And so Saint-Mars set out for his new post in the capital, taking with him his “ancient prisoner,” masked as ever, in a litter, with an escort of horse-soldiers. On their way they passed by Saint-Mars’ estate of Palteau, near Villeneuve in the Department of the Yonne, where Saint-Mars rested for a day or two, never letting his prisoner out of his sight; together they ate their meals, and at night Saint-Mars slept in a bed close to that of the man in the mask.
In a letter upon the subject published in the “Année Littéraire” for June 30, 1768, and quoted in his admirable book by Mr. Tighe Hopkins, the grand-nephew of Saint-Mars, M. de Formanoir de Palteau, writes:
“In 1698, M. de Saint-Mars passed from the charge of the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite to that of the Bastile. On his way he stayed with his prisoner at Palteau. The Man in the Mask came in a litter which preceded that of M. de Saint-Mars; they were accompanied by several men on horseback. The peasants went to greet their lord; M. de Saint-Mars took his meals with his prisoner, who was placed with his back to the windows of the dining-room, which overlooked the courtyard. The peasants whom I questioned could not see whether he wore his mask while eating, but they took note of the fact that M. de Saint-Mars, who sat opposite to him, kept a pair of pistols beside his plate. They were waited on by one manservant, who fetched the dishes from the ante-room, where they were brought to him, taking care to close behind him the door of the dining-room. When the prisoner crossed the courtyard, he always wore the black mask; the peasants noticed that his teeth and lips showed through it; also that he was tall and had white hair.”
These things the writer had from the few remaining actual witnesses of them, seventy years before.
On the arrival of Saint-Mars at the Bastile in the later days of September, 1698, he was met by Du Junca, the King’s lieutenant of the prison, who noted the fact with all its circumstances in the register now in the library of the Arsenal in Paris. It is this entry of Du Junca’s (according to M. Funck-Brentano, as quoted by Mr. Hopkins) that is “the origin and foundation of all that has been printed on the question of the Iron Mask.”
The entry goes thus:
“On Thursday, 18th of September, at three in the afternoon, M. de Saint-Mars, governor of the château of the Bastile, presented himself for the first time, coming from the government of the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite—Honorat, having with him in his litter a prisoner who was formerly in his keeping at Pignerol (Pinerolo), whom he caused to be always masked, whose name is not mentioned; on descending from the litter, he had him placed in the first chamber of the Basinière tower, waiting until night for me to take him at nine o’clock, and put him with M. de Rosarges, one of the sergeants brought by the Governor, alone in the third chamber of the Bertandière tower, which I had had furnished some days before his arrival by order of M. de Saint-Mars. The said prisoner will be served and tended by M. de Rosarges, and maintained by the Governor.”
By degrees, though, poor Mattioli’s importance began to decrease with years and the world’s forgetfulness of the events that had so stirred France and Italy all those years before 1679; by 1701, twenty-two dreadful years after his arrest by Catinat at Pinerolo, he had fallen from his high estate of mystery, and we find him torn out of his seclusion from the common herd of malefactors, and put to share a cell with a miserable rascal imprisoned for various offences against the common law—one Tirmont, who died insane, seven years later, in the Bicêtre. And on April 30, 1701, there was added to these two yet a third prisoner, Maranville by name; the three remained together thus until the December of that year, when Tirmont was removed to Bicêtre.
The two remaining years of Mattioli’s life were spent with Maranville; one can only hope the latter was able to console him a little and to soften his last moments on earth with some particle of companionship.
And now comes the last of him; as noted in Du Junca’s handwriting in the prison register on November 19, 1703: