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AUTHOR: HOPKINS, TIGHE, 1856-1919 TITLE: MAN IN THE IRON MASK PLACE: LONDON DA TE : 1901 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 944.033 H77 Hopkins, Tighe, 1856-19 1 9 The man in the iron mast, by Tio'he Honlrina t don, Hurst and Blackett, lindted, 1901. ^ " ' ' •^"'' XV, a,. 368 p. inc.. front, plates, ports., facsims. fold, plans. 20i™ Restrictions on Use: 1. Mattioli, Ercole Antonio. 1640-1701 9 u™ J^jQno o. 1040-1703. 3. France-Hist. i. Title. Library of Congress 944 K^ DC130.M38H7 1-84238/4 F398 TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SlZE:_^jr/>irtZ-^ ^_ REDUCTION RATIO: IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA HIaJ IB IIB DATE FlLMED:__2/3o/^_ INITIALS__G^G^__ HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRTDCF. PT ^x BIBLIOGRAPHIC IRREGULARITIES MAIN ENTRY: H^Pt^'^S. 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Km n >f IIJUII Hi>;H Pf imm fi . t> . ■" 4w^ tt'.u!; t?2^ R'? .4 r': i^ ^4) rli ijp I 1 f * 'MvE^^: ii ■.•I 'f\t] V-t8 l^^ 1B£:'^XV'9£xH£l£j .■^illSlHH r^.7%- i'^i' «*£■«-•-' \ntiit€iipciMmfotk LIBRARY I *^ m y \ i t i ■i:\ 4 ". .«• n /W, AtWcOUui ^ktAvA^.-?- j^^w, «((«v '^.^'i'Ctc^i^^^fffe. ^UtLcAf^ «pMaMWi4> **— THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK ffcB4 '61 *-.. PROLOGUE. '* Tell me, I pray thee, thy name," cried Jacob, wrestling with the dark adversary at Peniel. So have successive generations of writers striven with that plaguy ghost of history, the Man in the Iron Mask, and have vairlly entreated his name. But it has at last been spoken. The mask has dropped from him, behind which he lurked, it seemed, impregnably. The solution of this diplomatic mystery of two centuries, the *' ultimate dim Thule " of sp many speculations, brings forward no new appellant. It disposes finally of a host of pretenders (whose claims, however, were for the most part quite abandoned in the nineteenth century), but it seeks the tragic honours of the mask for no fresh candidate. This may be a disappointment to some, for what is most fabulous in this history has at least been richest in dramatic surprises ; but to others, and especially to those who have followed the progress of research in France, and who are not unacquainted with the earliest true surmises on the subject, it will be rather gratifying to discover in the victim of Louis XIV.*s vengeance that Mattioli who was first put forward a hundred and thirty years ago — whose pretensions .to the mask have been canvassed, de- ; vin PROLOGUE. bated, approved, assailed, rejected, renewed, and are now reduced to demonstration. History has allowed a long innings to guess- work, tradition, and invention in all that has con- cerned the Man in the Iron Mask. But the truth is that she has been ready to come into her own, to yield up the secret of the Mask, almost any time since the opening of the century. The right kind of research, and the dogged patience which nothing but Q. E. D. will satisfy: ^^/mwoSx she asked in payment. The unlocking ot^rchives has left few problems of history unresolyfed ; and when, after the Revolution, those curious documents were disclosed which Louis, his ministers, his ambassadors, and his gaolers had penned in full security, it was certain that the true tale of the Masked Man must some day get the^Jii^nefit of print. Louis XIV. had his revenge of Mattioli. History has had hers of Louis XIV. I cannot think that the story misses much in human interest by the elimination of the large element of fable ; but the fact remains that to a reader of old French history it presents no extraordinary feature. The mask itself excepted (and the unimportant character of that too celebrated disguise is hereafter shown), the fate of Mattioli was neither exceptional nor uncommon. It accorded, if not entirely with French jurisprudence, at all events with the administration of French justice. It was of a piece with the system under which political and other offenders always might be, and usually were, dealt with: arbitrary arrest, arbitrary im- prisonment, and arbitrary punishment, with or with- % PROLOGUE, IX out the form of trial by a court, packed as Richelieu generally packed his, to ensure conviction. Trial and sentence were both dispensed with in Mattioli's case ; but in the days of the " bon plaisir royal et ministeriel," which were long before and long after the days of Richelieu, those formalities were easily forgone. So lightly were subjects of all degrees imprisoned under the monarchy, and so readily for- gotten in prison, that when a prisoner died after years of captivity, the very Minister by whose order he had been confined, and who had been informed of his demise, would often request to be told the reason of his detention. The close of the qipeteenth century has shown us that justice in France can still be *a thing of very small security to a prisoner at the bar ; and the epoch under consideration in this volume begins in the last quarter of the seven- teenth century. That a needy and obscure Italian diploma, and adventurer, having tricked, flouted, and infuriated a sovereign of the temper of Louis XIV., should end his days in the Bastille, is not a matter to excite even the most trifling degree of wonder. Still, the documents to be offered to the reader present, with some new lights, a remarkable picture of more thart one phase of imprisonment under the 'old regime; and in Saint-Mars we have the typical State gaoler of the age, incorruptibly faithful to his charge, inflexible almost to cruelty, callous to the sufferings of ' his prisoners, and in his private aspect a miser growing richer and richer at the expense both of the prisoners and of the publi^treasury. [P<1I W i* ^ " r X PROLOGUE. The credit of the identification of Mattioli with the Mask belongs, as one thinks it should belong, to France. The beginnings of what constitute history on this, subject — history more or less exact at the outset — are set forth in the Introduction, and more minutely in the second part of the volume. Delort, whose Histoire de V Homme an Masque de Fer is seventy-five years old, was the first to publish a really useful collection of documents. Elsewhere I have explained how, owing to the incompleteness of the series he had access to, his system came to grief. Forty-five years later appeared Marius Topin's LHomme an Masque de Fer, which is still as a whole the best and most complete narrative extant But even Topin left something undone ; and his proof is not absolute. His is the merit, nevertheless, of having first spread the light upon the whole field of enquiry ; and he it was who brought the case for Mattioli triumphantly to the front again, when the one signal error of Delort and his contemporaries seemed to have left it for ever in uncertainty. Had the investigation ceased with Topin, an impartial critic of his work might well have decided that unless and until this hypothesis were completely overset, Mattioli should be received as the Man in the Iron Mask. The crowning proof, decisive and irrefutable, might be to seek ; but testimony and inference alike fastened the mask upon Mattioli. This hypothesis has not been overset. It has been carried further, and con- firmed. The solution of M. Frantz Funck-Brentano, ratified by the common assent of scholars in France, has satisfied every doubt. Scarcely glancing at the i'- PROLOGUE. XI history of the affair, summarising all in a few pages of irresistible and translucent argument, he has laid the great enigma bare.* Thetre is a Legend of the Iron Mask, and there is a History of the Iron Mask. Of the Legend, only a small portion (and that, .perhaps, the most ridiculous) is known to the generation of to-day : with the History, the detail of it, this generation is almost of necessity unfamiliar, since no volume has yet embraced the whole. Legend and History are here brought together and contrasted. The best and the most foolish stand side by side ; the incredible transmutations of the Legend, and the precise facts of the true and rather simple History. A certain political transaction, not of the highest importance, nor of the most unusual kind, took place two hundred years ago in France. Out of this transaction has arisen the most extraordinary fable pf modern times. But truth has done her tardy office ; and the moral, somewhat worn, speaks for itself. *I refer to the chapter, **l^ Homme au Masque de Fer," in M. Funck-Brentano's Ugendes et Archives de la Bastille, Paris : Hachette et Cie., 1898. Second edition 1899. Crowned by the French Academy. An excellent translation from the pen of Mr. George Maidment has since been published by Messrs. Downey and Co. in n *tt Mwia H4r CONTENTS, xiii CHAPTER V. THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. Character of Monmouth — His conduct at Sedgemoor — In the presence of James II. — The System which makes Monmouth the Man in the Iron Mask — Extraordinary character of Saint- Foix's ** proofs" — From the Cafe Procope to the Ixjudoir of the Duchess of Portsmouth — Execution and Burial of Monmouth . . .114 CHAPTER VI. "the king of the MARKETS." The systbne Beaufort is the especial snare of age — Lenglet- Dufresnoy, Lagrange-fhancel, and Anquetil — Beaufort and Monmouth — Beaufort a Lumpkin at Court but a Leader in the Field — The market people dub him their King — Beau- fort Appointed Admiral — His change of front — Lenglet-Dufres- noy's theory — The siege of Candia — Panic and rout of the French — Beaufort missing — The Dates — Was the Man in the Mask a Nonogenarian ? . . • . • . • • ^39 CHAPTER VII. THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. Bibliophile Jacob makes ' Fouquet the Masked Man — An earlier XXX conjecture — ** 64,389,0001^ ^- " — The author of this jest unknown — ^The fable revived by Lacroix — Louis XIV. re- solves upon the overthrow of Fouquet — His arrest at Nantes in 166I' — A special Court formed to try him — A ** Seventeenth Century Warren Hastings affair" — The Judges in favour of banishment — Louis's decree of perpetual imprisonment — Sup- position on which Lacroix's hypothesis rests — Fouquet in the dungeon of Pignerol — Gradual improvement in his lot — His wife and family allowed to visit and stay with him — Fouquet*s death of apoplexy, March 23rd, 1680 — Impossibility of agree- ing with Lacroix — Theories of Ravaisson, Loiseleur, and lung — * 'Oblivion has looked upon them all '* .... "^PART il.— THE MAN IN THE MASK. CHAPTER 1. THE INTRIGUE FOR CASALE. Italian policy of Richelieu — Gradually abandoned .by Louis XIV. — The ** Military diplomacy " of Louvois — Character and situation of Charles IV., Duke of Mantua — Casale — Louis covets this Stronghold — Intrigue begun in 1676 — Abl>^ d'Estrades — Ercole Antonio Mattioli — D'Estrades employs Giuliani to sound Mattioli • •181 158 XIV CONTENTS. 192 CHAPTER II. THE RIPENING PLOT. The Situation— D'Estrades to Louis XIV.— Mattioli selected to conduct the affair — He wins the Duke of Mantu I's consent to the sale of Casale — The Duke ambitious of a military com- mand under Louis — Mattioli to Louis — Louis to Mattioli — Louis to send an army into Italy — ioo,cxx) crowns to Ix: paid for Casale — Louis's conditions — Everything agreed to — Charles in a hurry to conclude the affair — Midnight conference between Charles and d'Estrades — Mattioli to go to Paris CHAPTER III. THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. Delays are now upon the French side — Mattioli's journey post- poned — D'Estrades precedes him to France — Mattioli ill — Off at last — The Treaty — Mattioli has audience of Louis — Preparations on the Frontier — Louis to Charles of Mantua — The French impatient while the Italians begin to lag — Alarms — D'Asfeld seized by the Governor of Milan — Mattioli sus- pected — D'Estrades to Mattioli — Mattioli betrays the plot CHAPTER IV. THE VENGEANCE OF ** THE MOST GENEROUS" KING. Details of Mattioli's treason — His motives ? — Rage at the Court of France — How shall Mattioli be dealt with ? — Louis sanctions the proposal of d'Estrades — The King's Orders — The Abbe's ruse — The rendezvous — Mattioli falls into the trap — Is made prisoner by Catinat — Search for the papers — The King is avenged — Mattioli given out as dead — His family 227 CHAPTER V. THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. Pignerol in the 17th centur}' — Saint-Mars : the gaoler quintessen- tialised — His manner of guarding his prisoners — Mattioli becomes the *' Sieur Lestang " — Is to be treated **with severity " — Tempc^rarily insane — The mad Jacobin — The King — Fifteen years in Pignerol ...... 206 250 CHAPTER VI. THE INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. The first attempts to prove that Mattioli was the Man in the Mask — Delort — His omissions — Mattioli's fellow-prisoners at Pignerol — Saint-Mars receives the command of Exiles — The question is, What prisoners went with him ? Who was the prisoner who died of dropsy ? — Sudden disappearance of Mattioli's name from the correspondence of Louvois and Saint- Mars — Deductions of Loiseleur 270 ■» «« f I I. t ^JI1IJ( \ 4: 'A w .( ) I ' I CONTENTS, XV CHAPTER VII. THE MISSING LINK REVEALED BY TOPIN. The history of the Mask not contained in any single set of documents— Topin takes up the trail— Keasons why Saint- Mars should have been afraid to take Mattioli to Casale— iVas Mattioli at Exiles or not ?— The Missing Link— Mattioli was never at Exiles— He re-appears accordingly in the history. 285 CHAPTER VIII. THE PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. The Isles of Sainte-Marguerite— Arrival there of Saint-Mars in 1687— Mattioli still in Pignerol— Saint-Mars at his ease— The mandate of February 26th, 1694— Reasons for the transfer of the three prisoners from Pignerol— Louis XIV. falling on his evil days — The mysterious journey — After the death of Fouquet and the release of Lauzun, Mattioli was the only "prisoner of consequence" at Pignerol— New measures of precaution— Mattioli, " your ancient prisoner " . . . 296 CHAPTER IX. THE SILVER DISH. A Prisoner of State under the Monarchy— Mattioli and other State Prisoners— Fable does duty for History— Origins of the legends of the Silver Dish and the Linen Shirt—The Guitar- Fact and fable in the history of the Iron Mask . . . 312 CHAPTER X. THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. - Saint-Mars is transferred from Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille — He is to bring with him his ** ancient prisoner" — From the Isles to Paris— The halt at Palteau— Letter of the grand- nephew of Saint-Mars— The entry in Du Junca's Journal— The Mask is a mystery, and remains a mystery, to the slaflf of the Bastille — But in the course of time his importance ceases —He is displaced in the Bastille by a fortune teller — Eflect of this upon the Legend — Origin of the story of the whitewashed cell— Death and burial of the Mask— His name ; his ace— "Marchioly," **Marthioli," Mattioli . . . . . 323 CHAPTER XL Q. E. D. The mask itself unimportant in the History — But the mask gives rise to the Legend— Mattioli the Man in the Mask ?— The proof set out— The Five Prisoners— Louis XV. and Louis XVI. — Madame Campan — Charles of Mantua in Paris . . . 350 l^..MIBaakiM * ■!•■ ' ■ ' ! m 1 w • « •■ ■^■^H^' ■ I • ■ ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE The Man in the Iron Mask, according to the Popular Legend Frontispiece Louis XIV. at the Age of Twenty-eight ... 31 Louis, Comte de Vermandois ... . . '37 Louise de la Valliere, as a Carmelite Nun . . 44 Voltaire -53 Anne of Austria ....... 62 George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, and his Assassination .....•• 75 Anne of Austria and her Sons 81 Louis XIII. . . , 89 Cardinal Richelieu .....•• 100 Cardinal Mazarin . . . . . • .107 Charles II. 117 The Duke of Monmouth 123 James II. 129 The Execution of Monmouth on Tower Hill . -135 Francis de Vendome i47 Nicolas Fouquet 166 Louis XIV . .185 Plan of the Town and Citadel at Pignerol to face page 216 Plan of the Dungeon of the Citadel at Pignerol to face page 228 Louvois . . . . . • . . .231 Plan of the Chateau of Exiles . . to face page 250 Panorama of Pignerol (Pinerolo) at the present day . 259 Plan of the Fort of Sainte-Marguerite to face page 264 The Fort and Chateau of Exiles in 1681 . . . 279 A Corner of the Fort of Exiles .... 287 Isle and Fortress of Sainte-Marguerite at the present day . .293 Bird's-eye View of the Bastille, 1 6th and 17th centuries 325 Entry in the Register of the Bastille .... ^t^ Entry in the Register of Saint Paul's . . . 345 Burial Certificate of the Masked Prisoner . . . 359 M f ■ i < s i The Man in the Iron Mask IJY TiGHE Hopkins AUTHOR OF "The Silent Gate: A Voyage into Prison, "An Idler in Old France," "The Dungeons of Old Paris, " Lady Bonnie's Experiment," ETC »i »> ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1 90 1 Alt rights reserved LIBRARY STATE UNIVERSITY AGRICULTURAL AND TECHNICAL cGLLfSC AT FARMINnOALE. NEW YORK *A*1jIA1 ■ n i l 1 J M lllMI ■'■I ■■ mmtm i*A I The fv\an in the lror\ fy^ask INTRODUCTION. The Man in the Iron Mask. According to the Popular Legend. t s /f V. Tr II ■ > ■ mm hi i I 1 ' ■ INTRODUCTION. An arrival at the Bastille, September, 1698, has been the cause of more French discussioii than any other event in the notable history of that fortress. It was Thursday, i8th of the month, and three of the afternoon. Armed men on horseback surrounded a closed litter, from which, when all was sure, descended a meagre, silent figure, Saint-Mars, Louis XIV/s most trusted gaoler. He had come to the Bastille for the first time, having just received its command. The entry of a new governor would naturally be of no small moment to the staff, whose future lay between his hands ; but curiosity was immediately transferred from Saint-Mars to the prisoner who accompanied z^ 4 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, him. The prisoner's face was hidden by a mask of black velvet, a disguise in which no one had ever before been brought to the Bastille. The unhappy man was already a mystery, before even he had set foot within the prison which was to be the third and last of his long captivity. No one knew him, who he was or what he had done that Saint-Mars should have him in this ex- traordinary keeping. Together, Gaoler and Mask, they had traversed France from far Provence, travelling always in this secure fashion, by silent ways. At the chateau and domain of Palteau, a property of Saint- Mars, a halt had been made ; and the peasants of the estate who came out to meet their lord preserved and passed on as a tradition the memory of that strange visit. The mask, once seen, seems to have haunted the dullest fancy. In itself it was no way remarkable ; a little black velvet mask : what <&imj< 40iu9daY3-sfdl4hi . f. THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTOR Y. 5 affected the mind was the circumstance that the person who wore it was a prisoner. T/iis was something entirely unwonted. The peasants observed that when the table was served the prisoner was always kept with his back to the window, they noted the pistols at the hand of the vigilant Saint-Mars, and the two beds ranged together in the sleeping- room. The officers of the Bastille had been apprised, and the King's lieutenant. Du Junca. whose careful diary will be opened, .had prepared for the prisoner " the third room of the Bertaudiere tower." Five years later, after one day's illness, November 19. 1703. this prisoner died in the Bastille. His end was so rapid that he did not receive the solace of the sacrament ; the chaplain " exhorted him a moment before he died." As dusk fell on the next afternoon the drawbridge was lowered, and a sorry funeral 6 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. passed out, which took its way to the graveyard of the church of St. Paul : behind a rude coffin, two turnkeys of the priison. A furtive, per- functory burying, scarcely even decent; into his hasty grave, probably by lantern-light, the turnlceys unknown lowered the unknown dead, and that was the end. On the church's register was inscribed the name of Marchioly. In the Bastille they had known him as the prisoner from Provence, This is that mysterious creature, the problem of whose identity has bewitched, impassioned, and embroiled six generations of enquirers. The incontestable facts are these: that in 1698 Saint-Mars conducted to the Bastille a prisoner who died there five years later; that he was known in the Bastille as the prisoner from Provence ; that his unique, unhappy memory survived his death in the prison, and overran the world. These are the simplest data of the problem that lies before us. Twenty-four years M ■ —. ^mmmrrf^fi'mrfmwr^ m ' ^ M\ '9L% i^m^dawa-ffalJini THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 7 /i679_i703) in the obscurity of prison; at the end of that period, an obscure, untended death-bed, and a hurried and obscure inter- ment ; some further years of oblivion, and then there arises and steals from that graveyard of St. Paul this ghost that shrouds its face, intent upon an odd revenge, the torment and insoluble conundrum of historian, fabulist, novelist, dramatist, essayist and gossip— the Sphinx of French history : the Man in the Iron Mask. The sole question to resolve is : Whose was the face which the mask concealed ? The happy acumen of Topin instructs him at once as to the false path on which his predeces- sors, with scarcely an exception, had set fprth. Voltaire had said : " What is doubly astonishing is this, that when the prisoner in question was sent to the Isles of Sainte- Marguerite, there did not disappear from Europe any personage of note." The Mask had lain fifteen years •-:• ■»>•• jr 8 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 4 in the dungeon of Pignerol before they trans- ferred him to Sainte-Marguerite, but Voltaire, than whom never a writer has approached this theme with so complete a lack of information, did not take that fact into account. The statement just brought forward stimulated and obsessed all minds. Who of note did vanish from European scenes between the date of Mazarins death (1661) and 1703? That must be the way ,to seek the truth about the Iron Mask! Thus was begun the ** monstrous brood *' of all those theories and systems which have darkened counsel on this subject. In pieces of sundry sorts, waiting to be sifted and joined together ; in official despatches, epistles, reports, memoranda ; in certain live pages of the Bastille's archives, the true history of the Masked Man was lying all this while unheeded, unthought of. The • hunt was elsewhere — anywhere, everywhere but where the quarry couched. They were \ ■ i T i • i < \ ; ;i 1 I- THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 9 all wanting to come upon the track of that '* person of importance '' who must have been thrust out of sight while Louis XIV. was on the throne! Was it a brother of Louis ? Was it Vermandois ? Was it Monmouth ? Was it Beaufort ? Was it Fouquet ? The least resemblance found or imagined, the mask was clapped on, and a new discovery given to the world. ** Never an Indian deity," says Paul de Saint-Victor, ** has undergone so many metempsychoses, so many avatars." To one incarnation of the Mask succeeds another and another ; system topples upon system ; but the Sphinx keeps hold on the secret. During thirty years (says Topin) Voltaire, Freron, Saint-Foix, Lagrange-Chancel and Fere Griffet were cutting and slashing one another most brilliantly, in a joust in which each adversary found it easier to demolish the opinions opposed to him than to maintain and win *AJiYa( iaiudd«o- « folani lO THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. acceptance for his own. In Topin's day fifty-two writers, sharing among them twenty- five different hypotheses, h^d essayed to look behind the mask, and Vicomte Maurice Boutry extends the h'st to sixty, not embracing the legion of anonymous contributors to periodicals and dictionaries.* Would the problem ever be expounded ? This intermin- able series of defeats — system and system built up in years and shattered in an hour — ended by producing one curious but not unnatural result. Since no one could identify the Mask, might it not be that the Mask had never lived } Here was perhaps some prodigious myth, and nothing more. Critics less sceptical, but despairing of the truth, averred the question beyond human ken. * In how many works on the Bastille there is mention of the Man in the Iron Mask, I cannot pretend to say. The library of the British Museum contains 40,000 treatises on this famous dungeon of pre- Revolutionary Paris. Thus, reading at the impossible rate of one a day, it would take above a hundred years to exhaust the collection. I ^AVJil aoiU9dJitD-ss9l4iii \ . 5 THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 1 1 '* The history of the Iron Mask,'' says Michelet, ** will probably remain for all time in obscurity." And Henri Martin : '' History is debarred from giving judgment on what will never pass beyond the confines of con- jecture.'