 Voltaire also wonders about such detention measures and state secrecy around a simple subordinate confidant.Questions on the Encyclopaedia

Voltaire took up his pen once again after his enemy Fréron's publications in 1768.In the "Questions sur l'Encyclopédie" (1770), he declares that wearing the mask was enforced, including during medical examinations, for fear that ""an overly striking resemblance […] would be recognized"" and quotes the apothecary of the Bastille's account, to whom the prisoner is thought to have told his age shortly before his death, saying he was ""around sixty years old"".