After seeing how Du Junca makes “Marcheil” where the sacristan of Saint Paul makes the name “Marchioly,” it is presumable that Du Junca learned it by word of mouth from some one or other; also that the name itself had been communicated to Du Junca’s informant in the same manner by Rosarges or Reilhe or the sacristan—in short, that, all along, the name was an unintentional corruption of “Mattioli.” And so good-bye to his competitors, in the popular imagination, to the title of “Man in the Iron Mask,” Vermandois, Monmouth, Vendôme, Fouquet, an unknown twin brother of Louis XIV, Avedick, the Armenian patriarch, General de Bulonde, and the rest. I would once more recommend to all interested in the subject Mr. Tighe Hopkins’ altogether admirable publication in which he traces and destroys the claims of each and every one of these candidates to be what he so aptly terms “The Sphinx of French History.” CHAPTER XV A “CAUSE CÉLÈBRE” The Defrêne Case, a Drama of Crime and of Justice—The Marquis Defrêne—Marie-Elizabeth du Tillay—Elopement—Bogus Marriage—Flight to England—Marriage Made Legal—The Marquis Tires of the Marriage State—Evil Plans—Marie-Elizabeth Forewarned—Adventures of Her Flight—The “Penitent” Defrêne—Compromising Letters—The Vindication of Marie-Elizabeth—A Judicial Separation. The name of that same Duchess-Regent of Savoy, Maria Baptista of Nemours, the cause of Mattioli’s downfall in 1679, had figured in connection with another and now long forgotten “cause célèbre” some few years earlier, in 1672—the drama of crime and of justice known to legal annalists as the “Defrêne Case.” Towards the year 1670 there was living in Paris a young man of the name of Pierre Hennequin, Marquis Defrêne. Of his antecedents I have no knowledge, but, by all accounts, he was related to many noble and influential families; a personable young man of considerable address, and entirely given over to the fashionable life of his day as he found it—that life of license, bridled only by the fear of a death upon the scaffold; that orgy of dissipation and debt by the encouragement of which Louis XIV, as history tells us, was bent upon sapping the resources of his powerful nobles in order that he might cut their claws and impair their ability ever again to dispute the absolute authority of the throne.