* But the curiosity of the world has never been appeased. Irritated, checked, baffled, and a hundred times defeated, it has come again to the quest. The itch spread far ; England, Germany, and Italy helped France to confuse the issue, to draw the mask a little tighter over those inscrutable features. A secret well kept during many years is greatly liable to distortion when it begins at last to emerge from the comfortable dark of legend and tradition. Indeed, it may become twenty or more dissimilar histories before it has been properly divulged. At one era and another the secret of the Iron Mask has been fi ve-and-twenty secrets at the very least. In uM4*dttuasi 12 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. the lifetime of Louis XI V. it was preserved with a cunning and fastness scarcely to . be believed. Was ever gaoler so mum as Saint-Mars? That mute, uneasy shadow, perpetually plagued by fears for the safety of his prisoners, now with an eye at the key-hole and now crouched among the branches of a tree to spy unseen, never in four-and-twenty years gave up the secret which he held inviolable by order of the King. In the fifteen years the prisoner was captive at Pignerol, in the four years he lay at the Isles, in the five that brought his tragedy to a term in the Bastille, no sub- ordinate officer of either place had learned so much as his name. From Du.Junca's journal we shall see presently that even the King's lieutenant got it by mere 'hazard after the prisoner's death. And the Court was not better informed than the Bastille. The omniscient Saint-Simon, the Greville of France, had never an inkling of the matter. That \\ : r \ \ ^ THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 13 unbridled gossip, the Princess Palatine, who spent half the day at her desk inditing scandal to her family and friends abroad, was com- pletely wide of the mark.* Supposed at one time to rank among the prerogatives of the crown, history has proved that this was not the case with the sombre secret of the mask. Madame Campan will show us that it was unknown to Louis XVI. Napoleon expressed a lively regret at not being able to satisfy his curiosity. Louis-Philippe discussed the problem frequently, but confessed his ignorance of the solution ; and if certain other sovereigns pretended to the knowledge, the contradictions of their statements sanction the inference that they were not more correctly instructedf » "I have just learned," writes Madame from Versailles, October 22, 171 1, who was the masked man who died in the Bastille. His wearing a mask was not due to cruelty. He was an English lord who had been mixed up in the affair of the Duke of Berwick (natural son of James H.) against King William. He died there so that the King might never know what became of him.*' t Topin. ^kX'^A^ JldlUdd4«3- himmiliii tmm I u TBE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. Here, then, indeed was a Secret of the State consummately preserved, not only during, but after, the lifetime of the monarch whose inte- rest it was to safeguard it. ** See that no one knows what becomes of this man!' * Such was the private peremptory order of Louis XIV. to his minister, Abbe d'Estrades ; and he was obeyed. Clearly, therefore, this would be a hard secret to come at, until the sole right method— the search for, and disentombing of, the documents — was chanced upon. But both the writers on this mystery and their readers, in England as in France, have displayed, for the most part, a rather singular perversity. It would be fastidious, if not altogether idle, at this day to make inquest on the motives which led so many authors of erudition, ingenuity, and exceeding patience to beguile the public with the notion that they had found beneath the mask the features * " Ilfaudra que personne ne s^ache ce que cet homme sera devenuy Louis XIV. to d'Estrades : April 28th, 1679. "•wr ■ II . i m III I l l^ iy i p ■>€*•: f >.n '#-. *" ,• J. i\ -» 4^, ^H ■4^ m i^' ^•"•-irf •WV.xwkWk^ ««- o a 3 B & & b S I § OB a o e o Q q I again. Topin, / IN FA TUA TION " OF B UCKINGHAM. 83 These are the two memorable scenes of Amiens with which scandal was once very- busy, but with which history, seeking proofs, was never seriously concerned. During the troubles of the Fronde, and the heat of civil war, the hint of a criminal love between Buckingham and the Queen, whose honour he would very willingly have spoiled, was bruited often ; but all the evidence goes to show that Anne of Austria outwitted a passionate, unscrupulous gallant, and was never for an instant his victim. A kind of Spanish tender- ness she may have felt for him, and we may suspect her of no small skill in flirtation ; but, . as there is no particle of evidence to adduce, accusation may go no farther. It is abundantly clear that, so far as Buckingham was con- cerned, the Queen was never without witnesses to her conduct. Marie de Medici, who bore her daughter-in-law no very goodwill at this period, took upon herself to assure Louis XIII. /,♦ 84 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. that he need not concern himself with rumour; that even if the Queen had been willing to demean herself she was so perpetually sur- rounded that the opportunity could never have offered. As for the impetuous indis- cretions of Buckingham, the Queen had not encouraged and could not well have prevented them : in her younger days, said Madame de Medici to her son, such things had happened to herself.* Madame might have added that the Due de Montmorency and the Due de Bellegarde had both been in love with the fascinating Queen of Louis XIII., and that neither of them had fared one whit better than Buckingham. Says Topin: — "Nothing seems to accuse the Queen save the persistent coldness towards her of Louis XIII. But does this conduct date from the visit of Buckingham to Paris ? Was Louis so completely estranged from the Queen * M^moires of La Porte. INFATUATION OF BUCKINGHAM. 85 as has been supposed ? And may we seek in this the proof of an act of infidelity on the Queen's part, whether with Buckingham in 1625, as the result of love, or with some person unknown, in 1630, as the result of deliberate calculation, and to the end that, after the death of Louis XIII., which at that moment seemed imminent, she might reign in the name of her illegitimate child, who, on the King's un- expected recovery, must be hidden away, to become later the Man in the Iron Mask .'' " I M C- 86 THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 87 1/ CHAPTER IV. Born within eight days of one The Acquittal of another, Anne of Austria, Infanta the Queen, ^f gpain, and Louis, Dauphin of France, may be said to have been pledged in infancy. Astrologers had announced that, delivered under one star, they were des- tined to love each other, married or not married. The little Anne lent a willing ear to the wise men's predictions ; and when, at the age of twelve, she was bidding good-bye to the Due de Mayenne, who had come to Madrid to sign the marriage contract, she instructed him to tell the King that she was "extremely impatient to see him." Her governess was shocked, but the Infanta replied that it had always been recommended to her to speak the truth. Two years later, in 161 5, she was a bride of fourteen, and as enthusiastic as ever about the boy she had married. Much less enthusiastic was the boy. He had always declared that he hated the Spaniards, '' because they are the enemies of Papa " ; and on two occasions, when his father, Henri IV., talked to him of his future marriage with the Infanta, he gave stubborn answers in the negative. He was grave and observant for his years, intolerant of the King's mistresses who tried to conciliate him, and precociously fierce against their children, whom he would not call his brothers and would not suffer at his table. After the death of Henry IV., the boy-King shewed himself less and less in sympathy with the gross speech and habits of the Court, and was fonder of hawking than of chambering. The idea of marriage seems always to have repelled him, and after four years of wedded life, Anne was a wife only to the extent that / \ 88 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. the church had made her one. The conduct of the King had become, indeed, almost a question of State. His determined abstention had moved the French Court, it had offended the Court of Spain, it was regarded as a slight by the papal nuncio and the Court of Tuscany, whose aid had been considerable in bringing about the union. In January, 1619, some kind of rapproche- ment seems to have been effected, but the hopes that were built on it were disappointed. Again in 1622 it was said with confidence that an heir to the throne might be expected, but almost immediately afterwards the Queen was the victim of an accident. The visit of Buckingham left the King unmoved, and had no result in modifying his relations with the Queen. Having freed himself front his mother's yoke, Louis XHI. passed absolutely under that of Richelieu ; and jealously as the cardinal-minister watched the young sovereign, \i \t Louis XIII. >r ^ f <^ I *"^»*%#' I \\ THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 91 he was yet more jealous in his surveillance of the Queen, an object of his implacable resent- ment. Is it possible for one moment to believe in an intrigue of hers, with Buckingham, with Mazarin, or with another, which Richelieu fails to know of, whose spies penetrated to the inmost recesses of the Court ? And knowing It, would he have hesitated an instant to ruin the woman whom he hated, by confiding his knowledge to the King ? Let us consider next the circumstances of the illness of Louis XII L in 1630. The King fell ill at Lyons, not, says Topin, at the beginning of August (which has been asserted), but on the 22nd of September; "and here the dates are of the utmost importance." On the 29th, an exhausting dysentery added itself to a severe attack of fever, and at midnight the doctors despaired of saving him. He took a tender farewell of the Queen, and entreated her forgiveness for all things. Towards noon » — !—-• '^ ; 92 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. of the next day the King still lingered, and the Archbishop of Lyons was preparing to administer extreme unction, when the doctors, who had already bled the enfeebled body six times, ordered a seventh bleeding. This would assuredly have carried off the patient, but before the operation could be performed the true cause of the malady revealed itself: an abscess in the stomach broke, and the King was saved. On his recovery, Louis XIII. quitted Lyons with the Queen, whose unaffected tender- ness and solicitude at his sick bed had touched him closely. ** In that crisis, both had forgotten the past. The coldness of the one was overcome, the wounded pride of the other was healed." Exulting in her unwonted empire, it was not enough for the Queen to have won a tardy place in her husband's heart ; she desired to complete her triumph by casting down the minister who had opposed .n ) ,\/ THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 93 himself between them, and, at one moment, she had nearly been successful— but the King could rule only by the Cardinal. In January, 1631, the Queen was manifestly enceinte. Supposing this the result of a criminal intrigue, at what date should the commencement of the pregnancy be placed ? "Is it, as was asserted, at the moment and by reason of the apparently imminent death of Louis XIII.? But the Queen was delivered within the first five days of April ; consequently the child, conceived the 30tfi of September, would by no means have attained the full period, and could not, therefore, have become the Man in the Iron Mask.* Was it on the arrival of Louis XIII. at Lyons early in the August of 1630? But at this date, Anne of Austria had not the vital motive for becoming a mother, which, according to her accusers, * The Medical science of the present day might succeed in saving such a child ; but the chances would be very slight indeed. (■■ 94 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. she had on the 30th of September, when the King lay on the threshold of death. Either, then, the child is born incapable of living, or its conception mounts to an epoch which makes Louis XIII. the father, because the Queen had no need to procure herself an heir by unlawful means." The truth is, that this, the third pregnancy of Anne of Austria, traces to the reconciliation which followed on the desperate illness of the King. Richelieu himself is a witness here. " If France should be blessed with this fortune," he wrote, "it will be the fruit of God's blessing, and of the kindly relations established of late between his Majesty and the Queen." * Not a word on Richelieu's part which inculpates or seeks to inculpate the • Lettres et papicrs de Richelieu. Found among the letters and documents which passed from the hands of the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, Richelieu's niece, to the Archives de I'E/at, and which were published by the learned Avenet in his collection of Documents inedits de Phistoire de France. THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 95 Queen, and it has been observed with justice, that history could never hope to be better instructed than that ^* clairvoyant and pitiless minister.'' Not for seven years were the ardent hopes of the nation to be realised. On the 5th of September, 1638, Anne of Austria gave birth to a son who was to ascend the throne as Louis XIV. This is also the day which has been assigned to the birth of the Iron Mask by those who, rejecting the theory of an illegitimate child, have pronounced for that of a twin brother, born in the evening, '* and condemned, for his tardy arrival, to perpetual imprisonment.'' The problem of the twin is briefly to be considered. In no country in Europe, perhaps, was the birth of a royal child more jealously scrutinised, more elaborately and minutely attested, than in the France of the Monarchy. Such an event might over- whelm the expectations of a collateral heir, y M^ 96 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. or might ruin the prospects of a party. Precautions the most extraordinary were employed, precautions which may be said, practically, to have excluded the possibility of fraud or deception. Not only were the greatest persons in the State compelled to be eye-witnesses of the event, but the people itself was summoned '' to assist '' at the birth of the Child of France. The doors of the royal dwelling were flung open in this solemn hour, the people thronged in, and passed freely into the innermost chambers of the palace. Madame Campan relates how, at the birth of the first child of Marie Antoinette, the room in which the Queen lay was so intolerably crowded that Louis XVI. broke a window to let in more air. Indeed, this practice, so distressing and humiliating to the royal mother, was invariable and all but immemorial. It was not omitted at the birth of Louis XIV. At five o'clock on the morning of the 5th of THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 97 September, 1638, Louis XIII. was summoned to the Queen's chamber, where he remained until he had the happiness to know that a son and heir had been born to him. At six, there arrived in succession at Saint- Germain, the King's brother, Gaston d'Orl6ans (who had a vital interest in assuring him- self that the birth was genuine), the Prin- cesse de Conde, Madame de Vendome, the Chancellor, Madame de t^ansac (the future governess of the prince) and Mesdames de Senecey and de la Flotte of the royal house- hold. Close to the Queen's couch an altar had been raised, where the Bishops of Lisieux, Meaux, and Beauvais pronounced mass in turn. Pressing up to the altar and flowing out into the room beyond, were princesses, dukes, duchesses, and bishops, '' with a vast crowd of the common folk who had invaded the palace from an early hour, and who now completely filled it." 7 ii 1 , /\ - /- III 98 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. At eleven a.m. precisely the Queen's pangs were over, and the birth of a prince was announced. The resentment, ill-concealed, of Gaston d'Orleans did not escape a few observant eyes, but passed almost unnoticed amid the general joy. The melancholy Louis XI 1 1, broke into smiles, and called on those around him to admire the fine proportions of his son. Shortly afterwards, and in the Queens chamber, the Child of France was baptised by the Bishop of Meaux, chaplain-in- chief A King's messenger was despatched in all haste to bear the great news to Paris, but the joyous cries of the populace outran his horse all along the route, and as the messenger galloped into the capital, the bells were already swinging in every church. Meanwhile, what of the Twin ? The state- ment of Soulavie was, it will be remembered, that the Queen was delivered at eight in the 1 I.^ K Cardinal Richelieu. After Champalgne. r . A THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN, loi evening of a second son, who, conformably to Richelieu's counsel, was privily and at once put away. The role here invented for Richelieu was of such immense importance that Soulavie should at least have been careful to know where the Cardinal was at this capital moment. For the truth is that Richelieu was not at Saint-Germain at all. He had quitted the Court at the end of July ; he was at Saint-Quentin on the day of Louis XIV.'s birth, and he did not return to Paris until the 2nd of October. The letter of congratula- tion which he wrote to their Majesties from Saint-Quentin is printed in his Lettres et papiers, Richelieu, then, is summoned in vain as a principal instrument of the plot imagined by Soulavie. As the Queen's enemy, he had every interest to denounce her to the King ; as her suppositious friend and accomplice, he could scarcely have aided, at the distance of Saint-Quentin, the conspiracy which must I ^ » 1 102 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, have been compressed within an hour at the utmost in the palace of Saint-Germain. But let Richelieu be dismissed from the case. We are to receive as plausible the suggestion that a twin brother of Louis XIV. IS born without the knowledge of the Court. The birth is nine hours late, but the palace is still swarming with the princes of the family — and no one has heard of it. Or, it is known to all, and all are agreed, for no conceivable reason, to keep the secret. The secret is so well kept, moreover, that never once is it divulged or even hinted at in any Memoir of the period. We have contem- porary notices of Anne of Austria which are scarcely discreet, and we have others which are less than discreet ; but we have no record of her by any writer of her own day which contains the faintest reference to the surrep- titious birth of a twin brother of Louis XIV. Let this birth, however, be admitted. Let / / \ THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN 103 it be supposed that, at eight in the evening, the witnesses were few, and had pledged themselves to secrecy. Was there any reason for secrecy? Why should Louis XIII. be, as Soulavie says, on the point of fainting when he learns that he has two heirs instead of one '^. The question of the trouble that might arise from the idea that the second born is the first conceived is not admissible ; for, never sanctioned in medicine, this em- pirical theory had no recognition in the law of France. From commoner to King, the first-born was the heir. Far, therefore, from being alarmed by the birth of a twin, Louis XIII. had reason to praise his fortune, for the right of inheritance was now doubly consolidated in his own family. Once more, however, for the rounding off of the argument, let the impossible be received and acquiesced in. This ambiguous son of Anne of Austria is born, we will say. He is I04 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. brought into the world shortly before 1625, and Buckingham is his father; or in 1631, when Louis XIII. is believed to be dying, and Mazarin, or some gallant unknown, is his father; or in 1638, when he is presented to us as the most interesting, the most romantic, and the most unfortunate of twins. Entrusted to some creature of consummate devotion and discretion, he is reared in the country ; and if, in the course of time, there is developed a rather striking likeness to a certain Queen- mother or a King, no one perceives it, or those who do perceive it are polite enough to refrain from questions. But at what epoch was he imprisoned, and for what cause ? '' From the day that he becomes the famous prisoner whom Saint-Mars conducts in 1698 from Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille, we have the right to ask when, how, and in what circumstances he was arrested and con- fided to his gaoler } " THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN, 105 He was allowed his liberty, we will suppose, during the lifetime of Anne of Austria; that would be not unreasonable, provided he were kept out of sight. Was he imprisoned after her death ? But Anne of Austria died in January, 1666, and Saint-Mars receives no prisoner. Did the arrest take place, as Voltaire affirms, In 1661, after the death of Mazarin ? But at this date, and three years later, Saint-Mars was still an officer of musketeers. It was not until December, 1664, that he was appointed to the governorship of Pignerol, where, in the following month, he received Fouquet into his keeping. On the 20th of August, 1669, arrives at Pignerol a second prisoner, one Eustache Danger. But Danger is known to us : an obscure spy, he was given as a servant to Fouquet. Is it likely that Saint-Mars would have appointed to wait on Fouquet — who had passed all his life near Louis XIV. and io6 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, Anne of Austria — a prince whose features recalled the King*s ? From the date of Dauger's imprisonment no other prisoner is sent to Saint-Mars until the Comte de Lauzun goes to Pignerol in 1671. After that, at long intervals, other prisoners are led thither, but they are all identified, their crimes or their faults are known. ** We see them sometimes not too well treated; and when, in i68f, Saint-Mars passes from the command of Pignerol to that of Exiles, he takes with him two prisoners only, whom he styles contemptuously **a pair of gaol-birds." At Exiles, at Pignerol, at Sainte- Marguerite (which dungeon w^as taken over by Saint-Mars in 1687), if new prisoners are entrusted to him, we know to what motives their incarceration may be attributed ; and nothing in their past, nothing in their treatment in prison, nothing in their conduct allows us to suspect in any one of them a r Cardinal Mazaria. After Mignard. ^ .(* THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN, 109 brother of Louis XIV. Needless to say, Saint-Mars would not be likely to designate his prince by name in any official despatch, nor should proof of that kind be demanded. But when, after having examined in turn all the prisoners whom the future governor of the Bastille had in his charge — and among whom must of necessity be found that mysterious one with whom he traversed France in 1698 — we have satisfied ourselves as to the causes of their arrest, and have penetrated into their past ; when a hundred authentic despatches * render it absolutely certain that beyond these prisoners there was no other, have we not reason to conclude with the question : Where then is the son of Anne d'Autriche }[' f « Tradition, fable, legend, ensnare us at * Archives dti ministere de la marine. — Archives du minisQre de la guerre. — Archives du ministere des affaires Stranger es. — Archives imp^riales. t Topin. no THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. every turn in this enquiry. Truth and fiction are interwoven in the strangest manner. Around every legendary hero the adventures of other persons gradually group themselves, and this has been signally the case with the Man in the Mask. How interesting— in its relation to the hypothesis of the king's brother — is the story of the boundless defer- ence shown to the prisoner, and the visit he received at Sainte-Marguerite from the minis- ter Louvois, who addresses him "with a consideration savouring of respect." But we shall see presently that no one goes out of his way to show deference to the Mask ; and, as for the visit of Louvois, that is pure in- vention. In 1680 (eight years, be it noted, before Saint-Mars took the Man in the Mask to the Isles) Louvois, who had broken his leg, went to Bareges for a few weeks to complete his cure In Rousset's Histoire de Louvois, we have the detailed itinerary I! \\ H w THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN, iii of the journey, and Sainte-Marguerite is not found in it ; nor, after this, was Louvois ever again in the south of France. The piquant episode of the silver plate (trans- formed by Pere Papon into a linen shirt) is bound up with the theory of a brother or a twin brother of Louis XIV., and is highly interesting as an example of the commingling of fact with fiction in the popular history of the Mask. The story of the plate, as will be plain, has its origin in the attempt at escape of a Protestant minis- ter confined at Sainte-Marguerite in 1692. Indeed, it was scarcely even an attempt at escape : the Protestant minister writes some complaint on his pewter-plate or vessel (is it necessary to say that State prisoners of the 17th century were not served on silver?), and flings it out of window. Out of this commonplace fact has arisen the pungent tale of the silver dish which is nearly the ri2 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, death of the fisherman who rescues it. It was believed — and it has still a kind of illiterate currency. There are legends which, doing hurt to no one's memory, it seems almost a pity to displace by fact ; but it is always grateful to slay a fable which has involved a repu- tation in disgrace. This has been the inte- rest and the motive of refuting once again the discarded and long-contemned invention of Voltaire, which, modified variously by successive writers, has crammed the mind of Christendom. It may lessen the charm of the story to remove from it the captivating person of a brother of Louis XIV., but the arid truth of history repeats that the Iron Mask was not a son of Anne of Austria. Who has proved the birth of the pretended prince ? Who will give the date of his imprisonment ? Not even in the France of the old Monarchy were royal infants delivered I \ THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 113 by the gods, and inscrutably concealed by them. The malign concept of Voltaire returns again to the rag-bag of Time — alms meet for oblivion. » \ 8 X T14 THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH, 115 CHAPTER V. English readers will not expect to The Expiation - .. 