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the Bastille. If he was not permitted to speak to his doctor except while wearing a mask, it was for fear that his features might reveal some too striking resemblance. He could show his tongue, but never his face. As for his age, he himself told the apothecary of the Bastille, a few days before his death, that he believed he was about sixty years old; and Monsieur Marsolan, surgeon to the Marshal of Richelieu, and subsequently to the Duke of Orléans, the Regent, and son-in-law to this apothecary, repeated this to me more than once.
Finally, why give him an Italian name? He was always called Marchiali. The person who is writing this article perhaps knows more than Father Grifet, and will say nothing further about it.
It is true that this minister had many friends in his disgrace, and that they persevered until his judgment. It is true that the chancellor who presided over this judgment treated this illustrious captive with too much harshness. But it was not Michel le Tellier, as was printed in some of the editions of the Siècle de Louis XIV The Century of Louis XIV; it was Pierre Seguier. This inadvertence of having taken one for the other is a fault that must be corrected.
What is very remarkable is that no one knows where this famous superintendent died: not that it matters to know, for as his death did not cause the slightest event, it is in the rank of all indifferent things; but this fact proves to what point