The King expects that, during the little time you will be absent from the citadel of Pignerol, when you go with the Sieur du Channoy to Exiles, you will arrange the guarding of your prisoners in such a manner, that no accident may happen to them, and that they may have no intercourse with any one, any more than they have hitherto had during the time they have been under your charge.

No. 112.

DE LOUVOIS.*

LOUVOIS TO SAINT-MARS.

Precautions for the Journey of the Prisoners from Pignerol to Exiles.

Versailles, June 9th, 1681.

I send you the necessary grants, as Governor of Exiles, which the King has thought good to have sent to you. The intention of his Majesty is, that as soon as the room at Exiles, which you

*From the Archives of France.

shall judge the most proper for the secure keeping of the two prisoners in the lower part of the tower, shall be in a state to receive them, you will send them out of the citadel of Pignerol in a litter, and conduct them there under the escort of your troop, for the march of whom the orders are hereunto joined and immediately after the departure of the aforesaid prisoners, it is his Majesty's intention that you should go to Exiles, to take possession of the government, and to make it, for the future, your residence.

And because his Majesty does not wish that the remainder of the prisoners at present under your charge, who are to remain in the citadel of Pignerol, should be left to the care of a Captain of a Battalion, who may be changed from day to day, I address to you an order from the King to have the Sieur de Villebois recognized as Commandant of the aforesaid citadel of Pignerol, until the return of M. de Rissan, or the arrival of the person whom his Majesty shall entrust with the command of the aforesaid citadel. In case the health of the aforesaid Sieur de Rissan does not permit him to return there, you will, if you please, acquaint the aforesaid Sieur de Villebois with it, to

whom the Sieur du Channoy has orders to pay two crowns a day, for the support of those three prisoners.

You will see by the orders of the King hereunto joined, that your company is to be reduced to forty-five men, to commence from the 15th of this month; and by the statement which accompanies them, the footing upon which it is to be paid, as well as what the King has ordered you for the subsistence of the two before-named prisoners, whom his Majesty expects that you will guard with the same exactitude you have made use of hitherto. Therefore, it only remains for me to recommend you to give me, from time to time, intelligence respecting them.

With regard to the effects belonging to the Sieur Matthioli, which are in your possession, you will have them taken to Exiles, in order to be given back to him, if ever his Majesty should order him to be set at liberty.

You will receive the orders I have mentioned by the first occasion.

DE LOUVOIS.*

From the Archives of France.

No. 113.

LOUVOIS TO ST. MARS.

Versailles, June 11th, 1681.

I have acquainted the King with the contents of your letter of the 13th of last month, and with the list of the repairs necessary to be made to the tower at Exiles, which you deem the most proper residence for the prisoners whom his Majesty leaves under your care. The King has thought fit to grant you a thousand crowns, as well for the aforesaid repairs, as for those which you shall judge necessary to make in your own lodging; which, as soon as you receive this, you will take care to have done immediately, as if the expense was to come out of your own pocket: and as soon as the prison shall be in a fit state, it is the intention of his Majesty that you should transfer the aforesaid two prisoners to it, according to what I have already commanded you in my last letter; and in conformity with that and the order which was joined to it, you will then deliver to the Sieur

I have received your letter of the 29th of last month. You may have the doors you have need of, for the security of your prisoners, made at Exiles, without taking the trouble of having them carried from Pignerol.

I have written to the Père Lachaise for the benefice, which you ask of the King for one of your children, to whom I trust his Majesty will grant it. DE LOUVOIS.†

+ Ibid.

* From the Archives of France. Francis d'Aix de La Chaise, for thirty-four years confessor to Lewis the Fourteenth, was descended from a gentleman's family, and great nephew of the Père Cotton, the confessor of Henry the Fourth. He was born August 25th 1624, and died January 20th 1709. He was, for a Jesuit, remarkably mild, tolerant, humane, and unambitious. The king continued to confess to him till his death, though his intellects had been for some time entirely extinguished. "Il se faisoit encore," says St. Simon, apporter le cadavre, pour dépêcher avec lui les affaires accoutumées."