0, be detained long over the case ol Monmooth. Monmouth. Monmouth's claims to the mask were the imagination of an ex-officer of French cavalry, by name Germain-Fran9ois Poullain de Saint-Foix.* Single-handed he defended them, but with the valour of six. His hypothesis was only too easily destroyed, and perhaps its most valid title to respect during the lifetime of Saint-Foix lay in his perfect readiness to prove it at the point of the rapier. The early career of Monmouth scarcely con- cerns us. The natural son of Charles II. and Lucy Walter or Walters (the ^^browne, beauti- * Bom February 5, 1698; died August 25, 1776.— lung. 1/ /H' ful, bold, but insipid creature " whom the diarist Evelyn encountered in Paris), his father doted on him, the Court spoiled him, and, in the prime of manhood he was, for the general people — The young men's vision, and the old men's dream ! The line is Dryden's, and the famous flattery of the picture in ''Absalom and Achitophel'* may once again be cited : — Early in foreign fields he won renown, With kings and states allied to Israel's crown : In peace the thoughts of war he could remove, And seem'd as he were only born for love. Whate'er he did, was done with so much ease, In him alone 'twas natural to please : His motions all accompanied with grace ; And Paradise was open'd in his face. History has rejected the verdict of Monmouth's contemporaries. A man of brilliant looks and most eminent graces of person, a polished courtier, a sportsman, and (save at the crisis of Sedgemoor) a brave man in battle : these were certainly his best recommendations to the 8* ii6 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. general goodwill. He lacked almost every element of greatness. His conduct of the rebellion against James II. showed that he was neither a leader nor an organiser ; defeated, he left his devoted followers to their fate ; and, in the most critical hour of his existence — the interview with the implacable James — he dis- played a cowardice and a baseness of spirit which disgusted the King, amazed and shocked the French ambassador, and drew down upon his memory the scathing rebukes of Macaulay. Day was not yet full come on the morning of the 6th of July, 1685, when Monmouth, with Grey and the German Buyse beside him, was riding in flight from the lost field of Sedge- moor. It is but just to say that, up to the moment at which he knew himself defeated, he had fought, on foot and pike in hand, like a stalwart soldier. But the moment of defeat was surely the one in which a rebel of courage and of heart would remember the men whom he \' '. 1 Charles II. From an engraving by Sherwin, {The wax effigy in Westminster Abbey was modeiled from this' engraving.] ^ I \ THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH, 119 had summoned to his flag. History has few more touching instances of devotion to a feeble cause than those which the wretched memory of Sedgemoor will eternally evoke. Those ''Mendip miners" and poor peasants, with their scythes and bludgeons and a few old rusty guns, who shouted for ^* King Monmouth" while Monmouth was among them, and who tried to stem the whirlwind of James's cavalry when Monmouth had abandoned them, deserved to die for a better treason, and for a nobler traitor. There is no need to rehearse again the details of the flight and capture of Monmouth. He must have realised his doom in the hour of his arrest, and it remained to him only to meet it as the son of a king, and as the van- quished leader of an ineffectual revolt. But twice he failed, and despicably, in the fortitude that inspires the great insurgent. He had abandoned his heroic peasants when his mili- i" . 120 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. 121 tary knowledge told him that the battle had gone to the King ; and he abandoned his own manhood when he found himself in James's clutches. His letter to the King from Ring- wood is branded by Macaulay as *'that of a man whom a craven fear had made insensible to shame" — his behaviour in the interview with the King degrades him deeper still. It was an interview which James II. should never have accorded. He was justified in sending to the scaffold an enemy who had not only usurped the title of king, but whose proclamation was charged with hideous libels ; but, having resolved upon the death of Monmouth, James should not, in common humanity, have admitted him to his presence. That cruel favour, worthy of the most resentful sovereign in English history, tempted the beaten and broken Monmouth to plead miserably and most ignominiously for the life which was already lost to him. \ With his arms bound, Monmouth grovelled on the floor at the King's feet;* tried to embrace him by the knees ; begged for life, for life only. The champion of Protestantism — a position which had disgraced him with his father, and the plea which had supported his rebellion against his uncle — he offered, in his last desperate extremity, to become a Catholic. James turned from him in contempt, and Monmouth's final hope was extinguished. It is at this dramatic moment that M. Germain-Francois Poullain de Saint-Foix ap- propriates the doomed adventurer, hands Rim over to Louis XIV., who passes him on to Saint-Mars, who transforms him into the Man in the Mask. James the unforgiving, it is pretended, for- gave his nephew on the very eve of the fate he had ordained for him ; and Louis of France consented to receive and lodge him for life in one of his convenient dungeons. This, of ( r 122 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, course, implies that it was not Monmouth, but some magnanimous substitute for that prince, whom Ketch, with the clumsiness of fright, mangled to death on Tower Hill, on the morn- ing of the 15th of July, 1685. How then was the fraud accomplished ? With the ease which might be expected, when a relenting sovereign and uncle needs fortune's aid. An officer of Monmouth, condemned with him to the axe, and strikingly like the Duke, agreed to per- sonate him on the scaffold! Prelates not acquainted with Monmouth were chosen to attend his last moments, and the execution was hurried, that there might be no opportunity for a ** dying speech'* to the crowd, and no oppor- tunity for the crowd to recognise the generous impostor. The situation would no doubt be an extremely taking one in the theatre ; but it was not the situation on the morning of Monmouth's death. The divines by whom he was accompanied to Tower Hill were the same w The. Duke of Monmouth. Prom a contemporary German Broadsheet, THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH, 125 who had exhorted him in the Tower ; and the scene on the scaffold, far from being hurried, was so protracted that it must have been an agony to the spectators who had thronged in thousands to see their idol die. Nor was there any unseemly eagerness on the part of those in attendance upon Monmouth to send their victim in silence to the block : on the contrary, as will be seen, it was Monmouth himself who held back, when urged by them to address the soldiers. It is when he comes to the proof that Saint- Foix, as may be imagined, is so terribly hard put to it. He has not even stubble for his bricks. Beyond the tradition of the feigned execution of Monmouth (which was for many years a cherished belief of our own west- country peasants), he offers only the vaguest of rumours and the idlest of conjectures. He cites (with a confession of little confidence) an anonymous libel published in Amsterdam and / 126 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. Paris, under the title Amours de Charles IL et de Jacques II „ rois d\4ngleterre, wherein Skelton, whom William of Orange had re- moved from the lieutenancy of the Tower, is reported as informing Lord Danby that ''on the night after the pretended execution of the Duke of Monmouth, the King, accompanied by three men, came himself to remove him from the Tower. They covered his head with a kind of hood, and the King and the three mounted with him into a coach." Although this tract is put forward by Saint-Foix as one of his principal pieces, he spoils at a stroke whatever worth it may have had for him by the candid admission that it should be classed with ** those books whose authors seek only to entertain their readers." His next witness is one Nelaton, a surgeon, and a haunter of that hot-bed of gossip the Cafe Procope, which has but lately disappeared from Paris. Nelaton's friends of the Cafe were ■( \ THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH 127 familiar with a story which he did not tire of rehearsing: how that, being chief assistant to a surgeon near the Porte Saint-Antoine, he was sent one day to bleed a prisoner of the Bastille ; the governor took him into the chamber of the prisoner, whose head was covered with a long towel knotted on the neck ; the prisoner complained of great pains in the head ; he wore a dressing-gown of black and yellow, ornamented with large fleurs dor — and the surgeon's assistant perceived by the prisoner's accent that he was an Englishman. How and by whom the Englishman with his head veiled in a towel was identified with Monmouth, Saint- Foix omits to say. From the Cafe Procope the simple advo- cate conducts his audience to the boudoir of that light-behaved celebrity, the Duchess of Portsmouth. '' Father Tournemine has often repeated to me that, paying a visit to the Duchess of Portsmouth with Father Sanders, \ \ 128 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. the ancient confessor of King James, the Duchess told them that she should always re- proach the memory of that sovereign with the execution of the Duke of Monmouth, remem- bering that Charles II., in the hour of his death and on the point of receiving the sacrament, had made him promise before the Host (which the priest Huldeston * had secretly conveyed), that, whatever rebellion Monmouth might at- tempt, he would never put him to death. — ' Madame,* answered Father Sanders with vivacity, * he did not put him to death.' " And here, to conclude, is Saint-Foix's crowning proof: On the rumour in London, which gathered as it rolled, that an officer re- sembling Monmouth had been decapitated in his stead, a ''grande dame'' — not named to us — bribed certain persons — not named to us — to open the coffin; and, '* having looked closely * Huddleston, the priest who had saved Charles's life after the battle of Worcester, and who received his last confession. ) James II. Prom an engraving by Claes Visscber, \ THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. 131 % (i \ at the right arm, exclaimed — * This is not Monmouth!*" Thus, for the confusion of later generations, were systems of the Mask erected towards the end of the eighteenth century. This is the case, and the whole case of Germain- Frangois Poullain de Saint-Foix. And this is to stand against the vouchers of eye-witnesses of Mon- mouth's death, the written and extant testimony of the bishops who stood with him on the scaffold, the detailed despatches sent by the French Ambassador in London to Louis XIV. in Paris, the Memoirs of the age, and the im- partial conclusions of history, based on what is described by Macaulay as '' the strongest evi- dence by which the fact of a death was ever verified.'' But let Saint-Foix not be dismissed too coldly from us. We owe him, at least, a ** homage of amaze.'' The callous invention of Voltaire, the light deceit of Soulavie, were 132 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, certain of a hearing, and they have had it for an age; but we are dumbly to praise the forlorn pugnacity of this ex-officer of cavalry, ready and eager to pink the critic who would not be persuaded that a barber's assistant had identified Monmouth through the folds of a towel tied over his face. For the purposes of fiction, by the way, this was a stronger story than the legend of the twin brother : it attaches itself to the fancy — on the one hand, an English peasantry fondly believing in the second coming of an idolised prince ; on the other hand, the victim ot Sedgemoor following Saint-Mars from one French dungeon to an- other, and, after missing a throne and escaping a scaffold, buried in the murk of a November twilight by two turnkeys of the Bastille.* On the evening of Monday, 13th of July, Monmouth knew that he was to die on Wed- nesday morning. Clarendon, Keeper of the * Topin. \\ i l! \ THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH, 133 Privy Seal, had visited him in the Tower, and had assured him that no hope remained. Two bishops came next. Turner of Ely and Ken of Bath and Wells, '' with a solemn message from the King.'' Monmouth, bloodless and terrqr- stricken, could not be brought to resign ' himself If no pardon, might not a respite be obtained .'^ The prelates, more anxious at this crisis for his ghostly than for his physical wel- fare, exhorted him vainly ; and were greatly scandalised by Monmouth's heretical plea of the propriety, *'in the sight of God," of his relations with his mistress. Lady Wentworth. They left him, after adjuring him to spend the night in prayer for spiritual enlightenment. Tuesday came and passed,, bringing neither pardon nor respite ; and Monmouth's last day began. At an early hour he parted from his wife and children ; showing, it is said, kindness but no emotion : he had sunk from terror to a dull despair. Lady Wentworth, who, in a few 134 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, short months, was to follow her lover to the grave, did not see him. The hour of ten brought the coach of the lieutenant of the Tower; and now, with Death's hand upon him, Monmouth grew calm and dignified. At his request, the divines who had visited him in the Tower went with him to the scaffold, and continued to exhort him to the last : — '' God accept your repentance ! God accept your imperfect repentance ! "* Mournful faces thronged about the scaffold, and Tower Hill was ''covered up to the chimney tops with an innumerable multitude of gazers," weeping, or silently indignant. Monmouth, as he passed between the ranks of the guards, saluted them with a smile ; and he mounted the scaffold without a tremor. The crowd hungered for his words, but he said very little, protesting that he died *' a Protestant of the Church of England.*' The bishops broke * Macaulay. /> I The Execution of Monmouth on Tower Hill. From a German Broadsheet. {'i ll I- m /.■t 11 I u<* TBI: EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. 137 in upon this, saying that as a member of that church he must submit himself to his King, and acknowledge the sinfulness of his rebellion. Once again the prelates interfered, when Mon- mouth would have spoken of Lady Wentworth. He declared his sorrow for the sufferings he had brought upon his followers ; then the bishops *' prayed with him long and fervently,'* and Monmouth, after a troubled pause, added a slow '' Amen " to the closing prayer for the King. Entreated to speak to the soldiers, '' I will make no speeches," he exclaimed ; and addressed himself forthwith to the executioner, to whom he gave six guineas, with injunctions to despatch him swiftly, and not to hack him ''as you did my Lord Russell.'' But this com- mand, and possibly also the long and painful scene he had been witness of, and the con- sciousness that the people loathed him for the dreadful work he had to do, unnerved the headsman utterly. Again and again the axe 138 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. fell on Monmouth ; the wretched Ketch flung it from him, took it up again at the sheriffs command, and finally severed the head from the shoulders with a knife,* amid screams of rage and horror from the crowd. The vengeance of the relentless James, which history, nevertheless, cannot severely reproach, was satisfied. Monmouth's head and body were gathered up, and buried privately the same day under the communion table of St. Peters Chapel in the Tower of London. An abstract of his speech on the scaffold, published by his partisans, has been rejected as spurious. *He "severed not his head from his body till he cut it off with a Ymitr—Verney MSS, 139 f'" s % CHAPTER VI. Between the years I7S4 and 1780, "The King ^ ^ ' ^^ ^ ^' of the three writers in succession espoused Markets." ^^e cause of the Due de Beaufort as a candidate for the mask. At the respected age of eighty (for he was born in 1674), the abbe Lenglet-Dufresnoy * first advanced this curious opinion, in his Plan de P histoire generale et particitliere de la monarchie frangoise, a treatise in three volumes i2mo, published in 1754. * The abbe, an ingenious student, had had the philosopher's full share of imprisonment under the absolute monarchy, for he was twice con- fined in the Dungeon of Vincennes and six times in the Bastille. It was, in the eighteenth century especially, an approved method of recognising distinction in letters ; and the abbe did not complain. Far from it ; he always obeyed his summons with the greatest alacrity, declaring that prison was the best place in the world to work in ; packed a few clean shirts and his MSS., and rode off with the officer who had come for him. 140 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, The systeme Beaufort seems to have been the especial snare of age, for Lagrange-Chancel,* of the Philippiqttes, carried fourscore years and three, when, in 1759, in an article in Freron's Annee litteraire, he defended Lenglet-Du- fresnoy. The historian Anquetil was nearing the seventies when he lent his support to the same theory in \i\s Louis XIV., sa Cour et le Regent, 1789. Since the year of the Revolution, Beaufort's claim has gone undefended. It shall engage us very briefly. Topin has noted the slight comparison that may be established between Beaufort and Monmouth. Both were royal princes, of illegitimate origin ; both had a career of ad- venture ; and both enjoyed the uncommon privilege of being fatuously loved by the people. * The satirist's experience of dungeons was inferior to the abbe's but he had been a prisoner of Sainte-Marguerite. ''KING OF THE MARKETS:' 141 r During many years, the market people of Paris refused as obstinately to believe in the death of Beaufort as did the peasants of the west of England in the death of Monmouth.* Ten years after the siege of Candia, where Beaufort unquestionably lost his life, the women of the markets were still having masses said, not for the repose of his soul, but for the prompt return of the man himself.f These persistent doubts, which, passing lightly over the necessity of proof, are always so easily propagated, have sufficed to place Beaufort at one era and Monmouth at another under the mask of Saint-Mars's perplexing prisoner. The points * These superstitions of the people are not peculiar to any age or country. The death of Mr. Charles Stuart Parnell is, I should sup- pose, pretty well attested ; yet there are those in Ireland who declare that the lost leader lives and will re-appear. Nay, by some it is maintained that he has re-appeared — and in a character somewhat plaguing to our fighting-men. Has he not been identified in print with that elusive De Wet of the Boer War who (at the time of writing) is leading our Generals such a dance among the mountains and passes of South Africa ! t Topin ! 142 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. of resemblance cease here : the characters of the two men were totally dissimilar. Monmouth breathed the air of Courts as a prince should do. Beaufort, not less a prince, floundered like a clown in the royal circle — the Tony Lumpkin of Versailles. Grandson of Henri IV. and Gabrielle d^Estrees (his father was Cesar de Vendome), Beaufort came up from the country to the Court, a raw, handsome braggart, with one hand incessantly on his hip, and the other twirling up his moustaches ; his conversation a ludicrous failure to mix the slang of the stable and the hunting-field, which was his proper language, with the jargon of the elegants, which was exotic to him. He got so far as to introduce a vocabulary of his own, which had no imitators, and which Cardinal de Retz declared would have melted Cato into tears. But the stentorian, lubberly Duke had his revenge at the wars, where his idiosyncrasies were '* not noticed in him " ; and he returned .^ 194 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, this affair more proper to conduct it than a certain Count Mattioli, who is entirely devoted to that prince. I had known him for some time, and he had shown a great desire to render himself agreeable to your Majesty by some service.. I knew that he had been Secretary of State to the late Duke of Mantua ; that the reigning duke had preserved much affection for him, and that he was well informed as to the different interests of the Princes of Italy. As, however, he had been much in the Milanese, and had had access to the Spanish ministers, I resolved not to place any confidence in him till I had put him to the proof. I accordingly charged the Giuliani to whom your Majesty was good enough to send a reward six months ago, and whose zeal for your service forbids all doubt of his fidelity, to observe Mattioli attentively, and in secret. Having been sufficiently informed of his ex- treme discontent with the Spaniards, who, f 1 THE RIPENING PLOT. 195 after entertaining him with hopes, had always in the end abandoned him, I sent Giuliani, in the month of last October, to Verona, where he went under pretext of his private affairs." We may return to that month, and overhear the first overtures of Giuliani in an affair which was to bring about results terrible enough for Mattioli. Giuliani had been well primed by the abbe, and shows for his own part an emphatic interest in his mission. As d'Estrades had instructed him, he repre- sented to Mattioli that the friends of the Duke desired greatly to see him in a position of independence ; that all his territories and all his revenues were under the absolute control of his mother and the monk Bulgarini, her confessor, and that Casale and the Mont- ferrat were threatened by all manner of Spanish and other intrigues. To these hints Mattioli lent an open and a friendly ear. " He had long, with grief. 13 * \ X. \ ,56 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. seen the truth " of what Giuliani had laid before him. he said, but " there was st.ll a remedy for so great an evil," and he would^ with Monsieur V Abbe's approval, get speech of the Duke and "discover his real sentiments All this was duly conveyed by Giuhan. to d'Estrades, and by d'Estrades to Lou.s XIV. Next we are apprised of the " secret in- terview " which Mattioli had with Mintua, and then of the meeting between that prmce and Giuliani. The Duke, says d'Estrades, .. approved very much of the proposition that was made him. to free him from the perpetual uneasiness he felt on the score of the Spaniards, and that, for this purpose. Casale should be placed in your Majesty's hands, upon the understanding that I should try to obtain from you in his favour^U that he could reasonably ask for." The Duke desired to communicate the matter to two of his counsellors. " in whom THE RIPENING PLOT. 197 he had the most confidence," and he gave the selection of them to Mattioli. Mattioli named the Marquis Cavriani and Joseph Varano, '' in whom he has confidence." The affair, it is evident, was already in a good train ; already there was talk of the preparation of '' a draft of the plan." D^Estrades was now anxious for a personal interview with the Duke, and this, it was agreed, should be managed at Venice in Carnival time, when all the world, ** even the Doge and the oldest senators," went masked. What the Duke de- sired above everything was that Louis should send into Italy a sufficiently strong army ** to be able to undertake something considerable," — an army of which he wanted the general- ship, says d'Estrades, **in order to be con- sidered in Italy like the late Duke of Modena, and the late Duke of Mantua, who at his age commanded in chief the Emperor's army, with the title of Vicar-General of the Empire." 