There is no answer to all these questions, and I, for my part, cannot undertake to affirm that the document is genuine.  Abbe Soulavie relates that he one day “pressed the marshal for an answer to some questions on the matter, asking, amongst other things, if it were not true that the prisoner was an elder brother of Louis xiv born without the knowledge of Louis xiii.  The marshal appeared very much embarrassed, and although he did not entirely refuse to answer, what he said was not very explanatory.  He averred that this important personage was neither the illegitimate brother of Louis xiv, nor the Duke of Monmouth, nor the Comte de Vermandois, nor the Duc de Beaufort, and so on, as so many writers had asserted.”  He called all their writings mere inventions, but added that almost every one of them had got hold of some true incidents, as for instance the order to kill the prisoner should he make himself known.  Finally he acknowledged that he knew the state secret, and used the following words:  “All that I can tell you, abbe, is, that when the prisoner died at the beginning of the century, at a very advanced age, he had ceased to be of such importance as when, at the beginning of his reign, Louis xiv shut him up for weighty reasons of state.”

The above was written down under the eyes of the marshal, and when Abbe Soulavie entreated him to say something further which, while not actually revealing the secret, would yet satisfy his questioner’s curiosity, the marshal answered, “Read M. de Voltaire’s latest writings on the subject, especially his concluding words, and reflect on them.”

With the exception of Dulaure, all the critics have treated Soulavie’s narrative with the most profound contempt, and we must confess that if it was an invention it was a monstrous one, and that the concoction of the famous note in cipher was abominable.  “Such was the great secret; in order to find it out, I had to allow myself 5, 12, 17, 15, 14, 1, three times by 8, 3.”  But unfortunately for those who would defend the morals of Mademoiselle de Valois, it would be difficult to traduce the character of herself, her lover, and her father, for what one knows of the trio justifies one in believing that the more infamous the conduct imputed to them, the more likely it is to be true.  We cannot see the force of the objection that Louvois would not have written in the following terms to Saint-Mars in 1687 about a bastard son of Anne of Austria:  “I see no objection to your removing Chevalier de Thezut from the prison in which he is confined, and putting your prisoner there till the one you are preparing for him is ready to receive him.”  And we cannot understand those who ask if Saint-Mars, following the example of the minister, would have said of a prince “Until he is installed in the prison which is being prepared for him here, which has a chapel adjoining”?  Why should he have expressed himself otherwise?  Does it evidence an abatement of consideration to call a prisoner a prisoner, and his prison a prison?