For Mattioli had the ear of Duke Charles as being the one of the favourites most especially admitted to his intimacy. Mattioli was about thirty-six years old, a member of the Mantuan senate and an ex-secretary of state; a successful lawyer, and, it would appear, a boon companion of the duke’s. No one fitter then, considered D’Estrades, than Mattioli to be entrusted, if possible, with the task of persuading his master to let the French take care of Casale for him against the Austrians and Spaniards, who designed to rob him of it. But Mattioli himself must first be sounded, in order that D’Estrades might be as sure of his sentiments towards France as he was of his influence over Duke Charles; hence Giuliani’s mission to Verona, where Mattioli was staying, in October, 1677. Now from this same despatch of D’Estrades’ to Louis XIV it is evident that he knew Mattioli to have been already engaged in negotiations with the Spaniards in Milan—which was still, for some years, to remain their capital in Upper Italy—and to have been disappointed by them in regard to certain hopes they had led him to entertain. What those hopes were I do not know, because D’Estrades’ despatch does not go into the details of them; but one can only suppose they must have had to do in some way with Mattioli’s personal advancement or profit—which consideration seems to have weighed, at first, more with him than did that of patriotism. And, if indeed Mattioli’s later conduct can be held to have been inspired by a desire to benefit his country, that conduct is at all events open by its deceitful tortuousness to the worst possible of interpretations. And so D’Estrades’s agent, Giuliani, came to seek out Mattioli at Verona, under pretence of private business, but in reality that he might win him over to the side of King Louis and so obtain his coöperation in bringing Duke Charles to the same view of his own interests. To this end Giuliani represented to Mattioli “that the friends of the duke desired greatly to see him in a position of independence; that all his territories and all his revenues were under the absolute control of his mother and the monk, Bulgarini, her confessor, and that Casale and the Montferrat were threatened by all manner of Spanish and other intrigues.”[26] To this Mattioli answered glibly “that he had long seen the truth” of what Giuliani had laid before him, but “there was still a remedy for so great an evil”; adding that he would speak with the duke on the subject and “discover his real sentiments.”