Note 575 — Chapter XXII

This is now placed beyond doubt, and moreover we shall find Matthioly’s name occurring later in the despatches from Louvois to the commandant of the donjon of Pignerol. With respect to the testimony of the Sieur Souchon, which, following M. Loiseleur, we have given in the preceding chapter, it is rather confused in the Mémoires d’un Voyageur qui se repose (vol. ii. pp. 204-210 of Bossange’s edition), and very clear in the work of Father Papon, but with the signification of the death of the servant and not of Matthioly himself. The following is the passage from the Voyage Littéraire de Provence (pp. 148, 149, edition 1780), integrally reproduced: “The person who waited on the prisoner died at the Isle Sainte-Marguerite. The father of the officer of whom I have just spoken (Souchon, seventy-nine years old), who was in certain matters the man of confidence of M. de Saint-Mars, had always told his son that he had taken the dead man from his prison at the hour of midnight, and had carried him on his shoulders to the burial-ground.”