The Man Behind the Iron Mask (26 page)

Heurtaut refused to talk and, before he could be persuaded to do so, committed suicide, but the Savoyard authorities agreed to extradite Plassot and Madame Carrière. A search set in motion for Mathonnet traced him to Lyon where he was arrested. By the beginning of September, Plassot, Mathonnet and Madame Carrière were all in prison at Pignerol undergoing interrogation. Heurtaut had been a valet in Lauzun's household and it appeared that he had been financed by Madame d'Argencourt to set up Lauzun's escape. With Plassot, his cousin, he had come to Pignerol to organize it. He used the seductive charms of Madame Carrière to enlist the aid of Mathonnet, who had then gone to Paris to deal directly with Madame d'Argencourt. That at least was the way things seemed to have transpired, but none of the prisoners admitted to an involvement in any plan to liberate Lauzun; since no actual evidence could be found to prove them guilty of any crime, Mathonnet and Madame Carrière were released in October. Plassot was detained for further interrogation, but was always too ill for this to be possible and eventually, in July 1673, when it seemed he was about to die, he too was allowed to go free. Only after he had been gone for some time was it realized that he had left a bag in the inn where he had been living before his arrest, and this bag was full of assorted poisons, presumably meant in Heurtaut's original plan for the elimination, if necessary, of Saint-Mars and his staff.

Lauzun in the meantime continued to act like a madman, but it seemed he was only playing for attention, hoping to win consideration. With Louvois, for instance, who wanted him to resign and sell his various positions at court, he was doing his utmost to establish some sort of special relationship, dragging the negotiations out for as long as possible. But with Saint-Mars the game was more a method of diverting attention. Amost certainly within the first few months he had made contact with Fouquet on the floor above, exchanged messages or even talked with him, and he was already at work on two secret passages. One was an enlargement of the chimney which would allow him to visit Fouquet, the other by way of a hole under the floor-boards to the empty rooms below and the possibility of escape. How long it took him to open a passage into Fouquet's rooms is not known, but to manage it alone without being discovered must have occupied many months. To set up an escape route took him years. Once he had opened a way to the floor below, he had to loosen bars on a window, find means to climb down the outside wall to the bottom of the dry moat below, then dig a tunnel through the side of the moat under the surrounding walls into the outer precinct of the citadel. All this under the alert eyes of his gaolers and guards without causing the slightest suspicion.

Saint-Mars continued to report that all was well and, since he believed it himself, his superiors had no reason to doubt it. Life as a prison commander had its compensations. Well paid as he was, with high-cost prisoners in his charge, he was soon rich enough to start acquiring property and so qualify for letters of nobility. Moreover, though Fouquet was always difficult to manage and Lauzun almost impossible, Dauger, apart from an occasional sickness, gave no trouble at all. In December 1673, he could write to Louvois: ‘As for the prisoner of the tower brought by M. de Vauroy, he says nothing and lives content, like a man altogether resigned to the will of God and the King.'

Heurtaut and company had not been state prisoners even though they had been held in the prison of Saint-Mars. Until 1674, Saint-Mars had only three state prisoners: Fouquet, Dauger and Lauzun. On 7 April of that year, his fourth prisoner arrived, brought from police custody in Lyon by Saint-Martin, an officer of Pignerol sent to fetch him. The name of this prisoner is not known, and Jung claimed that he was Oldendorf. However, in later correspondence between Sainte-Mars and Louvois he is referred to as ‘the monk' or ‘the Dominican' and from this it is possible to shed some light on his immediate background. In January 1673, a Dominican monk was arrested and imprisoned at the castle of Pierre-Encise in Lyon. His crime was not political. He was at the centre of a scandal involving the ignoble behaviour of a number of noble ladies. It was his claim to have discovered the philosopher's stone which drew the ladies to him, but his knowledge of the ‘great work' embraced secrets of the bedroom not proper to the disciplines of alchemist or monk and, whatever the mysteries he was adept in, they had little to do with philosophy. The Princess of Würtemberg was one of his devotees and, since the King had devoted time to her, she was expected to be devoted to no one else. The Comtesse d'Armagnac was another, but she was the daughter of the Governor of the Lyonnais and the niece of the Archbishop of Lyon. It was the Comte d'Armagnac himself who was responsible for conducting the monk to prison.

