However, Fouquet was not so detached from things terrestrial as not to interest himself in them at all. His mother, wife and several children, being still alive, his thoughts often turned towards these dearly beloved beings, and also, but without bitterness, towards Louis XIV. and his conquests, towards the Court and the Ministers. He often questioned Saint-Mars. The latter’s replies were brief, and so unprecise that he considered himself obliged to write to Louvois and inquire in what sense he ought to answer.[407] Entirely master of his prisoner, sure of those who surrounded him, he believed that the barrier which he had erected around him was insuperable, and thought that he would be able to keep him apprised of contemporary events as he pleased, or else leave him in the most complete ignorance. Useless efforts and vain confidence in his power! The enterprising audacity and industrious perseverance of a prisoner recently brought to Pignerol, triumphed over even the innumerable precautions of the most suspicious of gaolers. FOOTNOTES: [384] _Mémoires de Choisy_, p. 590. [385] M. Feuillet de Conches, _Causeries d’un Curieux_, vol. ii. p. 529. “M. d’Artagnan told me,” says Olivier d’Ormesson in his _Journal_, “that M. Fouquet, during the first three weeks, was very unquiet and amazed, but that his mind grew calmer, and that he became very self-possessed afterwards, giving himself up largely to devotion; that he fasted every week on Wednesday and Friday, and besides this, lived on Saturday on bread and water; that he rose before seven o’clock, said his prayers, and after that worked till nine o’clock; that he subsequently heard mass.”--_Journal d’Olivier d’Ormesson_, vol. ii. p. 52. [386] Letters from Louvois to Saint-Mars, June 29, 1665, and from Colbert to the same, on the same day. People at Paris as well as at Pignerol did not fail to say that heaven had judged him innocent whom men had condemned. See _Lettres de Madame de Sévigné et de Guy Patin_; _Journal d’Olivier d’Ormesson_, vol. ii. p. 372; _Œuvres de Fouquet_, vol. xvi. [387] Order of Louis XIV., countersigned by Le Tellier, and dated from Saint-Germain, June 29, 1665. It was Saint-Mars who, with his free company as escort, took Fouquet to La Pérouse, and continued to guard him there till the month of August, 1666, at which period he brought him back to Pignerol. [388] Delort, _Histoire de la Détention des Philosophes_, vol. i. p. 103. [389] Letters from Louvois to Saint-Mars, July 26 and December 18, 1665. [390] Louvois inquired in vain as to the manner in which Fouquet had been able to compound this sympathetic ink. “It is necessary,” he wrote to Saint-Mars on July 26, 1665, “that you should endeavour to find out from Monsieur de Fouquet’s servant how [his master] has written the four lines which appeared upon the book on warming it, and of what he has composed this writing.”