[524] Unpublished despatch, August 4, 1679:--Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, section Savoy. The project for the surrender of Casale was revived two years later and put into execution, thanks to the skill of the Abbé Morel, Minister of Louis XIV. to the Duke of Mantua, and without the intervention of the Abbé d’Estrades. On September 30, 1681, Louis XIV.’s troops entered Casale. We know what this policy led to, and how, at the peace of Ryswick, he was compelled to surrender everything, even Pignerol, his father’s valuable conquest. However, Louis XIV. was well advised to break off the negotiation in 1679, since Marshal d’Estrades acquainted him, on March 11, from Nimeguen, “that this new attempt was of a nature to defer the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty of general peace:”--Unpublished letter of the Marshal d’Estrades, Imperial Library, Manuscripts, _Papiers du Maréchal d’Estrades_, vol. xii. p. 1015 [525] _Arbor priscæ nobilisque masculinæ familiæ de Matthiolis_:--Archives of the Empire, M. 746. [526] Matthioly married in January, 1661, Camilla, widow of Bernardi Paleotti, by whom he had two sons.--_Trans._ CHAPTER XXI. Period from which the Theory that makes Matthioly the Man with the Iron Mask dates--Numerous Writers who have concerned themselves with the Abduction of this Individual--Arguments of Reth, Roux-Fazillac, and Delort--M. Jules Loiseleur--His Labours--The Supposition that an obscure Spy was arrested in 1681 by Catinat--It cannot be admitted--Grounds on which M. Loiseleur rejects the Theory that makes Matthioly the Man with the Iron Mask--Soundness of his Reasoning and Justness of his Conclusions. Prisoners have no history; their monotonous and uniform existence cannot be described, their lamentations remain without response, their sufferings have no other witnesses but their gaolers, their confidence is received by nobody. Poets alone imagine and sing the bitter sorrows of captivity.