The details that we possess of the imprisonment of Mattioli at Pignerol and afterwards at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite show that he was at the outset treated with the consideration due to his rank and to the position he occupied at the time of his arrest. Eventually the respect which the prisoner had at first inspired gradually diminished: as years went on the attentions shown him grew less and less until the day when, at the Bastille, he was given a room in common with persons of the basest class. On the other hand, the rigour of his confinement, so far as the secrecy in which he was kept was concerned, was more and more relaxed; what it was material to conceal was the circumstances under which Mattioli had been arrested, and with the lapse of time this secret continually diminished in importance. As to the mask of black velvet which Mattioli had among his possessions when he was arrested, and which he put on, without a doubt, only for the occasion, this in reality constituted a relief to his captivity, for it permitted the prisoner to leave his room, while the other state prisoners were rigorously mewed up in theirs. * * * * * It remains to prove that the masked prisoner was really Mattioli. 1. In the despatch sent by Louis XIV. to the Abbé d'Estrades five days before the arrest, the king approves the scheme of his ambassador and authorizes him to secure Mattioli, "since you believe you can get him carried off without the affair giving rise to any scandal." The prisoner is to be conducted to Pignerol, where "instructions are being sent to receive him and keep him there without anybody having knowledge of it." The king's orders close with these words: "You must see to it that no one knows what becomes of this man." The capture effected, Catinat wrote on his part to Louvois: "It came off without any violence, and no one knows the name of the knave, not even the officers who helped to arrest him." Finally, we have a very curious pamphlet entitled _La Prudenza triomfante di Casale_, written in 1682, that is, little more than two years after the event, and--this slight detail is of capital importance--thirty years before there was any talk of the Man in the Mask. In this we read: "The secretary (Mattioli) was surrounded by ten or twelve horsemen, who seized him, disguised him, _masked_ him, and conducted him to Pignerol"--a fact, moreover, confirmed by a tradition which in the eighteenth century was still rife in the district, where scholars succeeded in culling it. Is there any need to insist on the strength of the proofs afforded by these three documents, taken in connection one with another?