With regard to the Sieur de Lestang, I wonder at your patience, and that you should wait for an order to treat such a rascal as he deserves, when he is wanting in respect to you. Send me word how it has happened that the individual named Eustache has been able to do what you have sent me word of, and where he got the drugs necessary for the purpose, as I cannot think you would have furnished them to him.
I HAVE been made acquainted, by your letter of the 7th of this month, with the proposal you make of placing the Sieur de Lestang with the Jacobin Monk, in order to avoid the necessity of having two priests. The King approves of your project, and you have only to execute it when you please.
Matthioli and the Jacobin placed together.
SINCE you, Sir, permitted me to put Matthioli with the Jacobin in the lower part of the tower, the aforesaid Matthioli was for four or five days in the belief that the Jacobin was a man that I had placed with him to watch his actions. Matthioli, who is almost as mad as the Jacobin, walked about with long strides, with his cloak over his nose, crying out that he was not a dupe, but that he knew more than he would say. The Jacobin, who was always seated on his truckle bed, with his elbows resting upon his knees, looked at him gravely, without listening to him. The Signor Matthioli remained always persuaded that it was a spy that had been placed with him, till he was one day disabused, by the Jacobin's getting down from his bed, stark naked, and setting himself to preach, without rhyme or reason, till he was tired. I and my lieutenants saw all their manoeuvres through a hole over the door.
[307] Extracted from the work of M. Roux (Fazillac).
I HAVE only further, Sir, to acquaint you with the circumstance of the Sieur Matthioli's having given a ring to Blainvilliers, who immediately delivered it to me. I will keep it, till it shall please you, Sir, to give me orders what to do with it.
Particulars respecting the Ring given by Matthioli to Blainvilliers.
IN order to explain to you, Sir, more amply than I have hitherto done, the story of the diamond ring which the Sieur Matthioli gave to Blainvilliers, I shall begin by taking the liberty to tell you that I believe he made him this present as much from fear as from any other cause: this prisoner having previously used very violent language to him, and written abusive sentences with charcoal on the wall of his room, which had obliged that officer to menace him with severe punishment, if he was not more decorous and moderate in his language for the future. When he was put in the tower with the Jacobin, I charged Blainvilliers to tell him, at the same time showing him a cudgel, that it was with that the unruly were rendered manageable, and that if he did not speedily become the latter, he could easily be compelled to it. This message was conveyed to him, and some days afterwards, as Blainvilliers was waiting on him at dinner, he said to him; _Sir, here is a little ring which I wish to give you, and I beg you to accept of it_. Blainvilliers replied to him that _he only took it to deliver it to me, as he could not receive any thing himself from the prisoners_. I think it is well worth fifty or sixty pistoles.