198 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, Enclosed with d'Estrades's despatch was a letter from Mattipli to Louis,* in which he protests his devotion to him and to the interests of France. *' For myself, I bless the destiny which procures me the honour of serving so great a monarch, whom I regard and revere as a demi-god/' He undertakes to ''transmit to your Majesty all that I shall learn respecting Casale, which has been fortified by one of the most skilful engineers of the Milanese/' He entices the King with a hint of the great strength of the place. '' I am convinced it would be useless in me to enlarge upon the importance of the fortress of Casale. Your Majesty must remember that at different times it has arrested the progress of many armies, and that it is the only bulwark upon which depends the loss or the preservation to the Spaniards of the territories of Milan ; terri- * December 14th, 1677. I THE RIPENING PLOT. 199 I tories which, for more reasons than one, ought to belong to your Majesty's crown." To this Louis replies with his own hand, on the 1 2th of January, 1678 : — *' I have seen from the letter you wrote me, as well as from what has been com- municated to me by my Ambassador, the Abbe d'Estrades, the affection you exhibit for my interests. You cannot doubt that I am greatly obliged to you, and that I shall have much pleasure in giving you proofs of my satisfaction upon every occasion." On the 24th of December, 1677, and on the 1st of January, 1678, we have despatches of d'Estrades to the minister Pomponne.* The Abbe has learned from the Duke of * *' Simon Arnaud de Pomponne, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1671 to 1679, when he was dismissed from his office, but retained the title of Minister of State, with permission to attend the Council. A man, like so many of his race, who united considerable talents to great excellence of character. Madame de Sevigne says, in speaking of the eminent station he had filled, that * Fortune had wished to make use of his virtues for the happiness of others.' " — Ellis. 200 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, THE RIPENING PLOT. 201 Mantua that, should the French enter Italy, and should the Duke show a disposition to favour them, the Austrian party have deter- mined to seize Casale and all the Mont- ferrat. Mantua also is to be occupied. In these circumstances, the JDjuke, who is '' watched by his mother, by the monk Bulgarini, who governs her, and by the greater part of his ministers,'' can neither, declare himself openly on Louis's side, nor deliver up Casale to him, '' unless he will send a sufficient army into Italy to secure that fortress." Further, '' the Emperor and the Spaniards are ardently soliciting the Nuncios and the Ambassadors from Venice, residing at Madrid and Vienna, to persuade their masters to unite with them against France, and to represent to them that they have a common interest in the preservation of Italy, and in keeping out of it, the armies with which it is menaced." On the 1 2th of January, Louis writes ex- haustively to d'Estrades, commending his zeal in the business, and flattering Charles for the '* noble resolutions he seems disposed to take." As for the citadel and fortress of Casale, should they be given up to him, Louis says, ** I shall willingly content myself, with holding them in the same manner in which I held them formerly ; that is to say, under the condition of preserving them for the Duke of Mantua, and of paying the garrisons I shall keep there. I would also, in order to favour the military inclinations ^ of this Prince, take measures with him respecting the command of the armies I shall send across the Alps." Louis objects, however, to the Duke's price of one hundred thousand pistoles.* ''You must make him understand that this sum is too I large." As it was not convenient to Louis to * About ;^40,ooo ; the pistole being equal to ten francs. f »^' --^_,. ..I - -" /-■■»■- .-- ^-^ I - ul. / "^"^^v.- ' — \ /■ r 202 TJIi: MAN IN THE IRON MASK. send a considerable army into Italy that year, d'Estrades is instructed to protract the negotia- tions, and to "continue to entertain" the Duke with the notion that the French troops would shortly arrive in his territories. Mattioli, as the principal confidant in the affair, is to be kept "always in good humour, by the assurance of the especial good-will I bear him for his conduct, and by the expectation of the proofs of it which I shall be inclined to give him." The main difficulty — indeed, almost the only one— was to protract the negotiations, for everything was going so smoothly and so rapidly that, as d'Estrades writes to Pomponne on the 29th of January, there was no serious hindrance to be found or created. It was in the month of. January that Mattioli began secretly to visit the Abbe at his house in Venice. The only point the Duke's agent seemed inclined to contest was the price to be paid for the occupation of Casale. At length, ^i i\ I THE RIPENING PLOT. 203 he proposed to d'Estrades a sum of 500,000 livres, about ^20,000. This was reducing the price by half, but d'Estrades was for a lower figure still ; and, eventually Mattioli, knowing his master's straits, was induced to accept an offer of 100,000 crowns. Taking the crown at a value of three francs (though it is all but impossible to determine the relative values of the moneys then in cir- culation), this would represent the trifling sum of /i 2,000. This, moreover, was to be paid only on conditions. " Finally, Sire, I brought him to content himself with one hundred thousand crowns; and that on condition that your Majesty was not to pay them till after the treaty had been signed; and then, if you choose not to give the whole sum at once, that the Duke of Mantua should receive fifty thousand crowns first, and the remaining fifty thousand three months afterwards." Everything else was agreed to "without ,f^--, -■ ' /) 204 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. difficulty." Duke Charles, in fine, was in a hurry to conclude the affair ; being, says the Abbe, " in continual terror of the design, which he understands the Spaniards to have, of seizing upon his fortresses on the least pretext, and on the first favourable occasion." The next step was to arrange the meeting between Charles and d'Estrades, and nothing hindered this but the extreme secrecy with which the affair was being conducted. Charles had come to Venice in the last days of January, but the Spaniards were watching him, and it was not until the 13th of March, 1678, that he and the Abbe contrived their interview. We see them encountering at midnight, closely masked, "in a small open space," says d'Estrades in his despatch to Louis, "which is at an equal distance from his house and mine. I was an entire hour with him." The Duke was in a pressing haste to get the treaty ratified, from the fear that he was in of being THE RIPENING PLOT. 205 (( ••\') "overwhelmed by the Spaniards." Money, money was his call : his supplies from the Spaniards were threatening to stop, and, lacking this support, he could not maintain the garrison ofjCasale. His sole trust, he said, was in France: When would Louis's troops appear in Italy } He was tired of the slowness of despatches, and begged that Mattioli, in whom, says d'Estrades, "he has a blind con- fidence," might be sent to the French court, where his presence "may bring matters to a speedier issue." D'Estrades was put to a shift. He knew that Louis couid not send in 1678 the army upon which Mantua was counting. He knew that the Duke, who was all for clinching the treaty, began to be uneasy at the length of the negotiations. Balancing the issues, he decided to let Mattioli go to Paris. ( I _::&«. 2o6 CHAPTER Hi The Treason But being still under the necessity ., , of biding his time (for Louis, with of Count ^^ & Mattioii. the Dutch on his hands, could send no serviceable army into Italy), the Abb6 had barely made this decision when he began to devise means to delay the departure of Mattioii. Here again fortune favoured him ; and the Duke was at this time so beset, harassed, and importuned by the Spaniards to declare himself against France, that Mattioii, fearful of leaving him, resolved to postpone his journey to France. This was in the third week of May (1678). On the 9th of July, d'Estrades advises Pomponne that Mattioii is to start almost immediately, and TREASON OF COUNT MATT 10 LI, 207 that he should reach Paris in September. ''We have calculated the time together, and he cannot and ought not to leave his master sooner.'' Mattioii himself begins to be appre- hensive ^^that these delays may give a bad opinion of him '' : they were, in truth, just what the French designs required. Towards the end of the month the Duke is in attendance on his Duchess-mother, ill of a fever. '' If God should call her to Himself, the affair of Casale would without doubt be more easy to conclude. '* However, the lady lives ; and the affair continues to move. Mattioii does not cease to assure the Abbd that the Duke is *' always firm in his design of putting himself under the protection " of Louis — of which, indeed, there was very little question. Still, Mattioii cannot get off to France. The Abbe himself precedes him thither : partly, it would seem, on a holiday, and partly 2o8 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. in connection with the negotiations. He is succeeded at Venice by Pinchesne, from whose first despatch to Pomponne — September 3rd, 1678 — we learn that Mattioli has been ill, but hopes soon to be able to commence his journey to the Court. Nine days later, it is Mattioli who writes concerning his illness to Louis, de- ploring the further delay it has occasioned him. ** The eagerness I have is extraordinary, to be able with all possible celerity to throw myself at your Majesty's feet.*' It is the 29th of October before we know that he is actually off : Pinchesne has news of him, ** written from Berheta on the 26th of this month.'' Meanwhile, as late as November 1 8th, Paris has not yet beheld him. '' Neither the Count Mattioli nor the Sieur Giuliani," writes Pomponne from Versailles, '* is yet arrived here." At the end of the month Mattioli was really in Paris. No time was lost now in drawing to a close. /' TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 209 D'Estrad,.s was already in Paris ; and with him and M. de Pomponne, Charles's minister had several ir.ierviews. A treaty was quickly agreed upon, of which the following were the chief stipuk>.tions : — 1. That tne Duke of Mantua should receive the French troops into Casale. 2. That if Louis XIV. sent an army into Italy, the Duke of Mantua should be appointed generalissimo. 3- That upon the execution of the treaty, the sum of one hundred thousand crowns should be paid to the Duke of Mantua. Altogether a wonderful bargain from the standpoint of the King of France. For a mere ^12,000 or so, he acquired a splendid fortress which, with the one that was already his at Pignerol, would enable him to control the destinies of Northern Italy. The Court may^ well have been astonished at the terms, and at the ease and rapidity with which the whole 14 \j 7 ij 2IO THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 211 \ affair had been concluded. Moreover, so skil- fully had it been contrived, on the part of Pomponne, of d'Estrades, of Pinchesne, and of the small number of the Duke of Mantua's abettors, that no whisper of the plot had reached the Duchess Dowager or any of her circle. Mattioli was admitted to secret audience by Louis, who presented him with a ring and a sum of money, and promised --.hat his son should be a king's page, and thr:t his brother, who was in the Church, should receive pre- ferment.* Mattioli then prepared to return to Italy. / The secrecy which had been all along observed was still maintained. Pomponne, advising Pinchesne of the Italian's departure from France, bade him " keep the journey very secret." Varano, one of the two persons to whom the Duke of Mantua had confided the » Delort, Ellis, Topin. f \\ \\ design, was advised by Pinchesne that he had a letter for his Highness from France ; and Varano proposed .they should meet in mask at the opera. At about the same date (we are now in the closing days of 1678) Pomponne instructed Pinchesne that he was sending him a new cipher by courier; and the old pre- . cautions were kept up. ** The courier whom I despatch to you has orders not to go to your house as a courier, but to enter Venice as a tradesman, or as a private French individual who goes there on his own business. He brings you a cipher, which you will employ only in what concerns the affairs of the Duke of Mantua. We have been afraid that, for so important a business, the cipher of the Abbe d'Estrades was too old, and had probably been discovered in the many times it passed through the territories of Milan.'' The scheme having advanced thus far, I< 212 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. Louis was now eager to see it to the end. The able Louvois, in whom Topin discerns the finest genius for organisation up to the era of Napoleon, rapidly prepared the whole plan of action. A strong body of troops, placed under the command of the Marquis de Boufflers, Colonel General of Dragoons, was assembled at Brian^on, ready to pass the frontier. Baron d'Asfeld, Colonel of Dragoons, set out for Venice, with a commission to exchange the ratification of the treaty. Catinat, then Brigadier of Infantry,* went " dans le plus grand mystere" to Pignerol, where he was to conceal himself in the fortress, and to take for the time being the name of de Richemont. The first despatch of Louvois to Saint-Mars concerning this affair has refer- ence to the coming of Catinat. It is dated from St. Germain-en-Laye, Dec. 29th, 1678. • Afterwards the celebrated Marshal. Voltaire says of him that he united philosophy to great military talents. I \ TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 213 *' These few words are to inform you that It IS necessary for the King's service that the person from whom you will receive this should enter the citadel of Pignerol, unknown to anyone. With this in view, let the Safety Gate * remain open until night-fall, and send him one of your servants ; or better, if you are able, go yourself to meet him at the spot to which his valet will conduct you, in order that he may pass into the citadel and dungeon in your suite, without being observed by anyone/* Louis had already written to the Duke of Mantua : — ** My Cousin, — " The Count Mattioli will instruct you so particularly, both as to the manner in which he performed the orders with which you charged him for me, and as to the extreme * Porte de Secours. 214 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, satisfaction with which I have received his assurances of your zeal for my interests, that I can have nothing further to add upon these subjects. I am only desirous of stating that I wish you to place entire confidence in my friendship. You may promise yourself that it will be both useful and glorious to you upon all occasions, and you may always rely securely upon my alliance. I hope to be able to give you in the end unmistakable proofs of this. Having testified to you the satis- faction which the conduct of Count Mattioli has afforded me throughout the whole of this affair, I will add only that I pray God to have you, my Cousin, in His high and holy keeping. '* Written at Versailles, this 8th Dec. 1678. '' Louis, [and under the King's signature], / '' Arnaud.'' TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLL 215 D'Asfeld arrived in Venice on the 21st of January, 1679, ^^d at once communicated his orders to Pinchesne ; but nothing could be agreed upon until Mattioli came, who was still journeying slowly from Paris. They were, however, resolved to persuade Charles of Mantua to be at Casale by the 20th of Feb- ruary, to make the exchange of the treaty, and to prepare for the entry of the French troops. On the part of the French, in fine, all was now impatience where before it had been anxiety for delay. There was sufficiency of reason for this, since the massing of Louis's troops on the frontier must soon alarm the House of Austria ; and, in fact, the march towards Pignerol had begun in the last days of January. But just as, when the nego- tiations were at an early stage, they advanced, too rapidly for the pleasure and convenience of Louis, so now, when everything was in readiness on the French side, and Louvois's A^ ^ 2i6 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. plans were actually in execution, delay arose upon delay beyond the frontier. On reaching Italy, Mattioli was again smitten with fever, but he managed to see Pinchesne and d'Asfeld in the first week of February. Then it appeared that the Duke could not possibly go to Casale earlier than the loth of March. He alleged, through Mattioli, (i) a want of money; (2) the fear he had of leaving behind at Mantua Don Vincent Gonzaga, his heir presumptive,* at so critical a juncture ; and (3) '' the obligation he found himself under of holding a sort of carousal with several Venetian gentlemen." Pinchesne, in excusing to Pomponne the f ! * *' Vincent Gonzaga, Count of St. Paul, afterwards Duke of Guastalla, was descended from a younger son of Ferrant II., first Duke of Guastalla. After contesting for many years his right to that Duchy with Ferdinand Charles IV., Duke of Mantua (during which they were both merely made use of, by turns, as the instruments of the French and Austrian domination), he was finally successful in estab- lishing himself at Guastalla in 1706, where he died April 28th, 17 14." —Ellis. 1 \i Reduction du plan de la ville et CITADELLE DE PiGNEROL, AVEC LES DEDANS (A re) lives du Di^pot des fortifieations,) LEGENDE. DE LA PL^CE, AOUT 1 679, AU yyVxT' A. Demi-lune Sainte-Brigitte. B. Come Sainte-Brigitte. C. Demi-lune de Sault. D. Bastion des mines inforieures. E. Bastion des mines superieiires. F. Bastion des mines. H. Bastion de la fonderie inft'ricure. L Bastion de la fonderie superienre. K. FIntree des casemates du bastion de la fonderie intVrieure. L. Demi-lune du V'al-Saint-Pierre inferieur. O. Embrasure qui Hanque Q. Tour du Diablo. Bastion d'Aiguebonne. S. Les grandes Tenailles. T. Le petites Tenailles. V. Trois magasins a poudre. 4. X. Bastion de la Reine. i.V Y. Bastion du Roi. 14. Z. Fausse porte. i5- i& Demi-lune de Brouilly. 21. 1. Porte de campagne. 22. 2. Porte de la ville. 25. 'orte de la citadelle avec son 28. Porte du donjon. Abreuvoir. Logement des officier"* Caserne des soldats. Bastion de Malicy. Bastion de la Cour. Basikni-do Richelieu_s, Ba 35. Bastion de Montmorency. 38. Bastion de Schomberg. 40. Bastion des Capucins. 42. Demi-lune de Schomberg. 43. Demi-lune de Montmorency 44. Demi-lune de Grequy. 4^. Demi-lune de Villeroy. ly de {j^arde. > TREASON OF COUNT MATT 10 LI. 217 apparent triviality of the third of these rea- sons, thinks that, after all, the spectacle of his Highness dallying with his pleasures in a season of political unquiet, may assist to draw off the suspicions which are beginning to gather about him. In any event, Charles was clearly bent upon keeping his engage- ment with Louis. But the need of swift, decisive action did not diminish. ** Meanwhile, Sir," runs a despatch of Pinchesne on the i8th of Feb- ruary, '' I think it right to inform you that the march of the troops to Pignerol, and the munitions and money that are carried there, cause genuine alarm in all Italy. It is even publicly stated here that the King has some great design, albeit no one can say what it is ; suspicion falling now^ upon Casale, now upon Geneva, and now upon Savoy, but more particularly upon the Republic of Genoa, by reason of what has lately passed there. I 21 8 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. even know that M. Contarini * has written in these terms to Venice." More than this, the Spanish Ambassador and the Abbe Frederic, the resident of the Emperor, went to the Duke of Mantua and plainly told him ** they had heard from Turin that he wished to give Casale and the Montferrat'* to the King of France ; representing in strong terms *' the disadvantages that would arise to all Italy from such an action, and particularly to the House of Savoy, on account of the Duchy of Milan.'* Charles denied it roundly, wondering how the gen- tlemen *' could believe in reports of this nature '* ; nevertheless, adds Pinchesne, '*he is always in the intention of executing the treaty he has made with the King.'' But the circumstances were becoming tick- lish, and Pomponne deemed it well to be more pressing with Mattioli. Addressing him on * Ambassador from the Venetian Republic to the Court of Louis XIV. TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI, 219 the 2 1 St of February, he wrote: '* I have not failed to inform the King of your sorrow for the long delay over an affair which was begun and is to be concluded through your agency." And he added with some significance : ** His Majesty is still willing to promise himself suc- cess in this enterprise, and will entertain no doubt that the promise so solemnly given him is to be fulfilled." Pinchesne and d'Asfeld on their part con- tinued to ply him ; and towards the end of February it was arranged that d'Asfeld and Mattioli should go on the 9th of the following month to the village of Notre-Dame d'Increa, ten miles from Casale, there to make exchange of the ratifications ; while the Duke of Mantua should be at Casale ** without fail " on the evening of the 15th, to wait for the troops of Louis (due to arrive on the i8th), and to put them in possession of the place. By this time alarums were shaking all the 220 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLL 221 north of Italy. From Turin, from Milan, from Mantua rumour, growing ever more definite, flowed in unceasingly. Suspicions, wTites Pinchesne, were beginning to change into certainties that Charles of Mantua had made a treaty with Louis for the cession of Casale and the Montferrat. The Governor of Milan sends couriers flying to Madrid and Vienna to give intelligence to the Emperor and the King of Spain. '' The courier to Vienna returned here* on Wednesday evening, with express orders to the Marquis Canozza, the Imperial Vicar in Italy, to speak strongly to the Duke of Mantua, and to deter him if possible, from doing a thing so contrary to the interests of the whole House of Austria ; and to go afterwards to Turin and Milan, to concert there the means of preventing it, in case the news proved true." The Duke, who showed no disposition to break his engagement *To Venice. with Louis, found excuses to keep the Imperial Vicar at arm*s length. Pinchesne began to be in dread that the Spaniards, more and more jealous and distrustful, might oppose Charles's passage through the Duchy of Milan, and that of Mattioli, *^whom they doubt as much.*' But it was not on the Duke of Mantua or on Mattioli that hands were laid. Like a thunderbolt the news fell upon Versailles that d'Asfeid had been arrested on his way to Notre- Dame d'Increa, and was held prisoner by the Governor of Milan * in the interests of the Spaniards. This was a check indeed ; and now at once the suspicions of the French began to fasten upon Mattioli, who had been the first to send the news of d'Asfeld's mis- fortune. Louis and his agents, it is true, were unwilling as yet to consider themselves be- trayed : the seizure of d'Asfeld might have been no more than an unlucky accident ; the * The Count de Melgar, Spanish Governor of the Milanese. jf?fliC« hi \ I 222 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, affair might still be carried through. But there was no time to lose. The 24th of March had come, and Mattioli had not gone to Notre- Dame d'Increa and the Duke had not gone to Casale. D'Estrades (now Ambassador at Turin), the soul of the enterprise from the first, was sending courier on the heels of courier ; to Venice, for Pinchesne ; to Mantua, for the Duke ; and everywhere in Northern Italy for Mattioli. Acting upon the instruc- tions of Pomponne, the French agents in Italy were careful not to communicate to Mattioli their doubts of his good faith ; but d'Estrades wrote him a letter in which the mailed hand might be felt through the glove. '' If," says the Abbe, '' I had not been aware of your probity, and of your zeal for the interests of his Majesty, and for the welfare of the Prince to whom you are attached, I should have been seriously uneasy at the delay of our affair, which ought without fail, and at the V TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI, 223 latest, to have been concluded at the beginning of this month. But although we are already at the 24th, and all that you can desire on our part is in readiness, I cannot bring myself to think that his Highnesses intentions and your own are other than they always were. You have so well understood how useful this affair would be to him at the present time, and how glorious in the future, and you have so ably represented this to him, that I cannot permit myself any suspicions on this head. Neither can I, when I reflect upon the very consider- able interest you have in completing an under- taking of such importance, the conclusion of which will be esteemed so great a merit on your part by the most generous and the most powerful King in the world, who has himself testified to you the good-will he bears you for it As his word has always been inviolable, you no doubt rely implicitly upon it ; you must be aware also how [ 224 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. dangerous it would be to deceive him and that, after all the steps he has taken, and the measures he has agreed upon, you would expose his Highness and yourself to very great misfortunes if his Majesty had reason to think that faith had not been kept with him." But March went out, and the treaty had not been ratified ; nor had Mattioli and the Duke kept their appointments. Versailles is all in profound uncertainty; as late as the i8th of April, we have Pomponne writing to Pinchesne — '* It is still very difficult to dis- cover what is the real case with this affair, and whether the good faith that was to be desired in it has been kept. Try to discover this adroitly, but without showing any suspicions ; and be careful to inform me of everything that shall come to your knowledge on the subject." Writing again on the following day, the minister makes it sufficiently plain that his own suspicions of Mattioli's treachery are TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLL 225 I'J I \ confirmed; and respecting the Duke, he says: ** In truth, this Prince should not be allowed to think that it is permitted him to fail in a treaty he has made with his Majesty. If the occasion should present itself, make it appear to him that you cannot doubt his keep- ing the promises which have been made to the King." This suggests that, with or without Mattioli, it may still be possible, in the opinion of Versailles, to bring the scheme to an issue of success. In a moment that hope was extinguished ' and annihilated. Intelligence of everything that had taken place between Louis XIV. and Charles of Mantua was conveyed simultane- ously to the Courts of Turin, Madrid, Vienna, to the Spanish Governor of the Milanese, and / to the Inquisitors of State of the Venetian Republic. '' To all, in a word, who were most inter- ested in opposing the execution of the project, 15 / vO < [K ^ / V 226 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. it was known point by point : the price of the cession, the date at which it was to be made, the names of the negotiators. They knew everything, because they had received at sundry times the confidences of the prin- cipal and best-instructed among the actors in the intrigue — of Count Mattioli himself"* It was true — Mattioli had played the traitor. He had sold his master ; he had sold and made a jest of the Omnipotence of France. * Topin. 