Afterwards, in a very vague manner, and without furnishing any positive proofs, M. Lacroix reminds us that Fouquet was mixed up in those famous poisoning trials which revealed so many monstrous scandals and implicated certain great personages of the court, in which, too, we see the audacity of the crimes still further increased by the revolting cynicism of the avowals, and which produced a profound commotion throughout the whole of France and even abroad. That Fouquet’s name may have been pronounced during the discussions, one is not prepared either to contest or feel surprised at. As his enemy, Colbert, was one of the appointed victims, and as a conspiracy seemed to have been formed to poison him, it is very natural that the accused persons should have invoked the recollection of the Surintendant. But how many other names, such as those of La Fontaine and Racine, were indicated to the lieutenant of police without their reputations being tarnished by it! M. Lacroix, with reason, regrets that most of the papers relating to this dark business have not been published. They are about to be, and not one of the innumerable documents relating to these various trials authorises us to accuse the Surintendant.[462] As for those which have already been published, and which include some declarations concerning Fouquet, an attentive examination of the period at which they have been made proves that they could have exercised no influence upon the fate of the prisoner of Pignerol. “The woman Filastre said at the torture, that she had written a contract by which the Duchess de Vivonne desired the restoration of M. Fouquet and the death of M. Colbert.” But this declaration was made some months after the Surintendant’s death.[463] We have a letter from Louvois to the lieutenant of police, La Reynie, in which the latter is thanked for having informed the King “what one named Debray has said of the solicitation that was made to him by a man dependent on Fouquet;”[464] but this letter is dated June 17, 1681, fifteen months after the death, or, if it is preferred, the period at which Louis XIV. had determined upon causing the Surintendant to disappear. Would the revelations of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers be relied upon by preference? But her trial dates from 1676, and if Fouquet had been seriously compromised at that time, wherefore those successive alleviations of his punishment during a period of four years?