"I want so much to see you again. I send with this the little key which opens the little door.... You must forgive everything, and you are not to be angry at finding here a most learned young man whom the love of science and the science of love have combined to reduce to a condition of midsummer madness. Does your friendship for me, to say nothing of your respect for yourself, suggest any means of ridding me instantly of this embarrassing lunatic? The poor devil loves me to distraction. He is astonishingly clever, and has discovered wonders—mountains that nobody else has seen, and worlds that nobody else has imagined. He has all the talents of the Bible, and another, the talent of making me the most miserable of women. This genius from the moon, whom I commend to your Eminence's most particular attention, is called Salomon de Caus."
A missive of that colour, from a Marion Delorme to a Richelieu, was the request polite for a _lettre de cachet_. Salomon de Caus was invited to call upon the Cardinal. Behind his jealous passion for his mistress, Salomon still cherished his passion for science, and he went hot-foot to Richelieu with his hundred schemes for changing the face of the world, with steam as the motive power. It must have been a curious interview. At the end, Richelieu summoned the captain of his guard.
"To what place are we sending our lunatics just now?"
"Just so! Ask admission for Monsieur at Bicêtre." So, from the meridian of his glory, Salomon de Caus hastened to his setting, and at this point he vanishes from history. Legend, not altogether legendary, shows him once again.
Some eighteen months or two years after he had been carried, "gagged and handcuffed," to Bicêtre, it fell to Marion Delorme (in the absence of her new lover Cinq-Mars) to do the honours of Paris for the Marquis of Worcester. The marquis took a fancy to visit Bicêtre, which had even then an unrighteous celebrity from one end of Europe to the other. As they strolled through the _quartier des fous_ a creature made a spring at the bars of his cell.
"Marion—look, Marion! It is I! It is Salomon! I love you! Listen: I have made a discovery which will bring millions and millions to France! Let me out for God's sake! I will give you the moon and all the stars to set me free, Marion!"