Give explicit warning to the Abbé Renaudot and to de la Croix of the necessity of maintaining an inviolable and impenetrable secrecy." It happened also at that period that a prisoner remained in complete ignorance of the reason of his incarceration: "The prisoner at the Bastille named J. J. du Vacquay," writes Louvois to the governor, "has complained to the King that he has been kept there for thirteen years without knowing the reason: be good enough to let me know what minister signed the warrant under which he is detained, so that I may report to His Majesty." As the greater part of the papers relating to the arrest were destroyed as soon as the incarceration was effected, it sometimes happened that in certain cases the reasons were not known even in the offices of the ministers. Thus Seignelay writes to the governor, M. de Besmaus: "The King has commanded me to write and ask you who is a certain prisoner named Dumesnil, how long he has been at the Bastille, and for what reason he was placed there." "The demoiselle de Mirail, a prisoner at the Bastille, having demanded her liberty of the King, His Majesty has instructed me to write and ask you the reason of her detention; if you know it, be good enough to inform me at your earliest convenience." Again, we find Louvois writing to the same effect: "I am sending you a letter from M. Coquet, in regard to which the King has commanded me to ask who signed the warrant under which he was sent to the Bastille, and whether you know the reason of his being sent there." "Sir, I am writing a line merely to ask you to let me know who is Piat de la Fontaine, who has been five years at the Bastille, and whether you do not remember why he was placed there." Letters of this kind are, it is true, very rare; yet if one compares the state of things they disclose with the extraordinary comfort and luxury with which the prisoners were surrounded, they help to characterize the celebrated prison at this epoch of its history, namely, the seventeenth century.