From Lyon he was moved to the Bastille and from there a year later he was transferred to Pignerol. A police officer took him back to Lyon, where Saint-Mars had him collected. On 18 April 1674, Louvois wrote to Saint-Mars: ‘I was relieved to hear of the arrival of the prisoner brought by M. de Saint-Martin. Since it is the King's intention that he should be treated with great severity, it will not be necessary for you to provide a fire in his room, at least until the coldness of winter or an actual illness obliges you to do so, and you will give him no other nourishment but bread, wine and water. He is an out and out scoundrel who could never be treated badly enough nor made to suffer the kind of punishment he deserves. However, you may allow him to hear mass, so long as you are careful to avoid him being seen or having contact with anyone, and His Majesty sees fit that you furnish him with a breviary and books of prayer.'

In the following September, Fouquet's valet Champagne became ill and died. He remained in Fouquet's rooms until the end and Fouquet, watching him die, was stricken with grief and despair. For eight years of prison life his only solace and support had been that young man's energy and optimism. Alone with La Rivière his health and spirits, low as they were, declined even more. A letter he was allowed to write to his wife five months later reveals to what dark state the Superintendent Sun had been reduced after fourteen years of imprisonment. Defeated, unwanted, forgotten in the grey limbo of the world's indifference, he pined for human comfort and concern, for someone kind and good to care for his soul, for someone strong and sensible to care for his health. He yearned to see his wife and children. He longed to receive the sacraments more than just five times a year. His physical ailments, real and imaginery, were endless: colds and inflammations, stomach and liver troubles, gallstones, haemorrhoids, sciatica, swollen legs, failing sight, rotten teeth, headaches and buzzing in the ears. At sixty years of age, broken in health and spirit, he looked for nothing but peace of mind.

In autumn 1674, therefore, Saint-Mars was seeking another valet to replace Champagne. Two valets were in his opinion better than one because, as he had explained to Louvois earlier, ‘one alone gets too depressed, and also if either becomes sick the other one can do the nursing.' To find another, however, was difficult. He had had the same problem trying to find valets for Lauzun. ‘None of my servants would go in there for a million,' he had told Louvois then. ‘They have seen that those I put with M. Fouquet have never come out again.' For Lauzun he had managed to find two, but the second only as a replacement for the first. As a result Lauzun, like Fouquet, had only one valet, so in fact two more servants were needed. On 20 February 1672, when Lauzun's first valet had been withdrawn and the second was proving difficult to find, Saint-Mars had proposed to Louvois that he have Dauger do the job, since after all he was ‘only a valet'. ‘It is so difficult here to find valets who are prepared to be locked up with my prisoners that I would like to take the liberty of proposing an alternative. That prisoner who is in the tower, the one you sent me with the officer from Dunkirk, would it seems to me make a fine valet. I don't think he would tell M. de Lauzun where he comes from once I warned him not to. I'm sure he would give him no information at all. And he wouldn't just tell me to leave him alone as all the others do.' The reasons Louvois gave for refusing this proposal are not known, but after the death of Champagne the subject was raised again.

On 30 January 1675 Louvois wrote to Saint-Mars: ‘His Majesty gives his permission for the prisoner brought by M. de Vauroy to serve as valet to M. Fouquet, but whatever happens you must refrain from putting him with M. de Lauzun, or with anyone other than M. Fouquet. That is to say, you can give the said prisoner to M. Fouquet when he does not have his valet and not otherwise.' Six weeks later when Saint-Mars was still unable to find servants, Louvois returned to the same subject, reiterating the same concern: ‘You can give M. de Lauzun a valet if you can find one suitable, but no matter what the reason you must not give him the prisoner brought by M. de Vauroy who, as I have informed you, should serve M. Fouquet alone and only when it is necessary.

Thus one may clarify the state of affairs in the prison of Pignerol in 1675, ten years after Saint-Mars had received his appointment: Fouquet, worn out with sadness and old age, living with his valet, La Rivière, on the third floor of the Angle Tower, Lauzun, bearded and wild, living with his servant in jumbled disorder on the floor below, planning his escape and visiting Fouquet in secret by a passage he had made in the chimney; Dauger in the Lower Tower, sealed off alone in some specially constructed cell and resigned to the will of God and the King, but visiting Fouquet by special permission whenever La Rivière was indisposed; and the monk, also in the Lower Tower, isolated in some other cell, without fire or comfort of any kind, living on bread and books of prayer, his mind disintegrating as the months went by, all but ignored by Saint-Mars, already forgotten by Louvois.