1 \ ■\ 1 227 'I / 1 i 1 CHAPTER IV. '' Never was seen,*' exclaims Pom- The Vengeance of^'theMostP^^^^^ ^^ ^ despatch of the Generous" 3rd of May, '' SO signal a piece '''"'• of perfidy ! ** Maria Baptista of Nemours,* Duchess and Regent of Savoy, and one of her ministers, President Turki, or Trucci, were the first who had received the confidences of Mattioli. To the Duchess he had shown the original documents of the negotiations, of which she had taken copies: facts which she herself com- municated to Louis XIV. Mattioli had seen the President at Turin. He had given in- formation to the Spaniards, and had accepted * Mother of Victor Amadeus II., at this time a minor. i2# I 228 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. a cipher from the Spanish Governor of Milan. He had had secret interviews with one of the Inquisitors of State at Venice. All this, with sundry pleas and glosses, Mattioli afterwards confessed to Catinat.* The real motive or motives of this whole- sale treason will never be clearly known, for they were never divulged by Mattioli ; and we have little choice but to acquiesce in the general conclusion, which is — in M. Funck- Brentano's words— that he had cynically be- trayed both his master and Louis XIV., in order to reap a double harvest of gold. Topin asks generously whether this "gross cupidity " is the sole explanation ; and sug- gests that, " shaken to his soul, and illumined by the sudden apparition of his country in danger," Mattioli in remorse may have fallen back upon the one and only means of check- ing the advance of Louis. But this palliative, • Catinat to Louvois; May loth, 1679. \ I yn ! \ ■ \\ tG^ [l—^ ^ o a j o • < y • I ,.«••< PCES35S imimmmmm C*i^erAft 1 • •••«0« ff • t #9 u Plan du Donjon de la Citadelle de Pignerol. Execute par M. Robert, le 26 Juin, 1695. (Extrait de la liasse C, No, g Archives du D<^pdts des fortifications,) To face p. 228. 7. Appartement de M. de Rissan, lieutenant de Roi de la Citadelle de Pig-nerol. 8. Casernement de la compag^nie particuli^re de M. DE Saint-Mars. 17. Escalier particuli^re de M. DE Rissan, pour ne pas a voir 4 entrer dans le donjon. \ ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING, 229 well as it becomes its author, is not easy of acceptance ; for the conduct of Mattioli, after his return from France, bears every appearance of trickery and duplicity. If he designed to save Italy from Louis, he hid his project from his master, the Duke of* Mantua ; and he certainly did not return, as he should have done, the French King's presents. These are Topin's own admissions, and he has manifestly little faith in the hypothesis which his good-nature propounds. Mattioli had presumably acted with his eyes open, but he seems to have taken no measures for his own safety in the event of detection ; and the discovery of his treason had left him in a terrible situation. ' Charles of Mantua repudiated him, declaring that he had never authorised any negotiations for the sale or occupation of Casale. But Charles the insouciant was scarcely a dangerous « enemy ; and it is probable that, while he «p 230 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. might be willing to assist in his punishment, Mattioli had not much to fear from him. His real danger lay elsewhere. D'Estrades had beheld with feelings of mortification and intense bitterness the failure of a project in ^ which he had had from the first the closest personal interest. The details were his, the negotiations had been begun by him, he it was who had selected Mattioli, and it was by him that Mattioli had been introduced at the Court of France. Louvois, for his part, had been baffled in the execution of the plans he had so adroitly laid ; and a French minister beaten at his own game of intrigue by an Italian adventurer was little likely to find himself in the humour of forgiveness. D'Estrades and Louvois, moreover, had acted not for themselves but for their master the King ; and when the projects of Kings are confounded their ministers are very apt to be held blameworthy. ^<. »,>■• y JV 4 /■% --■^D*-:^'*'- 2 <8 I ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING, 233 But there was a vengeance infinitely more to be dreaded than that of either Louvois or D^Estrades. Mattioli had drawn upon himself the resentment, the implacable resentment, of Louis XIV. True, Louis had not at this time lost all hope of securing Casale ; but, for the immediate present, it was not Casale that filled his thoughts : it was the unspeak- able, the incredible effrontery of the man who had outwitted, cheated, and flouted him in the face of Europe. Europe was ringing with the discomfiture of Louis ; Europe was silently laughing at the Grand Monarque. It is necessary to recall his position among the Powers of that day, the splendid successes that had attended his arms, and his almost dictatorial attitude towards the Sovereigns his contemporaries, in order to appreciate the extent of the humiliation which Mattioli's treachery had brought upon the King of France. '' The most generous '* King was 234 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. d'Estrades's description of him. It was the unlucky fate of Nicolas Fouquet to submit to the test the generosity of Louis XIV. towards one whom he feared even in defeat. ** Let us be content with banishing this man," Fouquet's judges had said. '' No/' said the King: **he shall end his days in prison." And that was in the green tree, and it was now the dry : Louis was in his forty-first year. Again, what was Fouquet's offence in comparison with that of Mattioli 'i Fou- quet had enriched himself at the State's expense, and he had courted and had won a popularity which fretted the King's com- placency. But he had not broken faith with Louis, he had not contemptuously bartered his interests, he had not openly made light of that jealous and sensitive dignity — he had not given Europe the opportunity to smirk over the humbling defeat of a Roi Soleil. Fouquet, for his popularity in Paris, died < ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING, 235 an old, sick man, in the dungeon of Pignerol. What fate should Mattioli look for? Abbe d'Estrades was to have the pleasure of suggesting it. He proposed to Versailles that Mattioli should be seized, abducted, and imprisoned '^at the King's pleasure." Illegal arrests and imprisonments were not extra- ordinary in France at any date before the Revolution ; but the case of Mattioli was unusual. He was, as Ellis says : '' actually the plenipotentiary of the Duke of Mantua, for concluding a treaty with the King of France." Although his treachery was known, it had not been proved against him ; and, from the standpoint of international law, it is not an argument that the Duke of Mantua was a prince of no political consequence. The proposal to seize and carry off his minister was, in the circumstances, a proposal of brigandage. But it came pat to Louis's purpose and intention of revenge. He saw 236 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. the illegality of it ; but, if it could be effected without scandal, he asked nothing better. Absolute secrecy in the business of the arrest was all that he demanded — and his private authorisation to d'Estrades was modified only by this condition— ** that you get him carried off without the least suspicion of scandal/' Satisfied by d'Estrades upon this point, Louis sanctioned the kidnapping of Mattioli. He was to be conveyed to Pignerol, and kept there ''in the strictest secrecy/' *' Look to it,'' ran the closing words of the King's order, '' that no one knows what becomes of this man." This was followed by the despatch of Louvois to Saint-Mars at Pignerol, dictated by Louis, the tone of which is eloquent of the mood that inspired it : — ** Saint-Germain, April 27th, 1679. *' The King has sent orders to the Abbe \y ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING, 237 d'Estrades to procure the arrest of a man with whose conduct his Majesty has reason to be displeased. I am commanded to acquaint you with this, in order that you may not hesitate to receive him when he is sent to you. You will guard him in such a manner that, not only may he have no communication with anyone, but that he may have cause to repent his conduct, and that no one may know you have a new prisoner^ *' De Louvois." Instructions in these terms imposed the necessity of a ruse ; but the Abb6 d'Estrades, keen upon requitals, was ready there. Mattioli, whose subalpine shrewdness seems to have missed him at this highest crisis of his life, was quite unaware that Louis and his agents had unriddled him. He did not know that the Duchess of Savoy had sent to Versailles the copies of the papers he had I f t'lWi' 238 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. \^ shown her. His utter ignorance of the danger he stood in made it easy to set the trap that must catch him. Although vengeance was certainly the first motive of Mattioli's arrest, there was another which, if the negotiations for Casale were to be proceeded with, was not unimportant. The Varano who had all along been privy to the affair, had instructed d'Estrades, through the assiduous Giuliani, that the Duke of Mantua would go no further with it while Mattioli was at large. The Duke himseli appears to have been averse from, or at all events not inclined to, a personal reckoning with the agent in whom he had implicitly confided ; but he was willing enough that Mattioli should be brought to book by any- body else. D'Estrades also learned from Varano that Mattioli had privately obtained Charles's signature to the treaty (for what reason, unless with an eye to blackmail, it || V ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING, 239 is impossible to conjecture), and had kept the original document, with all other papers bearing on the negotiations. By what means, asked d'Estrades of Pomponne, were these likely to be secured, unless by the arrest of Mattioli ? That act, therefore, while gratify- ing the vengeance of Louis and his ministers, would render possible a renewal of the nego- tiations, and would be far from displeasing to the Duke of Mantua, whom it was desirable to retain in friendship. Mattioli was now again in Turin, where, as we have seen, d'Estrades was installed as French Ambassador ; he was still visit- ing the Abbe, and talking and acting as though he were as busy as ever in the matter of Casale. D'Estrades, with Nemesis in his heart, entertained him smoothly ; and affected always to believe that everything was secure. Through Giuliani, who was solid throughout in the interests of the M I ii \ 240 TI/i: MAN IN THE IRON MASK. French, d'Estrades learned that Mattioli was seeking money. His expenses in France, his journeys to and fro in Italy, and his bribes to win over the Duke's mistresses, had drained his purse. D'Estrades sug- gested a ready means of replenishing it. Catinat (he said), who commanded the French troops that were to take possession of Casale, was furnished, by the King's order, with ample means ; and was prepared, by the King's order, to meet every expense that might arise. Mattioli took the bait. '* Being one of the most consummate rogues that ever lived" (''Comme il est un des plus grands fripons qui ait jamais este "), wrote D'Estrades, *'this hint of mine made him desperately eager to meet Catinat." Catinat was warned, and the meeting was arranged. It was to be at a spot *' on the frontier towards Pignerol " — Catinat, said d'Estrades, not being able *' to leave the III \\\ \' I, ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING. 241 neighbourhood where his troops were stationed." D'Estrades, not anxious to risk his skin, stipulated for '' a few well-armed men " in Catinat's company : '* as I know that Mattioli always carries two pistols in his pocket, and two others, with a poniard, in his belt." D'Estrades gave him rendez-vous at six o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of May, 1679, at a church on the outskirts of Turin: they were to drive thence to the frontier. Unfriendly fortune led Mattioli to. the meet- ing-place. For months he had failed in the appointments which it would have profited him to keep ; but he was punctual at the one fatal tryst of his life. D'Estrades had with him in his carriage a cousin, the Abbe de Montesquieu ; and in this company Count Mattioli set out for the frontier. There had been heavy rains for three days, and the streams of that wild region 16 242 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. were pouring over their banks. One of these, the Guisiola, not far from the spot where Catinat waited with his men-at-arms, the Abbes party must cross; but the bridge had been damaged by the flood, and the horses could only ford the stream by swim- ming. This, apparently, the Abbe, precious of his charge, declined to risk ; but it was possible to make the bridge safe for foot- passage, and to work they went — Mattioli himself, says d'Estrades, ''helping so bravely, that in an hour we were able to get across." The carriage was left behind, the Abbe congratulating himself on getting rid of his servants, "as this ensured us a greater measure of secrecy." The journey was con- tinued on foot, *'dans des chemins fort mauvais " ; and Catinat, bearing in his hands the vengeance of Louis, awaited them at the chosen spot. '' M. Catinat," writes the Abbe, '' had made his arrangements so well cc ll.'l iw: i. if \^\ THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING. 243 \^ that not a creature appeared with him. He led us into a room " ; and then, before the real object of the meeting was declared, d'Estrades adroitly and insensibly admonished Mattioli '' respecting all the original papers belonging to our affair." Mattioli, who must now at last have begun to realise his danger, said that all the papers were in a box at Bologna, in the hands of his wife, who had retired to the convent of the Nuns of St. Louis. Upon this, deeming his presence not necessary in the scene that was to follow, d'Estrades withdrew, accom- panied by his cousin ; and Mattioli was left with Catinat. At two in the afternoon, Saint-Mars had him under lock in the dun- geon of Pignerol. Catinat's despatch to Louvois (Pignerol, May 3rd, 1679) is of soldier-like direct-, ness : — '' I arrested Mattioli yesterday, three miles from here, upon the King's territories, 16 # \ 244 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. during the interview which the Abbe d'Estrades had ingeniously contrived between him, Mattioli, and myself, to facilitate the scheme. For the arrest, I employed only the Chevaliers de Saint-Martin and de Villebois, two officers of M. de Saint-Mars, and four men of his company. It was effected without the least violence, and no one knows the rogue's name, not even the officers who assisted. He is in the cham- ber which Dubreuil occupied, where he will be civilly treated, according to the request of the Abbe d'Estrades, until the wishes of the King with regard to him are known." * » "Finally," says M. Funck-Brentano, "we have a very curious pamphlet entitled La Prttdenza trionfante di Casale, written in 1682, that is, little more than two years after the event, and— this slight de- tail is of capital importance— thirty years before there was any talk of the Man in the Mask. In this we read : ' The Secretary (Mattioli) was surrounded by ten or twelve horsemen, who seized him, disguised him, masked him, and conducted him to Pignerol '-a fact, moreover, con- firmed by a tradition which in the eighteenth century was still rife in the district, where scholars succeeded in culling it." I 'ti /;Mi. M W \^ k' ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING. 245 Among the papers taken on Mattioli's person were none of the series emanating from Versailles. These it was essential to secure ; they were the tangible proofs of Louis's failure. Mattioli had said they would be found at Bologna. They were not there. Under threats of torture and of death, the prisoner at length confessed that the original papers were at Padua, '' concealed in a hole in the wall of a room, in his father's house." Thereupon a letter was dictated, in which, without a word that could betray his situation, Mattioli was made to request his father to deliver the documents to Giuliani. The father, suspect- ing nothing, handed them over : Pinchesne presently received them all ; and they were forwarded, with rigorous care, to Versailles. Louis XIV. was avenged. If he had received at the hands of the petty minister of a petty prince his first serious check JHI 246 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, in Europe, his retaliation had been swift and terrible. Nor did Europe enjoy for long the spectacle of the potent King's defeat. The guilty principal in the affair had already vanished from the sight and knowledge of men, into the entrails of Pignerol, and would be beheld of them no more. The official proofs of the aborted enterprise were not less secure under Louis's hands than was Mattioli in the wardenship of Saint-Mars. The French troops had been withdrawn as secretly as they had been assembled at Briancjon. The whole scheme was renounced so promptly that, in Topin's phrase, it seemed, in a manner, as though it had never been begun.* The Court of Savoy undoubtedly * Not, however, that Louis had really abandoned his project. He wanted it forgotten only until such time as he could accomplish it with- out possibility of failure. The negotiations were resumed two years later ; and on the 30th of September, 1681, the French troops were re- ceived into Casale. ' (r.^ 1:' \^ -l I ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING. 247 had a full knowledge of the intrigue ; '*but Louis XIV. spoke with a master's authority at Turin." Mattioli had un- doubtedly made disclosures at Venice as at Milan ; but those beguiling lips were sealed eternally behind the bastions and demi-lunes of Pignerol. And the affronted king bore himself as high as ever. He demanded and obtained from Spain the immediate release of Baron d'Asfeld, im- prisoned at Milan ; and the censure of Melgar, the governor. At all points, and in a space of time the briefest, Louis re- covered the prestige which for a moment he had sacrificed ; and his personal pride, at once delicate and vengeful, was best solaced by the certainty that he had swept, as he thought, into eternal oblivion the agent and chief witness of his short dis- credit. Mattioli was given out as dead: a story was circulated that he had met 248 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. with a fatal accident on a journey. The Duke of Mantua might have doubted this, and probably did doubt it ; but he had sufficient reason for wishing out of his path the agent who, for objects of his own, had striven his best to ruin him with Louis XIV. And the family of Mattioli — why were they silent ? Upon this point, history has bequeathed us the curious legacy of an un- finished tragedy — curious to us, who can follow the tragedy to its end. Did his family also believe him dead, or were they cowed and voiceless under the stroke of Louis's wrath ? It is not known. What « alone is certain is, that he was never found by them again. The letter dictated to Mattioli, and signed under compulsion, was the last that his father received from him. His wife died in the convent of the Filles de Saint-Louis at IBologna, while he was /••' f \ J Y •; I , ''THE MOST GENEROUS'' KING. 249 still a hopeless prisoner : there is no record to show that his fate was known to her. The space within the genealogical tree of the family, which the date of Mattioli's death should fill, is blank.* Louis's ven- geance smote deep : in annihilating the man, it had crushed the family ; and perhaps nothing is sadder in the rnemories of this mystery of two hundred years, apart from the fate of the Mask himself, than the wretched ignorance in which his abduction and living burial left his nearest kin. * Topin : citing the Arbor prisccc 7iobilisque masculince familiie de Mattiolis. \ 250 CHAPTER V. The Good night, good night ! Romeo and ftiliet. May be seen to-day, on the flanks Dunilof of Alpine heights, near the source pigneroi ^^f ^^ streams which go to form the rich basin of the Po, the ruins of the dungeon wherein MattioH began the long night of his captivity. Close by stands the Cathedral church of Saint-Maurice, '^dou la vue embrasse," says Topin, '' le plus riant horizon.*' As different as might be was the face dis- closed by Pigneroi on the day that Catinat carried in his prisoner through the Safety Gate — the small secure postern which led straight into the recesses of the dungeon. A citadel, a dungeon : around the citadel a town, Jl ?\ft1e furrn*^ Chanbr&4 $ |s r i^oti n««r |\|(as(iuc:. 1 r.^ I 3o Toiies I Plan du Chateau d'Exiles. (Ext rat f d'i^n plan du temps fo urn i par le Df^pots des fortiftcatio7is,) 1. Lt)g:ements de la compaj^nie de M. DE SaIiNT-Ma^s. 2. Aitipartement du j^ouverneur, M. DE Saint-Mars. 2^HE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. 251 itself enclosed within vast fortifications, at the entrance of the valley of the Perouse, on the river Chisone, seven leagues south-west of Turin, twenty-eight from Nice, and thirty east of Grenoble — such was Pignerol, the Piedmontese town of the 17th century.