These proceedings, and the non-success of an attempt made in 1669 by an old servant of Fouquet’s,[403] who endeavoured, by corrupting some soldiers, to place himself in communication with his master, induced the latter to give himself up entirely to study and religious meditations. He renounced the project of communicating with his relations and friends. The salvation of his soul and the care of his body alone occupied his thoughts. Deprived long since of all physical exercise, and having suddenly exchanged an existence, excited by travel, and adorned by everything that could make life attractive and sweet, for the solitude and inactivity of a prison, Fouquet had seen his health rapidly decay, and innumerable disorders seize on him.[404] “There is not a disease to which the body is liable,” he wrote to his wife, “of which mine has not experienced some symptom. I am no sooner quit of one than it is succeeded by another, and I can but suppose that these will only cease with my life. I should require a large volume to describe my sufferings in detail, but the principal one is that my stomach does not act in concert with my liver; what suits one is injurious to the other, and, what is more, my legs are always swollen.”... “The best thing to be done,” he says afterwards, “is to give up all care of the body, and to think of one’s soul. This is important to us, and yet we show more concern for the body.” In truth, he gave as much attention to one as to the other. Distrustful of the surgeon of the citadel, he compounded himself the remedies which suited him best; and in order, no doubt, that he might avail himself of his servant as an auxiliary, he instructed him in the art of dispensing.[405] The first books which Saint-Mars consented to give him after having received authority to do so, were the Bible and a history of France. Later, the works of Clavius and St. Bonaventura were added; and then, by desire of the prisoner, a dictionary of rhymes.[406] Poetry to him was nothing more than a relaxation, and he devoted himself above all to reading religious works and to the production of several lengthy treatises on morals. The remembrance of his former grandeur clashed in them with the impressions of his profound fall. The Christian preoccupied with his salvation, the philosopher enlightened by adversity, the recluse giving himself up to the contemplation of divine things, hold in their turn a language of sublime and unchangeable serenity. One finds in almost every page proof of this resignation in disgrace, and of this contentment in affliction which Christianity can alone inspire. He whose haughty motto, for a long time justified by events, had been _Quo non ascendam_, now humbly submissive to his lot, adopted the touching emblem of the silkworm in his cocoon with these words: _Inclusum labor illustrat!_