Count Mattioli, the secretary of the Duke of Mantua. He was
kidnaped on Italian soil on May 2, 1679, and hurried to the
mountain fortress of Pignerol, then on French ground. His offense
was the betraying of the secret negotiations for the cession of the
town and fortress of Casal, by the Duke of Mantua, to Louis XIV.
The disappearance of Mattioli was, of course, known to the world.
The cause of his enlevement, and the place of his captivity,
Pignerol, were matters of newspaper comment at least as early as
1687. Still earlier, in 1682, the story of Mattioli's arrest and
seclusion in Pignerol had been published in a work named "La
Prudenza Trionfante di Casale."[1] There was thus no mystery, at
the time, about Mattioli; his crime and punishment were perfectly
well known to students of politics. He has been regarded as the
mysterious Man in the Iron Mask, but, for years after his arrest,
he was the least mysterious of State prisoners.


[1] Brentano, op. cit., p. 117.


Here, then, is Mattioli in Pignerol in May, 1679. While Fouquet
then enjoyed relative freedom, while Lauzun schemed escapes or made
insulting love to Mademoiselle Fouquet, Mattioli lived on the bread
and water of affliction. He was threatened with torture to make
him deliver up some papers compromising Louis XIV. It was
expressly commanded that he should have nothing beyond the barest
necessaries of life. He was to be kept dans la dure prison. In
brief, he was used no better than the meanest of prisoners. The
awful life of isolation, without employment, without books, without
writing materials, without sight or sound of man save when Saint-