* The little town, which, as early as the 12th century, the princes of Savoy had fortified for the surety of their possessions, climbed upwards in the form of an amphitheatre ; with russet roofs and slender campaniles and clusters of turret-fashioned chimneys. A moat isolated the citadel from the town ; and from the citadel the eye followed a double line of solid walls, forming a huge paral- lelogram, with four high towers for supports : in the midst of all, the great square keep or dungeon, black of aspect, " aux fenetres bardees de fer." The fortifications were composed of a series of bastions, half-moons, * lung. ] 252 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, and counter-guards. The two main gates of the town were named of France and of Turin ; the secret or Safety Gate was opened at rare times to admit by stealth some prisoner whose guards had been ordered not to take him through the town. This little mountain bourg of Pignerol* peopled by French troops and Italian sub- jects, was not inconsiderable in the 17th century. The officers in chief were the governor general, the commandant of the town, the King's lieutenant governing the citadel, the commandant of the dungeon, the members of the council of war, and of the ** conseil souverain " ; a fair posse for a world so tiny. There was the perpetual va-et-vient of a frontier place : officers from Paris or Turin, rejoining their regiments in the army of Italy, passed through ; there was much traffic and some commerce. * Ital. , Pinerolo. \ J THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL, 253 At the time of the coming of Mattioli to Pignerol, the dungeon of that place had been for fourteen years the charge of Benigne d'Auvergne de Saint-Mars, seigneur of Dimon and of Palteau, bailli and governor of Sens. Born in 1626, in the environs of Montfort I'Amaury, Saint-Mars died in the Bastille, its governor, September 26th, 1708, in his eighty-second year. At the age of twelve he had entered, as '' enfant de troupe,'* the First Company of the King's Musketeers. In 1650 he was a full musketeer of that Company ; in 1660, brigadier ; and *' marechal des logis," or quarter-master, in 1664. The year following, 1665, saw him in command of the dungeon of Pignerol, in which command he continued until he went to the fortress of Exiles in 1681. Louis XIV. granted him a patent of nobility in 1673. At the date we are arrived at (1679), Saint- Mars was in his fifty-fourth year ; of sinister 254 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. renown in Pignerol : the gaoler quintessen- tialised. lung calls him '' un vrai bouledogue/' but that term is applicable chiefly in the moral sense. Observe him outwardly, as he creeps, almost a-tiptoe, through the mazes of his prison : a small shrivelled person, shadowy of figure, wizen and dark of face, Httle head bobbing nervously betwixt the narrow shoulders, arms and hands twitching. ** A mortal ugly little man, looking eighty at the least ; all bent and tottering ; inces- santly in a passion ; swearing and blas- pheming horribly ; inexorably cruel." This IS the unsympathetic portrait left of him by Constantin de Renneville, a prisoner of the Bastille when Saint-Mars was about seventy- four. '' Inexorablv cruel '' seems not alto- gether just ; indeed, I find few traces of active cruelty in Saint-Mars's career as gaoler ; but a man so inflexible and so callous THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL, 255 in doing the bidding of King or minister could be nothing but the ogre of his prison. It is proper to spare him the charge of unnecessary cruelty, for his memory is void of sympathy : on the one side, an unimaginative pedant who has no rule for his prison but the strictest letter of his orders from Ver- sailles ; on the other, a mean and greedy type of the soldier of fortune, always whining for money and always bemoaning his lot. He had peculiar relations with the minister Louvois. His wife's sister was Louvois's mistress, and he can ask nothing of Louvois which Louvois does not grant. The ideal gaoler, harassed incessantly by fears for the safety of his prisoners, he packs his coffers with the moneys sent him for their keep. Holding them as wards of the King, whom he served like a slave, watching them so closely that he was himself a prisoner in his own prisons for over forty 256 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, years, these charges of his were still, in his private view, his ** sitting hens"* (**aux oeufs dor"); and they were a fortune to him. He left silver plate, furniture, jewels, six hundred thousand francs of ready money, and seigneurial property worth ten million francs. Among the governors of the prison- fortresses of France, most of whom enriched themselves at the cost of their prisoners and of the State, the position and the possessions of Saint-Mars were unique. As commandant of the dungeon of Pignerol he held his authority directly from the minister, owing no responsibility either to the governor general or to the King's lieutenant ; as Louvois's relative (upon the left) he held the minister in fee ; and what he asked of him was granted in advance. But, as the prince of gaolers, Saint-Mars was worth humouring. His discretion was * lung. THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL, 257 proof against all temptation ; and such was his habit of distrust, in what concerned his prisoners, that the distrustful Louvois him- self found it possible at times to chide his over-caution. Uneasy, timorous, and taciturn, the duties of his office gave him never a moment's rest. The King's orders were fulfilled with a servile exactitude : to discuss them, says Topin, would have seemed a crime, to seek to interpret them was super- fluous. No prison wall was high enough or stout enough, no moat was deep enough or wide enough, no bars or bolts were strong enough, no sentinel was watchful enough, no spy alert enough to keep that anxious soul at rest. He carries every detail of his cares to Louvois ; matters the most puerile are constantly rehearsed in his despatches. Does a stranger come to the town on business or a visit of pleasure ; if his sojourn is prolonged, Saint-Mars is 17 258 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, certain that a plot is hatching to carry off some prisoner from the dungeon. Nay, if the stranger shows some little curiosity con- cerning the citadel, Saint-Mars arrests him out of hand, and holds him captive during a pro- longed examination. " Lists of the travellers coming to Pignerol were drawn up for him every month, that he might see what names occurred too frequently. The prisoners' linen before being sent out of the dungeon, was soaked in water, then dried before a fire in the presence of officers who had to make sure that nothing had been written upon it. The smallest change in the habits of his prisoners drove Saint-Mars into a fever of anxiety. In everything they did, and in everything they abstained from doing, he saw the signal of some criminal attempt ; and one day, after his usual visit to Fouquet and Lauzun, and his rigorous examination of their rooms, discovering nothing out of the CO hi a. o o kl a s O c a. THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL, 261 common, he was first surprised, and then exceedingly alarmed. The absence of any apparent signal was in itself a signal for him. . . . After reading his naive and sincere correspondence, one is tempted to pity him almost as much as the prisoners in his keeping; since, enjoying a scarcely greater liberty than they did, the perpetual fears that he suffered on their account rendered him in some sort their victim." * Such was the man into whose hands Catinat gave Count Mattioli on the 2nd of May, 1679. ^' He is in the chamber which Dubreuil occupied, where he will be treated civilly, according to the request of the Abb6 d'Estrades, until the King's wishes with re- gard to him are known.'' Already, however, the prisoner had lost his identity, for he was passed into Pignerol, and received there; under the name of Lestang : as Lestang, and * Topin. 262 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK by no other name, was he known in the fortress,— save only to Saint-Mars. '' The King s wishes with regard to him" were very soon made known. In less than a fortnight from the day of Mattioli's arrest— the 15th of May — Louvois wrote Saint-Mars concern- ing him '' . . . . that it is not the intention of the King that the Sieur de Lestang should be well treated, or that, except the absohite necessaries of life, you should give him anything to soften his cap- tivity.'' Thus ''the most generous King'* — whose commands are renewed on the 20th of the month. ''Your letter of the loth of this month" — it is Louvois again to Saint- Mars — "has been delivered to me. I have nothing to add to what I have already commanded you respecting the severity with which the person named Lestang must be treated." Two days later, May 22nd: "You must keep Lestang in the rigorous THE DUNGEON OF FIGNEROL, 263 confinement I enjoined in my former letters, without allowing him to see a doctor, unless you know he is in absolute want of one. ' Later, July 25th, Saint-Mars receives in- structions that his prisoner may have writing materials; scarcely, however, for his own solace. "You may give paper and ink to the Sieur de Lestang, with permission to put in writing whatever he wishes to say. You will then send it to me, and I will let you know whether it deserves any consldera- tion. From the picture that history has left us of Saint-Mars, it is easily inferred that he would read aright the instruction to treat a prisoner "with severity": but the proof itself is not wanting. We have seen that Mattioli was arrested in the beginning of May, 1679. In eight months from that time the rigours of his imprisonment had re- sulted in the temporary loss of his reason f 264 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. He was neither the first nor the last of the State prisoners of pre-Revolutionary France whom the dungeon reduced to madness. Consider that these places were virtually impenetrable ; that there were no inspectors of prisons, no visiting justices ; and that the governor in his dungeon wielded a power scarcely less tremendous than the King at Versailles. There was no system of ad- ministration under which the prisoner could stand upon his rights, with privilege of appeal beyond the prison walls ; he had no rights — save what were granted him as peculiar favours. He depended in all things upon the governor : a miserly governor might starve and keep him cold and meanly clad ; a cruel one had darker means at his dis- posal, and used them — the torture, the whip, the subterranean cachot were always there. In eight months Mattioli had grown mad. On the 6th of January, 1680, Saint-Mars ; 1» . jchainhres audit Chateau ; il y ,|jmit oil Ton dit la riesse ; maij 4. L.; K^ kf-feitCTfrmt de Roy, i 5. L.- logis du major do la place, I 6. L,' quarticr des casjrnes oil soi. la compagnie francho dc M. dj 7. E;;t TappartemcMit des officiers, f 8. S^Mit les casernes pour les ca^ 'franche. 9. E(^t le corps de garde pour leJ cadets. 10. Sont les casernes pour les so'idats. 1 1. Ll corps de garde de la place. 12. pi tit corps de garde de lorticier. ,3. Le logement du cure et de laumonier a deux 14. Gichot. 15. J; rdin du cure. 16. Aitre jardin. 17. Magasin a poudre. 18. V vandiero. 19. L'>gis du chirurgien-major. a deux etages. 20. iJ^gis du p.- ^ron du bateau de service. 21. L h6pital a deux etages. 22. L horloge. 211. T^'U'berge des i-jfiiciers, a deux etages. 24. Li? logis du Boucher, a deux etages. 2^. L|-* Martinet. 26. T^ agasin pour les munitions de guerre. 27 Pate-forme; au-dessous il y a deux cisternes, un jmoulin a bras, un four et le logement pour le . boulanger. 28 S >nt trois cisternes. 29. L^-s puits au rivage de la mer avec les bassuis pour ! laver les draps. 30. La prison des soldats. 31. F'iate-forme pour garder le port. / TofS'i.S To fate />. -?6v» Plan di- fort Royal de L'.le Sainte-Marguerite en 1692' '(RMuction au \. d'un Man fournl par le D^p6ts des fortifications. ) THE DUNGEON OF FIGNEROL. 265 wrote to Louvois : — '' I am obliged, Sir, to inform you, that the Sieur de Lestang is become Hke the monk I have the care of; that is to say, subject to fits of raving mad- ness ; from which the Sieur Dubreuil also is not exempt/' The methods of Saint-Mars were rather fatal to sanity ; here were three lunatics together at one time in Pignerol. In the third week of February: *'The Sieur de Lestang, who has been nearly a year in my custody, complains that he is not treated as a man of his quality, and the minister of a great prince, ought to be I think he is deranged, by the way he talks to me ; telling me he converses every day with God and the angels ; that they have told him of the death of the Duke of Mantua and of the Duke of Lorraine ; and, as an additional proof of his madness, he says he has the honour of being nearly related to the King, to whom he wishes to 266 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. write in complaint of the way I treat him. I have not thought proper to give him paper and ink for that purpose, perceiving him not to be in his right senses." Versailles was quite unmoved by these recitals. Louvois, with the King behind him, was still hardening his heart. Even the consolations of religion were to be ad- ministered within the very narrowest limits imposed by the Church. '' It will be suffi- cient to let the prisoners of the lower |-Q^er " — in which Mattioli was confined — '' confess once a year.'' In the same de- spatch, the loth of July: — *^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." Then the mad Mattioli was put with the mad Jacobin ; an economy on the part of Saint-Mars, **to avoid the necessity of having il THE DUNGEON OF EIGNE ROL, 267 two priests." Mattioli, imagining the monk a spy upon him, *' walked about with long strides, his cloak over his nose, crying out that he was not a dupe." The Jacobin, '' who was always seated on his truckle-bed, with his elbows on his knees, looked at him gravely, without listening to him " ; but one day, '' getting down from his bed, stark naked," he set on preaching, ** without rhyme or reason " ; and preached till he could preach no longer. With a naivety of con- fession most characteristic, Saint-Mars adds : '' I and my lieutenants saw all their manoeuvres through a hole above the door." This is a sore history, not to be too long pursued. Nearly all that is known of Mattioli's life in Pignerol is concen- trated into this glimpse of the poor frenzied pair, mewed together in their narrow Bedlam, with ''I and my lieutenants " watch- ing them behind the door. Yet it was 268 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. better to be mad than sane — in Pignerol — with Saint-Mars. Fifteen years Mattioli lay here ; lived fif- teen years on the vapours of Pignerol. K solitary instance is recorded, pathetic enough in the circumstances, of his attempt to win over one of the lieutenants of Saint-Mars, Blainvilliers by name, by the offer of a ring. In some raving hour the prisoner had written ** abusive sentences with charcoal on the walV and Blainvilliers had threatened him with beating. A day or two later, as the officer was serving him with dinner, Mattioli said : '' Sir, here is a little ring, which I zvish to give you, and I beg you to accept of ity Saint-Mars, in his inevitable report to Louvois, conjectures it '* well worth fifty or sixty pistoles *' : it was probably the ring which Mattioli had received from Louis XIV. Concerning Pignerol, the rest is silence. THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL, 269 ♦ Mountain and wood and stream hem round that altitude of grey-black stone, where Louis's prisoner sits through fifteen spectral years. 270 CHAPTER VI. It has been rightly said that the The interest of Count Mattioli's captivity Inquisition ^ ^ of Jules owes everything to the supposition Loiseleur. ■, < • 1 • 1 1 that we have in hnn the actual Man in the Mask. So closely did the jealous anger of the King conceal him, that his life in prison, mysterious even to the creatures of Saint-Mars, has left scarcely a trace in the real history of Pignerol, of the Isles, or of the Bastille. Legend, indeed, abounds ; but facts are of the scantiest. Was this in truth the Man in the Iron Mask ? Who first sought to identify him ? Let us summarise briefly on this head the ex- haustive perquisitions of Topin. To begin \ INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR, 271 with, there is the political pamphlet already cited, La Prudenza trionfante di Casale^ published in Cologne in 1682. Here is set forth in detail the whole negotiation, with the parts played by the Abbe d'Estrades and Mattioli, Giuliani and Pinchesne, Catinat and d'Asfeld, and the Duke of Mantua. Five years later, in 1687, a compilation issued at Leyde under the title Histoire abregee de r Europe gave the translation in French of an Italian letter denouncing the abduction of Mattioli. There is then a long interval. In 1749, Muratori, in his Annali d' Italia, related the history of the intrigue for Casale, and the capture of the Duke of Mantuas plenipotentiary. In 1770 appeared the letter of Baron d'Heiss in the Joicrnal Encyclo- pedique, in which he says : '* It appears that this Secretary to the Duke of Mantua might very well be the Man in the Iron Mask, transferred from Pignerol to the Isles of l/ 272 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. Sainte-Marguerite, and thence to the Bastille in 1690,* when M. de Saint-Mars became governor of that place.'* In 1786, the Italian Fantuzzi, in his Notizie degli scrittori Bolognesiy summed up what had hitherto been written on the subject. The same opinion, that Mattioli was the Man in the Mask, was sustained in the year of the Revolution by the '^ Chevalier de B.", in a volume entitled Londres, — Correspondance interceptee. In November, 1795, M. de Chambrier, who had been Prussian minister at the Court of Turin, essayed to prove in a lecture delivered to the Belles-Lettres class at the Academy of Berlin, that Count Mattioli and the Man in the Iron Mask were one and the same individual.f Just one hundred years ago appeared the pamphlet * It was in 1698 that Mattioli came to the Bastille. t Mentioning the subject one day to a very intelligent German lady of my acquaintance, she replied ; "Mattioli? Yes, of course. We were taught that at school." I V I INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 273 of Roux-Fazillac, who was the first to publish documents in support of his case. Much more complete, however, were the documents of Delort, whose small, well-reasoned treatise, Histowe de r Homme aic Masque de Fer, was published in Paris in 1825. By permission of Comte d'Hauterive, Keeper of the Archives of the Office of Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, Delort examined and made excellent use of all the despatches known at that day. The history that he drew from them seemed conclusive. It is,' in effect, the true history ; but, as will be seen, it is the true history with a very important error. Ellis's work, which appeared a year or two later (the second edition, which is before me, is dated 1827) was little more than an adaptation of Delort's. Camille Rousset, in his Histoire de Louvois, rehearses once more the story of the negotiations, and says : *' We share the opinion of those who 18 \ 274 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. hold that the Masque de Fer was none other than Mattioli/' Depping, in his Correspondance administrative sous Louis XIV., is of the same mind. Except, however by Roux-Fazillac and Delort, there was little attempt to prove that the person arrested and carried to Pignerol on the 2nd of May, 1679, was identical with the prisoner who died in the Bastille on the 19th of November, 1703. And that, of course, constitutes the knot of the problem. *^That Mattioli was seized in 1679 by a French agent, and forcibly carried to Pignerol — this, as we have seen, was a fact which had long been known. But that intrigue is no longer our sole concern : a mere preliminary of the question which engages us. What is essential is, to follow the minister of the Duke of Mantua from prison to prison, and to see not only whether he might have been, but whether it is impossible that he should i \< \ INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 275 not have been, that mysterious prisoner brought by Saint- Mars in 1698 from the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille, where he died in 1703. Delort believed that he had proved it. His conviction was profound, and to many his demonstration seemed irrefutable."* But the documents discovered by Delort did not contain the whole history ; the omissions, in fact, were serious, and we are now to see how a keen examiner, detecting them, with one stroke of his pen shattered the system — and left the riddle of the Mask apparently insoluble to the end of time. Mattioli was incarcerated in Pignerol on the 2nd of May, 1679. At this date the dungeon held, besides Fouquet and Lauzun, four other prisoners concerning whom it is necessary to note that they were quite obscure and unimportant persons. One of them, Topin. 18* / 7 276 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, Eustache Dauger, brought to Pignerol in July, 1669, had served Fouquet in the capacity of valet. Another, the Jacobin monk whom we have seen sharing his cell with Mattioli, and who had been imprisoned in April, 1674, is branded by Louvois as *^a finished rogue, whom you cannot treat badly enough." He was to have '' no fire in his chamber, unless he is ill or the severity of the cold compels It, and no other nourishment than bread with wine-and-water." The two remaining prisoners were a certain La Riviere and the Dubreuil whose name has been mentioned. So insignificant were these, that when Saint- Mars was called from the government of Pignerol to that of Exiles, Louvois asked ot him a memoir furnishing their names and the reasons why they had been imprisoned. It is clearly not among prisoners of such small consideration, prisoners of whom the Minister knows neither the names nor the causes of \ . ? ! INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 277 their detention, that we shall find the Man in the Mask. Fouquet died at Pignerol in March, 1680. Lauzun was released the 22nd of April, 1681. On the 1 2th of May, 1681, Louvois announced to Saint-Mars that the King had appointed him to the command of the fortress of F^xiles. On the 9th of June the Minister wrote again, instructing Saint-Mars as to the precautions to be observed respecting the journey from Pignerol of those of his prisoners who were to be removed. *' His Majesty's desire is, that as soon as the room at Exiles, which you shall judge the most proper for the safe keeping of the two prisoners in the lower tower, shall be ready to receive them, you send these prisoners out of the citadel of Pignerol in a litter, and conduct them there under the escort of your troop . . . Immediately after the pri- soners' departure, it is his Majesty's wish 278 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, that you proceed to Exiles, to take posses- sion of the government, and to settle yourself there." Here were two prisoners to be removed. A word follows concerning '' the rest of the prisoners now in your charge," which it will be important to remember at the final stage of the enquiry. ** The Sieur de Chamoy," says Louvois, **has instructions to pay two crowns a day for the maintenance of these thi'ee prisoners." There were thus five prisoners in Pignerol on the eve of the departure of Saint-Mars for Exiles. The prisoners to be removed were the two prisoners of the lower tower. The lower tower was, as we have seen, the prison of Mattioli and the Jacobin monk : what more natural, then, than to conclude that these were the two whom Saint-Mars carried with him to Exiles ? This was the obvious view adopted by Roux-Fazillac, Delort, and all .\ 03 14 o x: H _i. INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR, 281 investigators up to the time of Topin. Was it the true one ? In the course of years the dimate of Exiles affected the health of Saint-Mars ; and the ever-obliging Louvois procured him a change of government. Early in 1687 he was called to the Isles of Sainte- Marguerite- Saint- Honorat, in the Sea of Provence. To the fortress of Sainte-Marguerite he took one prisoner only. The date was the 30th of April, 1687. Delort and the rest, determined not to lose sight of their candidate for a moment, declared that this ** seul prisonnier " must be Mattioli. No name was mentioned, and definite proof was lacking ; but probability favoured the conjecture. Let us see how it is established that one alone of the two prisoners brought from Pignerol to Exiles was carried from Exiles to the Isles. A few days before the close of 1685 (December the 23rd), Saint-Mars 282 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, wrote to Louvois : '' My prisoners are still ill, and under medical treatment. They are, however, perfectly tranquil/' In the autumn of the following year, one of the prisoners was dropsical. *^You ought to have told me," writes Louvois, October 9th, 1686, *^ which of your prisoners has become dropsical." He writes again on the 3rd of November : '' It will be proper to let your dropsical prisoner be confessed, when you are certain that his end is near." In the first days of January, 1687, the prisoner died. '' I have received your letter of the 5th inst.," writes -Louvois (January 13th, 1687), ** which informs me of the death of one of your prisoners. I will say no more concern- ing your desire for a change of govern- ment, since you have already learned that the King has been pleased to confer on you a better post than the one you are in posses- sion of" The death of one of the prisoners M 1 INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR, 283 brought by Saint-Mars from Pignerol to Exiles is thus demonstrated. Was it Mattioli or the other ? Delort and his contemporaries concluded, positively for the most part, that it was the other. They overlooked, however, one fact of the extremest significance. It was, that from the date of this death at Exiles Mattioli s naine disappears entirely from the correspondence of Lotcvois and Saint- Mars. Now there may be nothing absolutely conclusive in this ; but, taken with the testimony of the death, it seems to plunge into hopeless uncertainty every system which has sought to solve through Mattioli the mystery of the Man in tl Mask. Such was the terribly destructive en icism of Jules Loiseleur, in the Revue Co7itemporaine,^ a criticism which demolishes those systems in a fashion the most decisive. If Mattioli and the monk were the two * July 2ist, 1867. 284 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. prisoners whom Saint-Mars carried to Exiles (and we have seen that their removal was ordered by Louvois) ; if one of the pair died of dropsy at Exiles in January, 1687 (and the document in proof has been cited) ; and if from this date Mattioli's name vanishes from the letters of Louvois and Saint-Mars —with what confidence may it be pretended that Mattioli was the masked man borne in secret by Saint-Mars to the Bastille in September, 1698? "His demonstration," wrote a contemporary critic of Loiseleur, "at once luminous and peremptory, has ex- hausted the question ; and, in default of fresh documents, no serious mind will ever return to it." Topin confesses that after reading and re-reading this demonstration,* he could resolve no otherwise than that the secret of the Mask was and would remain impenetrable. • Refuted, nevertheless, by him in so far as concerned Loiseleur's hypothesis of the arrest of the spy by Catinat. 