the Ocean through the Admiral de Neuchèse,[378] when Brittany had in some degree become his kingdom,[379] and most of the places in the North had his creatures for commandants? How can one be astonished, above all things, after having read the famous plan of resistance found among the Saint-Mandé papers,[380] a veritable plan of a civil war long meditated, written entirely by Fouquet, and one in which he braves and defies the authority of his sovereign? The parts to be played in the revolt are distributed among his friends; the chiefs are designated; the places of refuge indicated. Fouquet makes known what arms are to be employed, what hostages it will be necessary to secure; all the means of agitation are advised. Through his two brothers, the coadjutor of Narbonne and the bishop of Agde, the clergy are to be stirred up. By means of certain members of the Parliament, disturbances are to be excited in Paris, and the war of pamphlets kindled anew. By means of the Governors, the public treasures are to be seized, and the garrisons are to be sent forth on to the highways. Lastly, supreme treason, foreign help is not to be lost sight of, and Lorraine, as well as Spain, is to be summoned to enter France.[381] So much audacity and such an exaggerated pride sufficiently explain the dissimulation and the minute solicitude of Louis XIV., without one’s seeking the cause elsewhere. But if he matured this _coup-d’état_ in secret, and accomplished it with a prudence, without which he would have certainly failed, none of the crimes which rendered it necessary were hidden from contemporaries. The preparations for the arrest were alone mysterious. During the three following years, every one of the documents relating to the trial was presented to the judges, communicated to Fouquet,[382] and was the subject of long discussions. From this there resulted the proof of his skill in argument, but not at all of his innocence. On account of his extortions and of his plan of revolt, he had, according to the laws and customs of the time, deserved death. The majority of his judges condemned him to banishment, a punishment rightly considered too lenient by Louis XIV., who changed it into perpetual imprisonment. But long before his condemnation the numerous _mémoires_ which the accused composed in order to defend himself had been secretly printed by his friends,[383] and circulated among the people. There had thus been nothing ignored or left in obscurity. There is nothing imaginary or hypothetical in the account of what preceded and brought about Fouquet’s imprisonment. It is essential to establish this first of all. Let us now see if, during his stay at Pignerol, any event occurred which, sixteen years after his condemnation, could all at once have determined Louis XIV. to simulate Fouquet’s death, and to make of a captive, long since inoffensive and forgotten, that mysterious and nameless prisoner who is to come from