Here, then, by July, 1680, are the two valets locked in one dungeon of the “Tour d’en bas.”  By September Saint-Mars had placed Mattioli, with the mad monk, in another chamber of the same tower.  He writes:  “Mattioli is almost as mad as the monk,” who arose from bed and preached naked.  Mattioli behaved so rudely and violently that the lieutenant of Saint-Mars had to show him a whip, and threaten him with a flogging.  This had its effect.  Mattioli, to make his peace, offered a valuable ring to Blainvilliers.  The ring was kept to be restored to him, if ever Louis let him go free—­a contingency mentioned more than once in the correspondence.

Apparently Mattioli now sobered down, and probably was given a separate chamber and a valet; he certainly had a valet at Pignerol later.  By May 1681, Dauger and La Riviere still occupied their common chamber in the “Tour d’en bas.”  They were regarded by Louvois as the most important of the five prisoners then at Pignerol.  They, not Mattioli, were the captives about whose safe and secret keeping Louis and Louvois were most anxious.  This appears from a letter of Louvois to Saint-Mars, of May 12, 1681.  The jailer, Saint-Mars, is to be promoted from Pignerol to Exiles.  “Thither,” says Louvois, “the king desires to transport such of your prisoners as he thinks too important to have in other hands than yours.”  These prisoners are “the two in the low chamber of the tower,” the two valets, Dauger and La Riviere.

From a letter of Saint-Mars (June, 1681) we know that Mattioli was not one of these.  He says:  “I shall keep at Exiles two birds (merles) whom I have here:  they are only known as the gentry of the low room in the tower; Mattioli may stay on here at Pignerol with the other prisoners” (Dubreuil and the mad monk).  It is at this point that Le Citoyen Roux (Fazaillac), writing in the Year IX. of the Republic (1801), loses touch with the secret.[1] Roux finds, in the State Papers, the arrival of Eustache Dauger at Pignerol in 1669, but does not know who he is, or what is his quality.  He sees that the Mask must be either Mattioli, Dauger, the monk, one Dubreuil, or one Calazio.  But, overlooking or not having access to the letter of Saint-Mars of June, 1681, Roux holds that the prisoners taken to Les Exiles were the monk and Mattioli.  One of these must be the Mask, and Roux votes for Mattioli.  He is wrong.  Mattioli beyond all doubt remained at Pignerol.

[1] Recherches Historiques sur l’Homme au Masque de Fer, Paris.  An.  IX.

Mountains of argument have been built on these words, deux merles, “two jail-birds.”  One of the two, we shall see, became the source of the legend of the Man in the Iron Mask.  “How can a wretched jail-bird (merle) have been the Mask?” asks M. Topin.  “The rogue’s whole furniture and table-linen were sold for 1l. 19s.  He only got a new suit of clothes every three years.”  All very true; but this jail-bird and his mate, by the direct statement of Louvois, are “the prisoners too important to be intrusted to other hands than yours”—­the hands of Saint-Mars—­while Mattioli is so unimportant that he may be left at Pignerol under Villebois.