“Fouquet, a prisoner at Pignerol,” says M. Lacroix,[450] “still excited hatred in Colbert and continual apprehensions in Louis XIV.: _one would have said that he possessed some great secret, the disclosure of which would be fatal to the_ _State_, or at least mortally wound the King’s pride.” But upon this hypothesis, how was it that Louis XIV. authorised the frequent intercourse of Fouquet with Lauzun, and afterwards with the different members of his family? How was it that he was not afraid lest these should become participators in and afterwards propagators of this State secret? M. Lacroix enumerates all the precautions taken by Saint-Mars during the first period of Fouquet’s detention, in order to hinder him from imparting or receiving intelligence. But three significant despatches show that these precautions, very minute indeed, were only inspired by the fear of an escape, and not at all by the apprehension of the spreading of a State secret. Three times, and for different causes, Fouquet’s valets were dismissed. They were sent away, one in 1665, another at the end of the following year, and the third in 1669--that is to say, when the Surintendant was in close confinement. What became of these three persons, who for a long time had lived with the prisoner and been in a position to receive his confidence? Were they ever deprived of their liberty in order to bury with them this secret, which they may have had the misfortune to become acquainted with? “I write you this letter,” says Louis XIV. to Saint-Mars,[451] “to tell you that I deem it good that you should give the Sieur Fouquet another valet, and that after the one who is ill is cured, you are to let him go where he pleases, and the present letter being for no other end, I pray God to take you into his holy keeping.” “Your letter of the 28th of the past month,” writes Louvois to Saint-Mars,[452] “has been delivered to me, and has informed me that the valet of the Sieur Fouquet is afflicted with a very dangerous illness. It is well to continue to have him nursed, and if, after his cure, he does not wish to continue his services to the prisoner any longer, prudence ordains that you should keep him in the donjon three or four months, in order that if he has transgressed his duty, time may fracture the measures he may have concerted with Monsieur Fouquet.” “His Majesty leaves it to you,” he writes to Saint-Mars in 1669,[453] “to act as you please with respect to La Rivière, that is to say, to leave him with Monsieur Fouquet or to remove him; his Majesty counting that, in case you remove him, you will only let him depart after an imprisonment of from seven to eight months, in order that, if he had taken measures to carry news from his master, it would be so stale by that time, that it could cause no annoyance.”