of the Court of justice, dated 20th December 1664, banished
Fouquet from the kingdom for life. "But the king was of the opinion that
it would be dangerous to let the said Fouquet leave the country, in
consideration of his intimate knowledge of the most important matters of
state. Consequently the sentence of perpetual banishment was commuted
into that of perpetual imprisonment." ('Receuil des defenses de M.
Fouquet'). The instructions signed by the king and remitted to
Saint-Mars forbid him to permit Fouquet to hold any spoken or written
communication with anyone whatsoever, or to leave his apartments for any
cause, not even for exercise. The great mistrust felt by Louvois
pervades all his letters to Saint-Mars. The precautions which he ordered
to be kept up were quite as stringent as in the case of the Iron Mask.

The report of the discovery of a shirt covered with writing, by a friar,
which Abbe Papon mentions, may perhaps be traced to the following
extracts from two letters written by Louvois to Saint-Mars: "Your letter
has come to hand with the new handkerchief on which M. Fouquet has
written" (18th Dec. 1665 ); "You can tell him that if he continues too
employ his table-linen as note-paper he must not be surprised if you
refuse to supply him with any more" ( 21st Nov. 1667).

Pere Papon asserts that a valet who served the masked prisoner died in
his master's room. Now the man who waited on Fouquet, and who like him
was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, died in February 1680 (see letter
of Louvois to Saint-Mars, 12th March 1680). Echoes of incidents which
took place at Pignerol might have reached the Iles Sainte-Marguerite when
Saint-Mars transferred his "former prisoner" from one fortress to the
other. The fine clothes and linen, the books, all those luxuries in fact
that were lavished on the masked prisoner, were not withheld from
Fouquet. The furniture of a second room at Pignerol cost over 1200
livres (see letters of Louvois, 12th Dec. 1665, and 22nd Feb, 1666).

It is also known that until the year 1680 Saint-Mars had only two
important prisoners at Pignerol, Fouquet and Lauzun. However, his
"former prisoner of Pignerol," according to Du Junca's diary, must have
reached the latter fortress before the end of August 1681, when
Saint-Mars went to Exilles as governor. So that it was in the interval
between the 23rd March 1680, the alleged date of Fouquet's death, and the
1st September 1681, that the I