One day in the early part of the year 1672, Fouquet hears one of the articles of furniture in his room suddenly thrown down, and perceives a man of short stature and slender figure creep through a narrow opening and advance smiling towards him. He is dressed in the full uniform of Captain of the King’s Guard--blue, with red facings. Nothing except the sword is wanting in this costume, the rich embroideries and brilliant insignia of which offer a singular contrast to the place where it is worn. The attitude of the new comer is haughty, and his air almost patronizing. Fouquet hesitates to recognize in him a poor Gascon cadet, the Marquis of Puyguilhem, without fortune or position, who had sometimes come to him in the days of his power to borrow a little money,[408] and who, extremely fortunate in having been received into the house of the Marshal de Grammont, his relative, had cut a very sad figure at court at the time of Fouquet’s arrest. What, therefore, was the astonishment of the latter when his strange visitor, questioned as to the causes of his detention at Pignerol, replies that they have been set forth by the King in a letter addressed to all the French ambassadors abroad.[409] Fouquet’s stupefaction is redoubled when he learns that this costume is not a masquerade, and that the man whom he had left in the lowest rank at Versailles is really Captain of the Guard, and in addition Governor of Berri and Colonel General of Dragoons, and that a brevet rank of General has been conferred upon him. But when his visitor, continuing his confidences,[410] enumerates his titles, and proclaims himself Count de Lauzun, Duke de Montpensier, Dauphin of Auvergne, Sovereign of Dombes, Count d’Eu and de Mortaing, and, finally, husband of the Grande Mademoiselle and cousin-german of Louis XIV., Fouquet ceases to feel surprised. Everything is explained; the speaker is mad; the tortures of a prolonged confinement have unsettled his mind, and led him to take all these fancies for real. Every one would have thought as Fouquet did, and this supposition was certainly the most probable one.