Note 467 — Chapter XVIII
Henry Vizetelly translation
In support of this opinion, M. Lacroix (in the work already referred to, pp. 251, 252) speaks of a letter written by Louis XIV. to Pope Clement X., in which he requested him “to grant him a secret dispensation in order that he might rid himself, without form of trial, of a man, dangerous and hurtful to his government.” M. Lacroix adds that “Clement X. was probably opposed to the death of the prisoner at Pignerol.” But M. Lacroix does not give this very strange letter of Louis XIV.’s, which he terms the keystone of his theory, contenting himself with observing: “This letter, so strange that people would wish to deny its existence, is among the manuscripts in the Bibliothèque du Roi. M. Champollion-Figeac, who discovered it three years ago among the papiers de Bouillaud, told me the tenour of it at that time, at the very moment I was setting off on a long journey. But unfortunately he forgot to take a note of the volume containing this singular paper, and since my return he has in vain sought to find it again. The learned M. Libri also remembers having seen this precious document.”
The following is the truth about this letter and the origin of the remarks of MM. Champollion-Figeac and Libri. It is in the recueil Bouillaud, Manuscripts of the Imperial Library, SF 997, vol. xxxiii., catalogue, that this seventeenth-century collector speaks of a letter “in which the Cardinal de Richelieu begged the King to demand from the Pope a brief allowing him to put to death, without any form of trial, those whom he considered deserving of it, a request which Pope Urban VIII. refused.” M. P. Clément has already quoted this extract in note 2, p. 222 of his Police sous Louis XIV.
M. Lacroix will thus see that his letter does not concern Louis XIV., Clement X., and Fouquet, but rather Louis XIII., Urban VIII., and some unknown victims.