After December, 1693, when he was still at Pignerol, the name of Mattioli, freely used before, never occurs in the correspondence.  But we still often hear of “l’ancien prisonnier,” “the old prisoner.”  He was, on the face of it, Dauger, by far the oldest prisoner.  In 1688, Saint-Mars, having only one prisoner (Dauger), calls him merely “my prisoner.  In 1691, when Saint-Mars had several prisoners, Barbezieux styles Dauger “your prisoner of twenty years’ standing.”  When, in 1696-1698, Saint-Mars mentions “mon ancien prisonnier,” “my prisoner of long standing,” he obviously means Dauger, not Mattioli—­above all, if Mattioli died in 1694.  M. Funck-Brentano argues that “mon ancien prisonnier” can only mean “my erstwhile prisoner, he who was lost and is restored to me”—­that is, Mattioli.  This is not the view of M. Jung, or M. Lair, or M. Loiseleur.

Friends of Mattioli’s claims rest much on this letter of Barbezieux to Saint-Mars (November 17, 1697):  “You have only to watch over the security of all your prisoners, without ever explaining to anyone what it is that your prisoner of long standing did.”  That secret, it is argued, must apply to Mattioli.  But all the world knew what Mattioli had done!  Nobody knew, and nobody knows, what Eustache Dauger had done.  It was one of the arcana imperii.  It is the secret enforced ever since Dauger’s arrest in 1669.  Saint-Mars (1669) was not to ask.  Louis XIV. could only lighten the captivity of Fouquet (1678) if his valet, La Riviere, did not know what Dauger had done.  La Riviere (apparently a harmless man) lived and died in confinement, the sole reason being that he might perhaps know what Dauger had done.  Consequently there is the strongest presumption that the “ancien prisonnier” of 1697 is Dauger, and that “what he had done” (which Saint-Mars must tell to no one) was what Dauger did, not what Mattioli did.  All Europe knew what Mattioli had done; his whole story had been published to the world in 1682 and 1687.

On July 19, 1698, Barbezieux bade Saint-Mars come to assume the command of the Bastille.  He is to bring his “old prisoner,” whom not a soul is to see.  Saint-Mars therefore brought his man masked, exactly as another prisoner was carried masked from Provence to the Bastille in 1695.  M. Funck-Brentano argues that Saint-Mars was now quite fond of his old Mattioli, so noble, so learned.

At last, on September 18, 1698, Saint-Mars lodged his “old prisoner” in the Bastille, “an old prisoner whom he had at Pignerol,” says the journal of du Junca, Lieutenant of the Bastille.  His food, we saw, was brought him by Rosarges alone, the “Major,” a gentleman who had always been with Saint-Mars.  Argues M. Funck-Brentano, all this proves that the captive was a gentleman, not a valet.  Why?  First, because the Bastille, under Louis XIV., was “une prison de distinction.”  Yet M. Funck-Brentano tells us that in Mazarin’s time “valets mixed up with royal plots”