes of this man.” So that it was now, as Americans say, “up to” D’Estrades to carry out the abduction of Mattioli.
Oddly enough, Mattioli had not the least inkling of his peril; he had no idea that the Duchess of Savoy had made known his transaction with her to Louis XIV, and so he was all unsuspecting of the advances with which D’Estrades continued to ply him. Indeed, he was now in Turin, trying to get more money out of the French representatives, on the ground of the expenses incurred by him in promoting King Louis’ interests in Italy. To that, on D’Estrades’ telling him that Catinat was at Pinerolo with funds for the express purpose of reimbursing him, Mattioli agreed to meet D’Estrades early in the morning of May 2, 1679, at a spot outside the city, whence they were to drive together to a place on the frontier near Pinerolo.
Mattioli kept the appointment; D’Estrades was waiting for him at the place set, and away the carriage rolled with its burden of revenge, and treachery, and greed, along the country roads to where, at the end of some seventeen miles, Catinat was waiting for them.
And so the meeting took place and, all unwittingly, Mattioli stepped in between the very teeth of the trap set for him by D’Estrades; and at once the teeth snapped to, never again to open for the unhappy man. At two o’clock that same afternoon, in Mr. Hopkins’ words, “Saint-Mars had him under lock in the dungeon of Pignerol—the French name for Pinerolo. There, for fifteen years, Mattioli was confined under circumstances of every severity; his name was changed, officially, to Lestang, in order that none might know his identity saving only that same Benignant Saint-Mars—as timorous and heartless a creature as ever passed for a man.