prison.[339] On the side of the hill were to be seen the houses of the town with their low red-tiled roofs, their slight-looking campaniles, and their chimneys in the form of turrets; here and there on certain houses, battlements and loop-holes might be detected, the remains of some old defence or a useful precaution against future attack. As one raised the eyes life and action were seen to gradually disappear, giving place to the dull monotonous service of a fortified post. On the summit wide ditches isolated the citadel from the town, whilst beyond, a double line of thick walls formed a vast parallelogram flanked by four lofty towers; along the breastworks, near the drawbridges and on the bastions, soldiers were on guard, and in the courtyards others were lounging about; lastly, in the centre of all these fortifications, was a large square donjon, silent yet appearing as though inhabited, and having its windows covered with iron bars. Sombre and sinister in aspect this black-looking mass towered to the skies. Such may we picture to ourselves, after the lapse of a couple of centuries, was the dwelling of those prisoners, some celebrated like Fouquet, others mysterious like the Iron Mask, who have rendered Pignerol for ever famous in history and legend. Between the severe aspect of this donjon and the character of its new commandant, there was a perfect similarity, and no one united in himself more completely than Saint-Mars the necessary qualities for fulfilling the duties confided to him. Bénigne d’Auvergne, Seigneur de Saint-Mars, was a petty gentleman of Champagne, from the neighbourhood of Montfort-l’Amaury, when he entered the first company of the King’s Musketeers.[340] At thirty-four years of age, he had just attained the rank of quartermaster,[341] when Fouquet was arrested at Nantes in 1661. In this affair he shared the royal confidence with his lieutenant, D’Artagnan, and whilst the latter was charged with the arrest of the Surintendant, Saint-Mars had confided to him the mission of arresting Pellisson and conducting him to Angers.[342] Selected by Louis XIV., in 1664, as being capable of securely guarding Fouquet at Pignerol, he was named Commandant of the donjon of this place, and Captain of a free company.[343] He immediately proceeded to Pignerol, and from that time devoted himself to those weighty duties of gaoler with which he was to be occupied in various prisons, and last of all at the Bastille, until his death, always with the same overpowering sense of his responsibility which made him in reality the chief of Louis XIV.’s State prisoners. He possessed the gaoler’s two principal qualifications: a discretion which was proof against everything, combined with a distrust such as the suspicious Louvois himself had occasionally to restrain while he had but rarely to put him on the alert. He was not, like D’Artagnan, an intelligent, generous, and frank executer of the royal will. With a somewhat narrow and extremely