These excessive scruples sometimes caused him to be wanting in humanity. He one day considered it necessary to ask Louvois for an authorisation to have a sick prisoner bled, and the Minister, on according it twenty days afterwards, added: “Whenever such circumstances occur, you can have [the prisoner] treated and doctored as may be needful without awaiting orders for it.”[395] The puerile questions and the demands for fresh instructions became so frequent, that the Minister was compelled to write to Saint-Mars: “I have received your two last letters. They oblige me to tell you that, as the King has charged you with the care of Mons. Fouquet, his Majesty has no new orders to give you to prevent his escape, or his sending or receiving letters.”[396] This outburst is so much the more significant as Louvois, very prone and qualified to enter into the slightest details, and an imperious and most exacting chief, accustomed all his subordinates to extreme deference, and to having incessant recourse to his authority. But in this case the Minister’s prejudices were outstripped, and Saint-Mars alone perhaps had the power to wear out by his pertinacity him who on ordinary occasions was most desirous of being consulted. Moreover, we must admit, it was the only instance in which the Minister manifested his displeasure. He habitually replied with care to every detail comprised in the letters from the commandant of Pignerol, and he sometimes even rivalled him in his want of confidence. Thus it was that in December, 1670, Fouquet, who was ill, having obtained authority to have a prescription drawn up by Pecquet, his former medical attendant, Louvois sent it to Saint-Mars with these words: “As soon as you have received it, you will make a very exact copy. You will show the original to M. Fouquet, and you and he will compare it with the copy which you will leave with him. You will then burn the original. By this means the said Sieur Fouquet having seen it will have no doubt, and you having burnt it will have no anxiety about it.”[397] On another occasion, when sending a chest of tea for Fouquet, Louvois prescribed to Saint-Mars: “To empty it into another receptacle, and to take away the chest, and the paper which may be within the chest, so as to leave to M. Fouquet the said tea only.”[398] Never were orders more agreeable or more faithfully executed. These precautions of Louvois encouraged Saint-Mars’ distrust, who thus found himself supported in his conduct by that authority, most persuasive when it emanates from one above us in station, namely, example.