leave off watching him, was in a state of extreme perplexity. His alarm was increased by the impossibility of making his usual perquisitions, and he was constantly representing to himself his captive imagining and realizing a project of escape. He at length released himself from this intolerable situation, but at what a price! For a long time the subordinate officials of Pignerol perceived their chief gliding stealthily amongst some trees that surrounded the donjon. Then choosing the highest and thickest in leaf,[431] overcoming the infirmities of age, and recovering for an instant the vigour of youth, he clasped the gnarled trunk, climbed by degrees to the highest branches, and there, hidden by the foliage, kept his eyes eagerly fixed upon Lauzun’s room, from which coarse insults had banished him. From this elevated point he observed the prisoner’s conduct without being seen by him,[432] and thus reconciled the duties of his office with the exigencies of his dignity. Surely never did a servant better merit the confidence of his master; and Saint-Mars will remain without a rival amongst the gaolers of all times. This post of observation ceased to be impenetrable, as Louvois had foreseen: “As the leaves have now fallen,” he wrote to Saint-Mars, November 10, 1675, “you will no longer be able to see what M. de Lauzun does in his room.”[433] But this fatiguing surveillance was then rendered less necessary by the resignation and calmness of the so long indocile captive. His submission to the orders of Louis XIV., the proofs of a piety, more or less sincere;[434] the entreaties of Madame de Nogent, his sister, and of several friends, obtained for Lauzun the same favours that, for several years past, Fouquet had owed to the accession to power of his friend Arnauld de Pomponne, and doubtless also to the increasing influence of Madame de Maintenon.[435]