Luxembourg remained for fourteen months in the noisome den into which Louvois had thrown him. The fetid atmosphere which he breathed, the want of exercise, and the disturbed state of his mind, brought on a fit of illness, and so much injured his constitution that he never thoroughly recovered. It must have been no small aggravation of his sufferings, that he was occasionally drawn forth, to be confronted with the profligate Lesage, and others of the same class, and to hear them impudently charge him with the foulest crimes. Lesage maintained, that the duke had entered into the compact with Satan for the purpose of procuring the death of Dupin; his accomplices added, that by his order they had murdered her, cut the body into quarters, and thrown it into the river. Besides this improbable story, they told another, equally improbable, that he had given poisoned wine to a brother of Dupin, and to a mistress whom that brother kept, and had endeavoured to destroy several persons by means of sorcery. Their depositions may, indeed, contest the palm of absurdity and falsehood with those of Titus Oates and his perjured associates. This, however, was not all. It would seem, from their evidence, that the duke had driven a hard bargain with the prince of darkness, for they asserted that the compact was designed not only to bring about the murder of Dupin, but also to obtain the government of a province or a fortress, and the marriage of his son with the daughter of Louvois. In a letter to a friend, Luxembourg has left on record his dignified answer to the last of these stupid calumnies. After treating with ridicule the idea that he would sell his soul for a government, he says, with respect to the remainder, “I replied that when the villain (Lesage) told such an untruth, he did not know that I was of a family which did not purchase alliances by crimes; that it would have been a great honour to me had my son married Mdlle. de Louvois, but that I would not have adopted for the purpose any means which would have subjected me to self-reproach; and that when Matthew de Montmorenci espoused a queen of France, the mother of a minor king, he did not give himself to the devil for this marriage, since the thing was done by a resolution of the States General, who declared that, to gain for the monarch the services of the lords of Montmorenci, it was necessary to form this union. It was even out of delicacy that I used the word _services_, for I believe that, in the declaration, the word _protection_ is used.”