axe.  After him, four voted for death; then, five for banishment.  Six to six.  Anxiety had now reached a distressing point.  The Chancellor stormed and threatened; but in vain.  On the twenty-fifth of December the result was known.  Nine for death, thirteen for banishment.  Saved!  “I am so glad,” Sevigne wrote to Simon Arnauld, “that I am beside myself.”  She exulted too soon.  The King was not to be balked of his vengeance.  He refused to abide by the verdict of the Commission he himself had packed, and arbitrarily changed the decree of banishment to imprisonment for life in the Castle of Pignerol,—­to solitary confinement,—­wife, family, friends, not to be permitted to see the prisoner, or to write to him; even his valet was taken away.

Thus the magnificent Surintendant disappeared from the world forever,—­buried alive, but indomitable and cheerful.  His last message to his wife was, “I am well.  Keep up your courage; I have enough for myself, and to spare.”

“We still hope for some relaxation,” Sevigne writes again; but none ever came from the narrow-hearted, vindictive King.  He exiled Roquesante, the judge who had shown the most kindness to Fouquet, and turned an Avocat-General out of office for saying that Pussort was a disgrace to the Parliament he belonged to.  Madame Fouquet, the mother, famous for her book of prescriptions, “Recueil de Recettes Choisies,” who had cured, or was supposed to have cured, the Queen by a plaster of her composition, threw herself at the King’s feet, with her son’s wife and children.  Their prayer was coldly refused, and they soon received an order to reside in remote parts of France.  Time seemed to have no mollifying effect upon the animosity of the King.  Six years later, a young man who attempted to carry a letter from Fouquet to his wife was sent to the galleys; and in 1676, fifteen years after the arrest, Madame de Montespan had not influence enough to obtain permission for Madame Fouquet and her children to visit the prisoner.

This cruel and illegal punishment lasted for twenty years, until an attack of apoplexy placed the Surintendant beyond the reach of his torturer.  So lost had he been in his living tomb, that it is a debated point whether he died in Piguerol or not.  He has even been one of the candidates for the mysterious dignity of the Iron Mask.  In his dungeon he could learn nothing of what was passing in the world.  Lauzun, whose every-day life seemed more unreal and romantic than the dreams of ordinary men, was confined in Pignerol.  Active and daring as Jack Sheppard, he dug through the wall of his cell, and discovered that his next neighbor was Fouquet.  When he told his fellow-prisoner of his adventures and of his honors, how he had lost the place of Grand Master of the Artillery through Louvois, and had only missed being the acknowledged husband of the grand-daughter of Henry IV. because Madame de Montespan persuaded the King to withdraw his consent, Fouquet, who recollected him as a poor cadet de famille, thought him crazy, and begged the jailer to have him watched and properly cared for.