285 ,>>. CHAPTER VII. The Missing Link Comes the question then : has the Man in the Mask once more Revealed by and finally eluded us ? Let us go ^'''"' a step further. Baudry had said of the inquisition of Loiseleur, that it had exhausted the problem ; that, if other docu- ments were not forthcoming, no serious mind would return to its consideration. But it has been stated before, and the statement must be repeated, that the whole truth of this strange drama was not con- tained in any single set of documents. Louis XIV. was little likely to leave us the epitome of it ; and no minister who had part in the affair ever forgot the Kings 286 \tHE man in the IRON MASK. command to d'Estrades : // faudra que personne ne sfacke ce que cet homme sera devenUy — No one must know what becomes of this man. His very name had already disappeared, save only for those few who had known it from the first. At Pignerol, he was Lestang ; in the Bastille, he was the prisoner from Provence. Apart from the brief but pregnant documents of the Bastille, to be presented when their time comes, his identity was only to be made good by the comparison of innumerable despatches, '' not one among which furnishes by itself an irrefutable proof, but which in their entirety, with the logical deductions that may be drawn from them, conduct to an absolute certainty/' * But there could be no doubt that, after Loiseleur, fresh documents were necessary, if this certainty were ever to be attained. * Topin. / A Corner of tlieiFort of Exiles. \ t y ■ ) ' / THE MISSING LINK REVEALED, 289 These documents were found by Topin. The passage in which he explains how he first imagined their existence, and then went on to prove it, is peculiarly interest- ing, as showing both his extreme mental ingenuity and the inexhaustible patience with which he pursued a task now regarded as well - nigh impossible of completion. There comes first a letter, of which, at sight, the significance is less than nothing : a letter from Louvois to Saint-Mars, dated January 5th, 1682. At this time Saint- Mars has been but a few months at Exiles; but he is already clamouring for a change of government, and has evidently been sounding Louvois on the subject, Louvois replies : '' I received your letter of the 28th ult. You do not know where your interest lies, when you propose to exchange the govern- ment of Exiles against that of Casale, the 19 290 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. value of which is only two thousand livres a year.* I strongly advise you not to think further of it." There is no more in the despatch than that. It suggests nothing but the interest of Louvois in the personal fortunes of Saint-Mars, whose sister-in law was the minister's mistress. Saint-Mars, incessantly grasping (and suffering in health at Exiles), seeks another change of place : Louvois responds that the change he proposes will put nothing into his purse. It is the letter, . not of the minister to the gaoler, but of the minister to his friend : it is a strictly per- sonal communication. What, then, is its value as a counterpoise to the criticism of Loiseleur, which showed — upon the docu- ments put in — that Mattioli, if he did not die of dropsy at Exiles, did at all events disappear incontinently from the des- *The amount which Saint-Mars was receiving at Exiles. i\ X THE MISSING LINK REVEALED, 291 patches which, up to this point, had been almost solely occupied with him? The supposition is still, of course, that Mattioli was one of the two prisoners whom Saint-Mars carried with him from Pignerol to Exiles. Just here, however, the doubt comes in that suggested itself to Topin. If Mattioli were with Saint-Mars at Exiles, what more imprudent than that he should propose to take him— ^n Italian subject forcibly stolen from Italy — into an Italian town, and a town Mantuan in its hereditary interests! If it were in any way possible that Mattioli should discover himself to friends, he would at least have a better chance of doing so in Casale than at Exiles. How did this not occur to Saint-Mars ? And, if it missed the sleepless intelligence of Saint- Mars, how came it also to be passed by Louvois } But Louvois evidently has not a thought of danger. His sole motive in 19* I 292 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. dissuading Saint-Mars from Casale is that his pocket would profit nothing by the ex- change. Mattioli, whom it would have been unwise to carry back into Italy, is not so much as mentioned. Then Mattioli, perhaps, was not at Exiles at all, and had never been sent there ? This was the inspiration that Topin drew from the colourless despatch of Louvois. The chance of success in this direction was a very feeble one; for the despatch of Louvois was extant, ordering the removal of the two prisoners of the tour d'en das, the lower tower, to which Mattioli and the monk had been relegated; and the despatch had closed with the injunction that "the effects belonging to the Sieur de Mattioli which are in your possession are to be taken to Exiles, so that they may be given back to him, should his Majesty ever decide to set the prisoner at liberty." This was categorical. i\ i [ [> THE MISSING LINK REVEALED. 293 Still, Topin's doubts persisted. If Mattioli were indeed at Exiles, how could Saint-Mars propose to transfer him to Casale? And how did Louvois let that proposal pass un- rebuked ? With these questions pricking him, Topin returned to the Bibliotheque Imperiale to begin the search anew — and the missing link revealed itself It was found in a letter from Saint-Mars to d'Estrades, bearing date June 25th, 1681. Saint-Mars, the least gregarious of men, had sworn an ardent friendship with the Abbe, and he hastens to share with him the news of his appointment to Exiles. ** Count on me as your most devoted. I received yesterday the warrant appointing me to the governor- ship of Exiles, at a salary of two thousand livres. ... I am to take with me two jail-birds * whom I have here Mattioli remains where he is, with two other * " Deux merles." 294 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. prisoners. One of my lieutenants, named Villebois, will have charge of them." Mattioli, therefore, was not the prisoner who died at Exiles in January, 1687. He never went to Exiles at all. The purpose indicated in Louvois's despatch, of the 9th of June. i68r, had been abandoned; and Mattioli remained at Pignerol, where he will be found in the keeping of Villebois. The long silence of Louvois and Saint-Mars concerning him thus receives^ its natural explanation. The perplexity, the scepticism which Loise- leur's examination had produced, vanished upon this discovery. Mattioli was at Pignerol and at the Isles and in the Bastille ; Delort's error, which for a time cast into uncertainty the whole history of the Mask, lay in re- moving him from Pignerol to Exiles. There are two traits or characters in the history of the Mask which attach themselves to THE MISSING LINK REVEALED, 295 Mattioli alone, of all the prisoners whom Saint-Mars had in his keeping : the unvarying tradition of his detention at Sainte-Marguerite, and the documental certainty of his detention at Pignerol. In Du Juncas journal, the prisoner whom Saint-Mars brings to the Bastille in September, 1698, is an ancient prisoner whom he had at Pignerol, Exiles finds no place in the entry. We know that Saint-Mars had Mattioli in his charge during two years at Pignerol, and Topin has shown that the prisoner was not transferred to Exiles. But for that unfortunate error, which is principally identified with Delort, the pro- blem might long since have been resolved. 296 FRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 297 CHAPTER VI I. The Most visitors to the Riviera have Prisoner of Hiade the little trip to the Isles Consequence, ^f Sainte - Marguerite and Saint- Honorat, enticed by the piquant legend of the Man in the Iron Mask. A good woman discovers you his cell, charms you and thrills you with stories of his fine apparel, his plate, and the deference shown him by Saint- Mars : poor Mask, who had no fine clothes and no plate, and whom the deferential gaoler had threatened with a cudgel ! The Isles owe most of their celebrity to what is purely fabulous in this history, but they have other annals also. Lying some fifteen hundred yards from the shore, the two islands, of which Sainte- Marguerite is the larger, are as sentinels over the pleasure-haunts of Nice, Cannes, and San Remo. Rock and reef lend some amount of danger to the approach. Within, the Isles are dark with pine trees, cumbered and strengthened with shaggy hills, gigantic boulders. Climbing Sainte-Marguerite's top, the traveller's eyes are filled with a marvellous golden light ; before him undulates on either hand all that sun-bathed shore of the Riviera ; he counts the glistening villas of Cannes ; grey-green hills of olive rise beyond ; to the left streams out the long chain of the Esterel, *'with contours brusque and varied"; and on the right the Maritime Alps cast up their *' thousand years of snow." The Romans were here once ; hermits have dwelt in these island solitudes ; the Saracens have invaded and the Spaniards have sacked them. * In the dawn of the fifth century * Topin. 298 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, Saint-Honorat founded here a monastery, greatly celebrated of the Gauls, where '^thou- sands of apostles" practised virtue and the monkish arts. On the smaller island is still shown the well which the saint created, yielding a miraculous sweet water. Here came Francis I., prisoner of the Spaniards after the disastrous field of Pavia, to endure a harsh captivity. Here, to Sainte- Marguerite, was sent, in December, 1873, Marshal Bazaine, who broke prison and escaped the night of the 9th of August, 1874. The two islands bear the common name of the lies de Lerins. The memory of the Iron Mask, whose prison was the fortress of Sainte- Marguerite, has conferred on the Lerins a celebrity which seems likely to endure. Hither, then, came, in 1687, the most incor- ruptible gaoler, Saint-Mars. He had received word of his new appointment on the 20th of January ; he was in ill-health, and eager for m. PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 299 the healing South. He wrote to Louvois : — *' I am most grateful for the new favour which his Majesty has just bestowed on me (the Government of the Isles of Sainte-Mar- guerite). If you order me to proceed there without delay, I would request to be allowed to take the road through Piedmont, on account of the great quantity of snow that lies between this place and Embrun." He went to Sainte- Marguerite in February, and was twenty-six days in bed, '' with a continual fever." Mattioli, this while, supposed at Exiles, lay close in Pignerol. We have glimpses of the guard that was kept upon him. Villebois, chained to his prisoner, seems never to have been allowed to leave the dungeon. In such a nervous fit as Saint-Mars was almost inces- santly a prey to, he wrote to Louvois, asking to whom he should entrust the prisoner, supposing he were incapacitated by sickness ; and Louvois replied : ** To the person you can 300 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, most rely on." Even the priest of the prison was distrusted — ''Your prisoners are to be confessed only once a year." Books of devotion might be given to them; but ''you are to take care they do not use them for passing notes to one another." One night someone is suspected of haunting a bastion gate of Pignerol, and Villebois is instructed to *' do your utmost to discover who the person was." There is a rare effort of Mattioli — the only one that records prove — to disclose his situation : he writes something on a lining torn from his pocket. It is discovered, and communicated to Versailles, and the answer is returned — " You must burn any scraps on which Mattioli has written." The walls of Pignerol, and the road beneath, were strictly watched ; the sentinels had orders to let no one linger about the gates. Saint-Mars, on his part, while at Exiles, had enjoyed a measure of liberty that he t^j a (ft V S e *3 CO to o B PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE, 303 / [;' had never known when guarding Mattioli at Pignerol He went on little visits to d'Estrades, to Catinat ; he paid his court to the Duke of Savoy ; he was allowed from time to time to sleep out of the gaol. *' Madame de Saint-Mars having told me/' writes Louvois, in March, 1685, **that you wish to go to the baths of Aix-en-Savoie, I spoke about it to the King, and his Majesty commands me to say that you may absent yourself from Exiles for that purpose for a period of from fifteen days to three weeks." Even at the Isles, at first, Saint- Mars was comparatively at his ease. ^\ The King consents to your taking a holiday two days in the month, and permits you to return the visit of the governor of Nice.'* These were the relaxations of the period when Saint- Mars had charge only of ''two jail-birds.'* On a sudden, the 26th of February, 1694, there is a mandate from Versailles, inform- 304 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. ing the commandant that three prisoners of State are to be sent from Pignerol to the Isles. The minister* enquires *'if there are safe places to hold them," and bids the governor make all needful dispositions to receive them. A second letter, March the 20th, contains a passage of capital significance: **You know in effect that they are of greater consequence, at least one, than the prisoners now at the Isles ; and, preferably to those others, you should see that they are lodged in the most secure quarter of the prison. The courier who bears this despatch takes with him also fifteen hundred livres for preliminary ex- penses.'' Thus was announced the coming of Mattioli, with the two remaining prisoners of Pignerol. * This was Barbezieux, the successor of Louvois, who died in 1691. t K 'J ll L- 322 CHAPTER X. The Mask comes On the first of March, 1698, Saint-Mars received from Versailles to the the offer of the government of Bastille. , the Bastille. The salary was rich, the office one of trust and dignity, and Paris was Paris : Saint- Mars accepted the offer at once. Nothing further passed until the 17th of June, when Barbezieux wrote again from Versailles : — " I have been long in answering your letter of the 8th of last month, as the King had not explained his intentions to me. I am now to inform you that his Majesty is pleased at your acceptance ot the govern- ment of the Bastille. You can have everything in train to be ready to start (I ( THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 323 when you receive the final word ; and bring with you in all security your ancient prisoner. ** I have arranged with Mons. Saumery to give you two thousand crowns for the transport of your effects." On the 19th of July there came a third despatch from Barbezieux, confirming what had gone before, and emphasising the importance of guarding the prisoner on the journey '' in such a manner that he shall be seen by no one.*' Two months later, in the middle of September, when the days were shortening, Saint-Mars set out with him to traverse the whole of France. At this point the reflection arises that had the affair of the Mask been a scandal of the Court, and the prisoner features revealed a royal have been strangely and dent to bring him to a a person whose origin, it would curiously impru- dungeon in the 21* /, / 324 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. heart of Paris— where chance might so much more easily discover him than in that dis- tant fastness lapped by the Sea of Provence. There could be no grave reason why the Italian Mattioli should not be carried to the Bastille ; there was every prudent reason of State why a brother of the King should not be carried there. But, as we shall see, it was unquestionably the Man in the Mask who made the journey with Saint- Mars. A glance at the map of France will show what a journey this was at the jog-trot pace of the litter. No detailed itinerary exists, but we know where the principal halt was made. In the central department of Yonne is the town of Villeneuve-le-Roi, once called the Ante-room of the Popes, now desolate and lifeless. Near Villeneuve is the chateau of Palteau, a property belonging to Saint-Mars, and here he halted with his f 4> «> U a 4> >% ■ CO Si* \v V - , THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE, 327 prisoner. * Reference has been made in the Introduction to the letter of M. de For- manoir de Palteau, grand-nephew of Saint- Mars, in which this episode is described. The letter, bearing date June 19, 1768, was '> f)< * Saint-Mars was not the man to loiter on the road, with a prisoner of State in his keeping, and it is unlikely that the stay at Palteau ex- ceeded a night or two. But wherever the Masked Man came legend laid hold upon his memory, and Villeneuve-le-Roi has appropriated him. There is in Villeneuve a vast old ruined fort, with castellated drum-towers, and cells and chambers in abundance. Now Saint-Mars and the Mask would probably take Villeneuve on their way to Palteau ; at all events, that close-guarded litter, watched with an awful wonder from Provence to Paris, must have passed very near. What more apt than to imagine for the Mask a period of captivity in the fort of Vil- leneuve-le-Roi ! It has been done. In a pleasant volume of wander- ings, " In the Rhone Valley," Mr. Charles W. Wood tells how he was shown the cell by a nun, as her pihe de resistance, " Most interesting of all was a small remote doorway, and the nun looked wonderfully picturesque as she bent down and applied the key to the lock, her black graceful dress standing out in strange contrast with the ancient and splendid masonry. Then she threw open the door and we entered a dark circular chamber that was half cell. In tones that thrilled her hearers and echoed in the roof, she said : * This is the room in which the Man with the Iron Mask was confined, before he was taken to another and more open part of the fort.'" Mr. Wood, accepting the statement in good faith, adds: **We almost felt on sacred ground." 328 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. addressed to Freron, of the Annee Litteraire, and published in the issue of June 30. '' In 1698, " writes M. de Palteau, " M. de Saint-Mars passed from the charge of the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite to that of the Bastille. On his way, he stayed with his prisoner on his estate at Palteau. The Man in the Mask came in a litter which preceded that of M. de Saint-Mars ; they were accompanied by several men on horseback. The peasants went to greet their lord ; M. de Saint-Mars took his meals with his prisoner, who was placed with his back to the windows of the dining-room which over- looked the courtyard. The peasants whom I questioned could not see whether he wore his mask while eating, but they took note of the fact that M. de Saint-Mars, who sat opposite to him, kept a pair of pistols beside his plate. They were waited on by one man-servant, who fetched the dishes from / .\ \ THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 329 the ante-room where they were brought to him, taking care to close behind him the door of the dining-room. When the prisoner crossed the courtyard, he aways wore the black mask ; the peasants noticed that his teeth and lips showed through it ; * also that he was tall and had white hair. M. de Saint-Mars slept in a bed close to that of the masked man." There could be nothing simpler than this statement. The writer has no hypothesis of his own, and no leaning towards any other hypothesis. He is content to report what he had learned by word of mouth from the old people on the estate who had actually seen the prisoner in the mask at Palteau.f The detail of chief importance in the account is the mask ; * Clearly, the little velvet half-mask which may be seen to-day at any bal masque in Carnival. t The chateau of Palteau still stands where it did. The dining-hall in which Saint-Mars faced his prisoner, with pistols by his side, is now, says M. Funck-Brentano, a kitchen. k x_ 330 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. and this is verified by the entry in Du Junca's journal, when the veiled prisoner arrives at the Bastille. We have kept touch of this prisoner so far, and have found under his velvet mask no features but those of Mattioli. A prisoner of particular consequence is transferred from Pignerol to the Isles, and at the date of his removal there is only Mattioli of consequence in that prison. His name ceases, but he is identified with the ** ancient prisoner'' of sub- sequent despatches. This *' ancient prisoner'' is the one whom Saint-Mars is instructed to carry from the Isles to the Bastille. The prisoner alights at Palteau, and it is observed by the peasants on the estate that he wears a mask. The journey ends at the Bastille ; and Du Junca, the King's Lieutenant of the prison, notes in his journal that the prisoner whom Saint-Mars brings from the Isles is an ancient prisoner whom he had at Pignerol, and that he is masked. Even in the Paris of that day THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE, 331 the use of the mask was not unknown ; but there is absolutely no other instance in French history of its employment to conceal the identity of a prisoner : hence the naive wonder which may be read between the lines ot Du Junca's entry. This note in the register or journal kept by the King's Lieutenant of the Bastille is, as M. Funck-Brentano observes, ** the origin and foundation of all that has been printed on the question of the Iron Mask." The journal itself (the original is in the Arsenal Library) is the work of an unlettered official who spells atrociously, and knows nothing of punctua- tion. When a new prisoner was received Du Junca wrote down the particulars of his coming, and the first of the entries with which this history is concerned is as follows, in a translation as literal as possible. ** On Thursday, i8th September (1698), at three in the afternoon, M. de Saint-Mars, go- 332 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, vernor of the chateau of the Bastille, presented himself for the first time, coming from his government of the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite- Honorat, having with him in his litter a pri- soner who was formerly in his keeping at Pig- nerol, whom he caused to be always masked, whose name is not mentioned : on descending from the litter, he had him placed in the first chamber of the Baziniere tower, waiting until night for me to take him, at nine o'clock, and put him with M. de Rosarges, one of the ser- geants brought by the governor, alone in the third chamber of the Bertaudiere tower, which I had had duly furnished some days before his arrival, by order of M. de Saint-Mars : the aforesaid prisoner will be served and seen to by M. de Rosarges, and maintained by the governor/' Such is the famous entry which records the coming of the Mask to the Bastille. He passed in there as mysteriously as he had Entry in the Register of the Bastille. By the courtesy of Messrs, Downey and Co, ^Wb'* THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE, 335 entered Pignerol nineteen years earlier, and the Isles in 1694. That the staff of the Bastille had not the least idea who he was is rendered certain by the names he received from them. He was *' the Prisoner from Provence/' most often ; sometimes ** the ancient prisoner "-^ the term so closely identified with Mattioli. It is clear that at first his isolation was as rigorous as it had ever been. Rosarges alone waited on him. No fellow-prisoner shared his captivity in the third chamber of the Bertaudiere tower. What tales would filter through the Bastille, what fables would begin to grow around him, even while he sat there — the unknown who wore the mask ! But time was passing even for the Man in the Mask. Casale was no longer French ; the negotiations which had issued so fatefully for Mattioli were old history ; the whole affair was out of mind : its X 336 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, importance had utterly ceased. Note how this affected the Mask in 1701, twenty-two years after he had been thrown into Pignerol. No pardon came for him, nor was he granted the ease in his dungeon which was allowed at last to Fouquet. His fate was infinitely more pitiful; he fell from his estate in the prison, he was degraded among the com- monest of the Bastille's inmates. He had been confined in the third chamber of the Bertaudiere tower. From this he was removed, the 6th of March, 1701, to make room for one Anne Randon, *Mevineresse et diseuse de bonne fortune,'* witch and for- tune-teller : the Man in the Mask displaced by a common sorceress! He was then put by Du Junca, whose Journal is the authority, into *'the second Bertaudiere," which he shared with a certain Thirmont or Tirmont. This man, embastilled in July, [700, had been a domestic servant ; he was only nine- THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 337 teen years of age, and had been accused of atheism and black magic, and of corrupting young girls : quite an ordinary type of the rogue and charlatan of the age. Some six weeks later these two were joined by a third prisoner. The entry is in Du Junca's Journal. '' Saturday, April 30, at about