This captive was the other candidate for the honors of the Mask, Count Mattioli, the secretary of the Duke of Mantua.  He was kidnaped on Italian soil on May 2, 1679, and hurried to the mountain fortress of Pignerol, then on French ground.  His offense was the betraying of the secret negotiations for the cession of the town and fortress of Casal, by the Duke of Mantua, to Louis XIV.  The disappearance of Mattioli was, of course, known to the world.  The cause of his enlevement, and the place of his captivity, Pignerol, were matters of newspaper comment at least as early as 1687.  Still earlier, in 1682, the story of Mattioli’s arrest and seclusion in Pignerol had been published in a work named “La Prudenza Trionfante di Casale."[1] There was thus no mystery, at the time, about Mattioli; his crime and punishment were perfectly well known to students of politics.  He has been regarded as the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask, but, for years after his arrest, he was the least mysterious of State prisoners.

[1] Brentano, op. cit., p. 117.

Here, then, is Mattioli in Pignerol in May, 1679.  While Fouquet then enjoyed relative freedom, while Lauzun schemed escapes or made insulting love to Mademoiselle Fouquet, Mattioli lived on the bread and water of affliction.  He was threatened with torture to make him deliver up some papers compromising Louis XIV.  It was expressly commanded that he should have nothing beyond the barest necessaries of life.  He was to be kept dans la dure prison.  In brief, he was used no better than the meanest of prisoners.  The awful life of isolation, without employment, without books, without writing materials, without sight or sound of man save when Saint-Mars or his lieutenant brought food for the day, drove captives mad.

In January, 1680, two prisoners, a monk[1] and one Dubreuil, had become insane.  By February 14, 1680, Mattioli was daily conversing with God and his angels.  “I believe his brain is turned,” says Saint-Mars.  In March, 1680, as we saw, Fouquet died.  The prisoners, not counting Lauzun (released soon after), were now five:  (1) Mattioli (mad); (2) Dubreuil (mad); (3) The monk (mad); (4) Dauger, and (5) La Riviere.  These two, being employed as valets, kept their wits.  On the death of Fouquet, Louvois wrote to Saint-Mars about the two valets.  Lauzun must be made to believe that they had been set at liberty, but, in fact, they must be most carefully guarded in A single chamber.  They were shut up in one of the dungeons of the “Tour d’en bas.”  Dauger had recently done something as to which Louvois writes:  “Let me know how Dauger can possibly have done what you tell me, and how he got the necessary drugs, as I cannot suppose that you supplied him with them” (July 10, 1680).[2]

[1] A monk, who may have been this monk, appears in the following essay, p. 34, infra.

[2] Lair, Nicholas Foucquet, ii., pp. 476, 477.