But Martin, after all, was NOT persuaded!

Martin replied to Joly that he knew nothing at all, and that, once
in France, people would think he was well acquainted with the
traffickings of Roux, "and so he would be kept in prison to make
him divulge what he did not know." The possible Man in the Iron
Mask did not know his own secret! But, later in the conversation,
Martin foolishly admitted that he knew a great deal; perhaps he did
this out of mere fatal vanity. Cross to France, however, he would
not, even when offered a safe-conduct and promise of reward.
Colbert therefore proposes to ask Charles to surrender the valet,
and probably Charles descended to the meanness. By July 19, at all
events, Louvois, the War Minister of Louis XIV., was bidding Saint-
Mars, at Pignerol in Piedmont, expect from Dunkirk a prisoner of
the very highest importance--a valet! This valet, now called
"Eustache Dauger," can only have been Marsilly's valet, Martin,
who, by one means or another, had been brought from England to
Dunkirk. It is hardly conceivable, at least, that when a valet, in
England, is "wanted" by the French police on July 1, for political
reasons, and when by July 19 they have caught a valet of extreme
political importance, the two valets should be two different men.
Martin must be Dauger.

Here, then, by July 19, 1669, we find our unhappy serving man in
the toils. Why was he to be handled with such mysterious rigor?
It is true that State prisoners of very little account were kept
with great secrecy. But it cannot well be argued that they were
all treated with the extraordinary precautions which, in the case
of Dauger, were not relaxed for twenty-five or thirty years. The