What objection yet remains to combat the result of this minute inquiry carefully conducted among innumerable materials? Is it the silence of Saint-Simon[639] in reference to this affair? But this very silence tends to prove that the masked prisoner was the victim of an intrigue concocted abroad. This immortal writer has, indeed, thrown light into the most secret and obscure recesses of Louis XIV.’s Court. None of its hidden wretchedness, none of its most secret intrigues, nothing concerning the interior of the Kingdom, has escaped this self-constituted observer. But, on the other hand, he was only acquainted with the foreign affairs of the end of the reign, when his friend, the Marquis de Torcy, had assumed the direction of them. He was as completely ignorant about all the others as he was well-informed concerning what passed within the Kingdom. His silence, therefore, which would be very strange, if the Man with the Iron Mask had belonged to a French family, is easily explained by the fact that this prisoner was arrested outside France, and in 1678. Will it still be maintained that the slight importance of a minister of the Duke of Mantua is incompatible with the care that Dujonca[640] took to prepare the chamber in the Bastille for the Man with the Iron Mask, when in the curious manuscript notes[641] which we have found in the Archives of the Arsenal, Dujonca himself states, “That on the arrival of a prisoner, it is necessary to take care to have given and brought to him all that is essential for the furnishing of his chamber, paying very dearly for it to the Governor’s upholsterer, or else to the _maîtresse d’autel_?” Is it still possible to draw an objection from the silence concerning Matthioly preserved in the despatches addressed by the Minister to Saint-Mars during the years 1680 to 1698,[642] now that we know that Matthioly, contrary to the opinion admitted up to the present time, had remained at Pignerol, and was only restored to Saint-Mars a few years before the latter’s departure for the Bastille? People have often spoken of the severe treatment of which Matthioly was the object, and the harsh expressions used with reference to him by the Minister. But if there was indeed, for a long time, a certain harshness in Louvois’ language, the despatches of the Abbé d’Estrades explain it. This harshness was caused by the cruel disappointment experienced by the Minister, when, notwithstanding Matthioly’s promises, the original of the ratification of the treaty of Casale could not be found among his papers. Previously to this, Catinat had written to Louvois: “Monsieur de Saint-Mars treats the S. de Lestang[643] very kindly so far as regards cleanliness and food, but very strictly in preventing him holding intercourse with any one.”[644]