nine in the evening, M. Aumont the younger came, bringing with him and handing over to us a prisoner named M. Maranville, but calling himself Ricarville, formerly an officer in the army, a malcontent, a tattler, and a rake ; whom I received by the King's orders, sent through the Comte de Pontchartrain, and placed with the man Tirmont, in the second chamber of the Bertaudiere tower, along. with the ancient prisoner, both being under lock and key." The Bastille of this date held accommo- dation tor no more than forty-two prisoners, separately confined. In 1701 it was exces- 22 338 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. sively full, and three prisoners were locked into one chamber: the servant Tirmont ; MaranviUe alias Ricarville, whom the pohce re- port described as " of a beggarly appearance ; and the Man in the Mask. In October, 1708, MaranviUe was sent from the Bastdle to Charenton prison, where he died. Tirmont was transferred in December, 1701. to the horrible Bicetre, half-prison, half-madhouse. He became insane two years later, and d.ed in 1709- . • ^f Now, for a moment, let this situation of the Mask, cheek by jowl with this sorry pair be considered in the light of the Legend. It is an awkward situation for the Legend ! The prisoner has been immured :., o Qprlnsion the strictest twenty-two years, in a seclusion and most cruel, his name and his identity withheld from everyone, for the reason that he is the depository of some tremendous secret of the State. He has been hidden under a THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE, 339 mask all this time, because, forsooth, if he were not so disguised, he would be recog- nised as the brother of Louis XIV. And lo ! this holder of the dread secret, this royal twin or bastard who so fatally resembles the King, is suddenly sent to keep company with two gaol-birds of the Bastille. The prison becomes crowded, a lady in trouble for telling fortunes is among the new arrivals ; and of so much greater consequence is she than this redoubtable prisoner who has been under seal for two-and-twenty years, that his room in the Bertaudiere is immediately assigned to her. The fortune-teller has the dignity of a separate chamber ; the Mask is thrust in with the lackey Tirmont, and MaranviUe presently makes a third. The two common fellows are bye-and-bye moved from the Bastille — having had the fullest op- portunity of learning and disseminating that stupendous secret. This is not a little curious 22* / 340 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, —considered in the light of the Legend. What, indeed, becomes of the Legend ? But if the reader is with us in this inquiry, with Delort and Topin and M. Funck- Brentano, this dech'ne in importance of the prisoner who had hitherto been all-important has already received its explanation. With the lapse of time, the man and the political intrigue he had been concerned in had quite ceased to be of consequence to anybody. Mattioli had no secret to reveal. Should he divulge the affair of Casale ? No one at that date would have been a penny the worse. Should he speak of his long and torturing captivity ? Alas ! captivities as harsh as his were none so rare at that era: pity indeed the tale might excite ; it could excite no extreme degree of wonder. In fine, at the epoch of 1701 the prisoner of the Mask had nothing to communicate which could disturb for an instant the repose of Ver- THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 341 sailles ; — and they suffered him to sink to the level of those vulgar delinquents who passed in and out of the Bastille. This fact, which we owe to M. Funck- Brentano's scrutiny of the Journal of Du Junca, disposes of the interesting tale that, after the prisoner's death, everything in his room was burned, '' linen, clothes, cushions and counterpanes '' ; the flooring taken up and the walls scraped and whitewashed again. We have just seen his room in the occu- pation of the adventuress Randon, which would be upon the order of Saint-Mars ; and that heedful man is not at all concerned to know whether his prisoner — who may henceforth be shifted anywhere — has left behind him any trace of his identity. Were this anything but fiction, it would be found in Du Junca. He is a Pepys in minuteness whenever he finds matter for his pen ; his details of the prisoner's death in 1703 are 342 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. precise, but he has nothing else to tell. If, after the prisoner's death, his cell had been even whitewashed, we should have learned it from Du Junca, who wrote everything that came to his knowledge, but with no more notion than Pepys that he was writing for posterity. The story, in fact, traces, through Pere Griffet, to a Major of the Bastille, Chevalier by name, who did not come upon the scene until 1749- For many years it was accepted, but it vanishes in the search-light of M. Funck-Brentano, and is now but an item of the Legend. It is self-evident that there was no motive for destroying the traces of a prisoner who, two years before his death, had been given ample opportunity to reveal himself, and who was thenceforth insignificant. This tragedy was now very near its closing scene. So far as records are concerned, the two remaining years are blank ; and the imagination does not willingly attempt to \ / >ll THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 343 re-create them. For the spectacle of the Mask degraded from his eminence of mystery cast unregarded among the coarser tenants of his dungeon, affects the mind, perhaps, even more painfully than the vision of him, solitary in his Alpine cell, or vainly inter- rogating the waters of the Isles ; narrowly surveyed, the veritable prisoner of State. Hope must have fled him for years ; we do not find him petitioning Louis, or appealing to Charles of Mantua: he sat "with close- lipped patience," or, if patience had not found him, it were better to know nothing of what passed within that lonely brain. Under date of the 19th of November, 1703, Du Junca wrote, in the Register which he reserved for entries of the death or liberation of prisoners of the Bastille * : — ^'""'The same day, November 19th, 1703. the prisoner unknown, masked always with a * The translation is as literal as is possible. 344 THE MAN IN THE IKON MASK, mask of black velvet, whom M. de Saint- Mars, the governor, brought with him from the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, and whom he had had for a long time, happening to be rather unwell yesterday on coming from mass, ' died this day at about ten o'clock in the evening, without having had any serious illness ; indeed it could not have been slighter. M. Giraut, our chaplain, confessed him yes- terday, and is surprised at his death. He did not receive the sacrament, and our chaplain exhorted him a moment before he died. ^And this unknown prisoner, confined so long a time, was buried on Tuesday at four in the afternoon, in the cemetery of St. Paul, our parish ; on the register of burial he was given a name also unknown. M. de Rosarges, major, and Arreil, surgeon, signed the register." A marginal note to the left of the entry ran as ibllows : — \ \ L^ /• ^H^ Entry in the Register of Saint Paul's. By the courtesy of Messrs. Downey and Co. THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 347 " I have since learnt that he was named on the register M. de Marchiel, and that the burial cost 40 livres." The entry in the register of Saint Paul's, discovered later, reads : — <'On the 19th (1703) Marchioly, aged forty-five or thereabouts, died in the Bastille, whose body was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul, his parish, the 20th of this month, in the presence of M. Rosage {sic), major of the Bastille, and M. Reglhe {sic) surgeon major of the Bastille, who signed.— " Signed : Rosarges, Reilhe." The written names in the entry are examples of the slovenly, inaccurate spelling of the age. The person who sets them down is ignorant even of the names of the two officers of the Bastille by whom his register is signed : Rosarges is " Rosage," / 348 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, Reilhe is " Reglhe/^ *^ Marchioly ^' is re- markably close to Mattioli when it is re- membered that Saint-Mars would probably have given the name by wo*-d of mouth ; it is still closer if he spoke it, as he often wrote it in his despatches — '' Martioly " in- stead of Mattioli. In the despatches of Louvois it is sometimes '' Marthioly/' which, with the difference of a letter, is the name on the register. In others, it is '' Matioli,*' '' Matheoli," &c. All proper names were stumbling-blocks to the writers of despatches in that era ; whether educated like Louvois, half-educated like Saint-Mars, or as totally unlettered as Du Junca. The age assigned to the prisoner, ''forty- five or thereaboiUSy' instances again the utter indifference and lack of care with which these entries were made. Probably, how- ever, no one in the Bastille, not even Saint- Mars, knew Mattioli's age. Born in 1640, THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE, 349 he was sixty-three at the date of his death. According to Delort, he told the apothecary of the Bastille that he was sixty ; a close guess for one who had lost count of time for near a quarter of a century. So fades and vanishes that tragic figure. 350 CHAPTER XI. If there had been no mask in ^' ^' ^' the case ? The fascination of the history has centred there. Had Saint-Mars not carried his prisoner from the Isles to the Bastille in that provoking domino, his story, like enough, had never engaged the curiosity of the world. Stories as sinister and sad have oozed from the shades of the Bastille, of the Conciergerie, of Bicetre, of the Chatelet — stories which never had audience, or which have lain for generations among forgotten things. But the mask has per- petuated itself; and, so simple as it proves, it has kept alive, through an infinity of changes, the memory of the prisoner whom it hid. Q. E, D. 351 And the mask was really nothing. From the instrument of torture invented by Voltaire, it shrinks to the little fashion- able shield of black velvet which every Italian gentleman had in his wardrobe ; which was de rigueur in Carnival time ; and which both Mattioli and the Duke of Mantua used as a matter of course in their private interviews with d'Estrades. In the Legend, the mask is everything : in the true, documentary history of the Masked Man it figures scarcely at all. We know from Du Juncas Journal that the prisoner was masked when he entered the Bastille ; but this is the first official notice on the subject. No document attests that he wore the mask at Pignerol or at the Isles. Saint-Mars does not anywhere allude to it; nor is there any injunction about a mask in any despatch from Versailles. Louis XIV. never gave the order which has been attri- V 352 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, buted to him ; Louvois never gave it ; Bar- bezieux never gave it. Up to the date of the entry into the Bastille, the mask seems to have been not much more than an acci- dent of the history; there is only the statement in the Prudenza trionfante di Casaie that the prisoner was masked by the persons who arrested him. We have it from Du Junca that in the Bastille the prisoner was '' masked always.'' Without the least straining at the facts this may be interpreted to mean that he wore his mask whenever there was occa- sion for him to be seen. And this the prisoner may have done of choice ; there are times and seasons in prison when it would be a convenience and a relief to possess this ready means of disguising one- self. Pere Griffet, chaplain of the Bastille in I745> observes in his Methode de Hiistoire : C E. D. 353 I > til i '' There is nothing to show that he was obliged to wear his mask when alone in his chamber, or in the presence of de Rosarges or the governor, by whom he was perfectly well known." If compelled to wear it at all, ^*it would only be when he crossed the courtyard to attend mass, in order that he might not be recognised by the sentinels, or when some person on the staff, not privy to the secret, was sent into his chamber.'* On the whole, it might be conjectured that the mask was an in- spiration of Saint-Mars when he fetches his prisoner from the Isles to the Bastille,! and that it was afterwards adopted by the prisoner himself, who secured thereby the slight liberty or relief of the incognito. But, let the origin of its employment have been what it may, this velvet vizor was to bear a part not less than astonish- ing in the fable of the Masked Man. 23 354 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. This was not only natural, but, in a sense, inevitable. I believe that the Legend itself had no other genesis than the mystery of the mask. The sense of surprise which it produced in Du Junca was immediately communicated to the whole staff of the Bastille. Time flowed, but the mask was still the great memory and tradition of the fortress. The prisoner himself—" Marchiel," " Marchioly," Mattioli —remained unknown: Du Junca's Journal was not yet laid bare, the St. Paul's register was a sealed book, the State documents had not become the nation's property. But the steady, . continuous, and provocative tradition of the mask lived on within the walls of the Bastille. There it was found by the many students, philosophers, and men of letters who lay behind those bolts for longer or shorter terms in the eighteenth century. Voltaire Q. E. D. 355 k II was imprisoned in the Bastille in 1717, and again, for a few days (most unjustly), in 1726. Here, in the very theatre of the mystery, these inquisitive keen minds got the earliest inkling of it ; and one poor shred of fact was even then gather- ing to itself both surmise and invention. It is an officer of the Bastille who sees in imagination the stripping and rehabili- tating of the prisoner's cell : where, then, would the flight of a Voltaire end ? : — whose was the face beneath the mask ? The men of letters, released from the Bastille, fastened on this rare enigma ; and those among them who saw here a means of involving in new discredit the imperious sovereignty of Louis XIV., rose gladly to the oppor- tunity. The mask, and the reason of the mask : these were the things to account for. So, unquestionably, did the Legend begin to be. 23* 356 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. But now, at last, was Mattioli indeed the man ? It was objected to Topin, that the complete silence on this subject of the copious Saint-Simon (who has peeped into almost every cupboard in the Court of Louis XIV.) made an important count against him. Topin shrewdly saw that Saint-Simon's silence made, not against, but for him. "That immortal gossip has in truth lighted up for us the very holes and corners of Louis XIV.'s Court. From its pettiest shifts to its innermost intrigues, nothing has escaped him ; nothing that had to do with inner France. But of foreign affairs he knew only those that concerned the end of the reign, when they were in the hands of his friend the Marquis de Torcy. Earlier than this, he was as igno- rant of what passed beyond the borders of France as he was intimate with everything at passed within them. His silence, then, \-^ \\: Q, E. D, 357 which would be more than strange if it were possible to trace the Mask to a family of France, is its own interpreta- tion if the prisoner were a foreigner, arrested beyond the French frontier, and as early as 1679/' * This is distinctly suggestive ; though, as testimony, it has of course, only a negative value. We come closer. At whatever point in the enquiry the mysterious prisoner is named, there has Mattioli been found ; and to no other among the prisoners of Saint- Mars has the term proved applicable. The political role of Mattioli has been defined, the circumstances set forth in which he fell under the vengeance of Louis XIV., and incurred that terrible punishment — inflicted, as Maurice Boutry says, " dans si grand secret/* We have the King*s order for his arrest with the particular injunction that no * Topin. ( 358 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, one IS ever to know what becomes of him ; we have Catinat's report of the seizure of Mattioli, so well contrived that even the officers who assisted him were ignorant of the prisoner's name ; we have the witness of the Prudenza trionfante di C as ale, in which the transaction is described from the beginning. This was the man whom Louis XIV. destined to end his life in prison, and from the hour that he entered Pignerol he has been observed, followed, step by step, to the night of his death in the Bastille. But this is not all. The proof does not end here. It is shown in the Journal of Du Junca that the prisoner whom Saint-Mars brought masked from the Isles was an ancient prisoner who had been in his ke(::ping at Pignerol, the first of Mattioli's three dungeons, and the one in which he remained when other prisoners were transferred with Saint-Mars B e ft* o I I i 5? a o e r a (2. E. z>. 361 to Exiles. Du Junca has made Pignerol essential in the history of the Mask. We come now to the axiomatic proof of M. Funck- Brentano. The reader was asked to bear] in mind the despatch of Louvois to Saint- Mars (June 9, 1 681) enclosing instructions for the journey of the two prisoners who were to be taken from Pignerol to Exiles. The/ despatch speaks then of the prisoners whoj were left, and their number is precisely shown, the Sieur du Chamoy having orders to pay ** two crowns a day for the maintenance of these three prisoners T It is certain then that there were just five prisoners in Pignerol ( on the eve of Saint-Mars's departure for Exiles, and since we know from Du Junca that the Mask was an old prisoner of Saint- Mars at Pignerol, it is among these five that we must inevitably find him. All the five are known to us ; their names have happened in these pages : — 362 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. THE FIVE PRISONERS. EUSTACHE DaUGER. La RivifeRE. The Jacobin, dubreuil. Mattioli. THEIR FATE. A prisoner of so little conse- quence that he was assigned as a servant to Fouquet in Pignerol, while Mattioli, in the same prison, was still in the strictest seclusion. Died in December, 1686. Died at the close of 1693. Died at the Isles, 1697. A Euclid could give the result no plainer. As M. Funck-Brentano observes, with a just complacency, it is mathematical. There are five : the first is dismissed on his merits ; the three that follow are dead before Saint- Mars sets out for the Bastille — and Mattioli alone remains. De facto, it was Mattioli whom Saint-Mars conveyed in the mask from the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille in 1698. Mattioli was the hidden prisoner whom we have kept touch of throughout. (2. E, D. 363 There are two very curious corrobora- tions of the documentary evidence, deriving their value from the fact that they antedate by many years the earliest mention of the name of Mattioli. The last King of France who appears to have known the history was Louis XV. Importuned by the Due de Choiseul to reveal the prisoner's name, the King would only say that **all the con- jectures which had been made hitherto upon this subject were false.'' Madame de Pom- padour was then engaged to press for a definite reply ; and the King at last informed her that the prisoner of the mask was the '' Ministe}^ of an Italian Prince^ * Still more explicit is Madame Campan, in the Memoirs of Marie Antoinette. During the first few months of his reign Louis XVI. * Dutens : La Correspondance Interceptie. On the other hand, in the ''Memoirs " of Baron de Gleichen, Louis XV. is represented as refusing to give up the secret. If he knew it, there was no reason why, at this date, he should not give it up. 364 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. was much occupied, says Madame Campan, with the revision of his grandfather's papers. He had promised to share with the Queen '' whatever he might find upon the history of the Man with the Iron Mask, who, he thought, had become so inexhaustible a source of conjecture merely because of the interest which a celebrated writer had excited in the detention of a prisoner of State/' '' I was with the Queen,'' continues Madame Campan, '' when the King, having finished his researches, told her that he had found nothing in the secret papers which bore in any way on the existence of this prisoner ; that he had referred to M. de Maurepas, whose age brought him nearer the time when the affair must have been known to the ministers, and that M. de Maurepas had assured him that the prisoner was merely a person of a very dangerous character by \ Q. E, D, 365 reason of his intriguing spirit, and a subject of the Duke of Mantua. He was enticed to the frontier, arrested, and kept a prisoner, first at Pignerol, and then in the Bastiller * There, in five lines, Madame Campan has given us the entire history, and in terms literally and absolutely correct. She does not know the name of Mattioli, she is writing at a time when no one in France knows it, and when there has not been as yet * Madame Campan adds : " Such was in fact the real truth about the man on whom people have been pleased to fix an iron mask. And thus was it related in writing, and published by M , twenty years ago. He had searched the depot of foreign affairs, and there he had found the truth : he had laid it before the public ; but the public prepossessed in favour of a version which attracted them by the mar- vellous, would not acknowledge the authenticity of the true account. Everyone relied upon the authority of Voltaire : and it is still believed that a natural or a twin brother of Louis XIV. lived a number of years in prison with a mask over his face. The whimsical story of this mask, perhaps, had its origin in the old custom, among both men and women in Italy, of wearing a velvet mask when they exposed themselves to the sun: It is possible the Italian captive may have shown himself some- times upon the terrace of his prison with his face thus covered." 366 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. a single word about him in connection with the mystery of the Mask ; yet the whole truth is there. It is Duke Charles's envoy : d'Estrades lures him to the frontier : Catinat arrests him ; Saint-Mars has him at Pignerol, at the Isles, and in the Bastille. It is Mattioli's story in a nutshell. Madame Campan's sympathy with her subject no- where betrays her into loose or inaccurate statements ; and had she been inventing in this instance it would have been the most extraordinary example of invention in all literature. * With the official documents which bear * In the essay in the Revue des Etudes Historiques^ June-July, 1899, in which he substantiates the proofs of M. Funck-Brentano, Vicomte Maurice Boutry has produced a confirmatory passage from the Souvenirs of the Marquise de Crequy. Summing up a discussion on the Iron Mask between Marshal de Noailles, the Duchess de Luynes, the Due de Broncas and others, the Marquise adds : " The leading and best-informed persons of my time always considered that that famous history had no other foundation than the capture and imprisonment of the Piedmontese Mattioli. Voltaire's details are the most ridiculous fable." Interesting, but of most questionable authenticity. Was there ever a Marquise de Crequy ? \\ Q. E. D, 367 them out, these pregnant passages make good the case. So the task is ended, the burden of the mystery rolls off: Mattioli the Italian takes the place of that impossible romantic creature who has so long usurped it. The historic truth of the affair is best, though we lose a Prince who never lived. For a tragi-colour-d myth we exchange a living tragedy ; a tragedy prolonged above the ordinary miseries of men. The punishment of Mattioli, through four - and - twenty years, for a single act of treachery, the effect of which was transient, takes something from the splen- dours of the reign in which it was inflicted. With his unfailing sense of dramatic con- trast, Topin has noted that at the very hour of Mattioli's unhee4ed jj^atji. 9^ a pallet in the Bastille, diaries* k- %^fanttaa*.*'&EriVed on a visit to Louis pCJVj: -Did :I^Oufe,, -who-, lavished on his guest the 'riches of * the *Luxe*mbourg, v^ • • • • • • • • • 368 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. tell him the fate of his ancient favourite ? It would have been heard by Charles as carelessly as Louis would have told it. Scarce a bowshot from the palace, two turn- keys of the Bastille were trailing Mattioli in the dusk to a grave in the churchyard of St. Paul. \\ k CONCLUSION. / • • • •• • •• • • • • •••••• • • • • • • • •• • • • •• '• ■ • • • • • • • • • « .• • • •• ■t i\, ft ,1^ • • • » • • • •• •••••• 7 it COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is due on the date indicated below, or at the expiration of a definite period after the date of borrowing, as provided by the rules of the Library or by special ar- rangement with the Librarian in charge. «*i » • * • 1 i DATE BORROWED DATE DUE DATE BORROWED DATE DUE 1 1 II . ■ , r i i % , €26(239) Ml 00 W I 11- [ 3^^.033 ^iiSmtimitmmmm CO ■-UMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARI ES 0021141231 V,' . !:- t >•*(/'».. • ■■■.;■■■> >»^^ ^y«\. ;f^iW:\ ^z/ v1 lifciiTH III lii>i^a>»»»fc«*^Jifc« \ \ DCl 7 tm .:f|Sil-!:#l fc-MM^* 'i^l r SK^ H^H iP^i* ^^M r."'--*!^^ f j, .» „W¥t - i ' ^^*t^' = li.|>i:*l|%4 ^^iW ^^mm^^lAit^ J