He certainly continued, from all accounts, to wear his mask from the time of his arrival at the Bastille till his death. We learn from the persons who saw him at Palteau that he was tall of stature; and an old physician, who had attended him at the Bastille when he was ill, described him (if we may credit Voltaire) as well made, of a brown complexion, and possessing an agreeable voice. He attended mass occasionally, and was forbid in his way there to speak to any one. The invalids were ordered to fire upon him if he disobeyed.[147] He is also said to have occupied himself a good deal during his confinement with playing on the guitar.[148] These are all the particulars, worthy of credit, to be collected respecting Matthioli during his confinement at the Bastille, which lasted rather more than five years. He died there after a few hours’ illness, November 19th, 1703. Dujonca’s journal gives the following account of his decease and interment. “Monday, 19th November, 1708. The unknown prisoner, who was always masked with a mask of black velvet, whom M. de St. Mars brought with him, when he came from the Islands of St Margaret, and whom he had had the care of for a long time, having found himself rather more unwell when he came out from mass, died to-day, about ten o’clock in the evening, without having had any considerable illness. M. Girault, our chaplain, confessed him yesterday. Death having come suddenly on, he was not able to receive his sacraments, and our chaplain only had time to exhort him for a moment before he died. He was interred on Tuesday the 20th November, at four in the afternoon, in the church-yard of St. Paul, which is our parish. His interment cost forty livres.” This extract is confirmed in its facts by the register of the Bastille,[149] as well as by the register of burials of the church of St. Paul, at Paris. The former document also informs us that he was wrapped in “a winding-sheet of new linen,”[150]--and the latter, that he was buried in the presence of Rosarges, Major of the Bastille, and of Reilh, Surgeon-Major of the same prison. In the register of the church he is designated by the name of Marchialy, and his age is entered as forty-five; assertions which are both of them evidently incorrect, and probably only made in order to mislead the curious. At the time of his death, Matthioli was sixty-three years of age, as appears from the date of his birth before given. Shortly before he died, he told the Apothecary of the Bastille that he believed he was sixty years[151] old--a degree of inaccuracy as to his own age, which is easily to be conceived in a man who had been so long and so rigorously imprisoned. His confinement had lasted above twenty-four years.