In February 1676, Lauzun finished digging the underground passage that would take him clear of the prison into the outer precinct of the citadel, but when he came to make his escape he had the misfortune to reach freedom under the startled eyes of a servant-girl. Seeing the bearded phantom rise up from the ground in the dark, she gave a scream of terror which alerted the guard. Lauzun was taken immediately and all his years of patient labour were cancelled at a stroke. The news of his escape attempt spread quickly, however, and made a sensation at Versailles. He was the hero of the hour and, by his honourable failure, won more voices for himself with the King, more generous feelings and open support than any successful escape could have achieved. Saint-Mars was reprimanded, but neither Lauzun nor his valet were punished.

In May 1676, Saint-Mars received a fifth prisoner: Dubreuil, alias Samson, resident of the free city of Basel, private agent specializing in military espionage. He had been hired by the French to spy on Austrian troop movements in Germany, but was discovered to be in the pay of the Austrian and Spanish governments as well as the French. He was kidnapped by the French secret service in Switzerland or Swabia and smuggled over the border into Alsace. Louvois ordered the kidnapping on 25 February, but Dubreuil was a slippery character and was not caught until 24 April. He was taken first to Brisach, thence to Besançon and from there to Lyon. On 2 May Louvois notified Saint-Mars of his imminent arrival: ‘In the next day or so you will receive a prisoner named Dubreuil, arrested in Alsace, who will be brought to you by fifteen guards of Monsignor the Archbishop of Lyon. It is important to have him well guarded, and the King desires you to take custody of him in the dungeon of the citadel of Pignerol. Put him with the last prisoner who was sent to you and keep me informed about him.'

The ‘last prisoner' was the Dominican monk, who after two and a half years of isolation and callous treatment had become deranged; his cell was foul, and he was violent. Dubreuil, horrified, begged to be moved, but Saint-Mars had his orders and Louvois was not interested. ‘I must warn you not to let yourself be deceived by his fine talk,' Louvois wrote in June. ‘You must regard him as one of the biggest scoundrels in the world and the most difficult to keep under guard.' Nonetheless Dubreuil managed to persuade Saint-Mars that he had information of such importance to communicate that on 28 July he was allowed to write directly to the minister. In this letter he made the claim that there was a plot afoot to assassinate Louvois, with Fouquet's brother, the Bishop of Agde, as ringleader; then, having proved his concern for the minister, he expressed the hope that the minister would show some concern for him and allow him to move cells. ‘I am here,' he wrote, ‘with a man who is completely insane and unbearable to live with. He has polluted the room so badly that one can scarcely breathe. I have not been able to eat or drink for a week and left in this wretched place I will surely die.' From Louvois no response at all, until Saint-Mars himself confirmed that the monk was insane.

In a letter to Saint-Mars dated 3 November, Louvois showed himself baffled. ‘Who is this prisoner with M. Dubreuil whom you say has gone mad? Note down his name for me and the name of whoever it was who brought him to you and send me a copy of the order for his imprisonment so that I might better understand what the situation is.' Louvois himself had written the order consigning the monk to Pignerol and two and a half years later he had forgotten everything about him. Not that the monk's harsh treatment would have been ameliorated had Louvois not forgotten. Once his memory was refreshed, he recommended the bastinado as the most appropriate treatment for madness in prisoners and was delighted to learn from Saint-Mars later that the mere threat of it had rendered the monk more reasonable. ‘That man is one of the biggest scoundrels there is in the world,' he remarked, employing his favourite expression, ‘and all the signs are that he is just pretending to be mad.' But Saint-Mars had scruples about beating a priest and needed to be reassured. ‘It is true,' Louvois explained, ‘that those who beat priests out of contempt for their holy office are excommunicated, but it is permissable to chastise a priest when he is malicious and you are responsible for his conduct.' Saint-Mars had proposed moving the monk into a cell with Lauzun's valet. Louvois did not oppose the idea, but suggested an alternative: leave the monk and Dubreuil together, but chain the monk to the wall. ‘Remember to be on your guard with M. Dubreuil,' the Minister concluded in characteristic fashion. ‘He is one of the wiliest scroundrels one could ever meet.'