Friday, 12th.—The conversation to-day led us to speak of the Iron Mask,
and we took a review of what has been said on the subject by Voltaire,
Dutens, and others; and of what is found respecting him in Richelieu’s
Memoirs. In these it is well known that he is said to have been the
twin-brother of Louis XIV., and the elder of the two. On this occasion,
some one added that, being employed in making out a pedigree, a person
had come to him to demonstrate seriously to him that Napoleon was a
lineal descendant from this Iron Mask, and consequently the legitimate
heir of Louis XIII. and Henry IV., in preference to Louis XIV. and all
his issue. The Emperor also said that he had heard something about it,
and added that the credulity of mankind and their love of the marvellous
are so great that it would not have been difficult to make out and
substantiate something of the kind for the multitude, and that there
would not have been wanting certain persons in the Senate to sanction
it; probably, he observed, the very men who at a later period were so
eager to revile him, as soon as they saw him in adversity.
We then went on to trace the foundation and the progress of this story.
The name of the Governor of the Island of St. Marguerite, to whom the
custody of the Iron Mask was entrusted, was M. de Bonpart, a
circumstance, to begin with, very singular. This man, it was asserted,
was aware of the origin of his prisoner. He had a daughter: she and the
prisoner were both young; they saw each other and loved. The Governor,
having informed the Court of this circumstance, it was decided that
there was no great objection to allowing the unfortunate captive to seek
in love an alleviation of his misery, and they were married.
The person who was speaking at this moment said that, at the time the
above particulars were related to him, he had been very much entertained
by them, and had happened to say that he thought the story very
ingeniously imagined; upon which the narrator of it became excessively
angry, maintaining that the marriage could very easily be verified by
the registers of one of the parishes of Marseilles, which he named. He
added that the children born of this marriage were silently and secretly
conveyed to Corsica, where the difference of language, chance, or
perhaps intention had, changed the name of Bonpart into Bonaparte and
Buonaparte, which, after all, has the same meaning, and is in fact the
same thing.
After this anecdote, it was added that, at the time of the revolution, a
similar story had been made in favour of the Orleans branch. It was
founded in a document found in the Bastille, and surmised that Anne of
Austria, who was brought to bed after twenty-three years of sterility,
had been delivered of a girl, and that Louis XIII. fearing she might
have no more children, had been induced to put away that girl and
falsely to substitute in her stead a boy, which was Louis XIV.; that the
following year, however, the Queen had been again brought to bed, and
this time really of a boy, which boy was Philip, the head of the house
of Orleans, who thus turned out to be with his descendants the
legitimate heirs to the throne, whilst Louis XIV. and his issue were
only intruders and usurpers. According to that story the Iron Mask was a
girl. A pamphlet on this subject was circulated in the provinces at the
time the Bastille was taken, but the story did not gain credit, and very
quietly disappeared, without having, it seems, engaged the attention of
the capital even for a moment.