possessed in his features any resemblance “revealing his origin,” he would not have been taken to Paris, or anyhow some mention would have been made of him in the first despatch in which the new duties are proposed to Saint-Mars. In the case of an Italian like Matthioly, the use of the mask has a very natural explanation. Indeed, it is only in Italy that we meet with the custom of covering the face of a prisoner with a mask. Individuals arrested in Venice by order of the State inquisitors were taken masked to their dungeons. Moreover, we have seen Matthioly concealing himself with a mask in his secret interviews with the Abbé d’Estrades, Louis XIV.’s ambassador. This mask[631] the Minister of the Duke of Mantua and the companion of his pleasures used always to carry about with him. It would certainly have formed part of the clothes and effects seized near Turin in 1678, and which were sufficiently valuable for Louvois to authorise Saint-Mars to take them with him.[632] In 1698, as at the time of his arrest, Matthioly was always under the ban of that order of absolute secrecy contained in a despatch which we shall shortly give; and Saint-Mars, as we know, was as exact and as scrupulous in carrying out his instructions, whether they were twenty years old or quite recent. Moreover, in 1678 Matthioly had come to Paris, charged with an official mission. He remained there a month. Supposing, as is probable, that he ran no risk, after so long an absence, of being recognized by the French whom he had visited, there was no reason why the Residents of the Duke of Mantua and the other Italian Princes should not do so. Lastly, an unpublished letter of Saint-Mars[633] and several despatches of the Minister of Exterior Relations prove that there was then in the Bastille a Count Boselli, an Italian, in whose detention the Marshal de Tallard appears to have been interested, and who, on account of his different missions, had travelled throughout the whole of Italy, and had been brought into connection with many of the illustrious families of Mantua and Bologna. He had doubtless known Matthioly’s, and perhaps Matthioly himself. For all these reasons, therefore, it was necessary to preserve the absolute secrecy to which the latter had been condemned. Saint-Mars had the means at his disposal--a means exceptional and extraordinary, but still very familiar to Matthioly. His face was therefore covered with a mask, and if this peculiarity was so striking to the people at the Bastille, it was principally on account of the prisoner’s arriving there with the new governor, and because their attention was already excited by the expected arrival of Saint-Mars, preceded probably by a reputation for rigorous severity, and awaited, anyhow, with that impatience to meet a new chief which all subordinates display. It is this which has contributed to render so strong in Dujonca the impression of surprise which we meet with in his ingenuous journal.