THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK.
For two centuries no question has excited public opinion more than that
of the Man in the Iron Mask. The books written on the subject would fill
a library. People despaired of ever lifting the veil. "The story of the
Iron Mask," says Michelet, "will probably remain for ever obscure," and
Henri Martin adds: "History has no right to pronounce judgment on what
will never leave the domain of conjecture." To-day, the doubt no longer
exists. The problem is solved. Before disclosing the solution which
criticism has unanimously declared correct, we propose to transcribe the
scanty authentic documents that we possess on the masked man, and then
to state the principal solutions which have been proposed, before
arriving at the true solution.
1. THE DOCUMENTS.
_The Register of the Bastille._--To begin with, let us quote the text
which is the origin and foundation of all the works published on the
question of the Iron Mask.
[Illustration: Note in Du Junca's Journal regarding the entrance to the
Bastille (September 18, 1698) of the Man in the Iron Mask.]
Etienne du Junca, king's lieutenant at the Bastille, in a journal
which he began to keep on October 2, 1690, when he entered upon his
office--a sort of register in which he recorded day by day the details
concerning the arrival of the prisoners--writes, under date September
18, 1698, these lines,[37] which the popular legend has rendered
memorable:--
"Thursday, September 18 (1698), at three o'clock in the afternoon, M. de
Saint-Mars, governor of the château of the Bastille, made his first
appearance, coming from his governorship of the Isles of
Sainte-Marguerite-Honorat, bringing with him, in his conveyance, a
prisoner he had formerly at Pignerol, whom he caused to be always
masked, whose name is not mentioned; directly he got out of the carriage
he put him in the first room of the Bazinière tower, waiting till night
for me to take him, at nine o'clock, and put him with M. de Rosarges,
one of the sergeants brought by the governor, alone in the third room of
the Bertaudière tower, which I had had furnished with all necessaries
some days before his arrival, having received orders to that effect from
M. de Saint-Mars: the which prisoner will be looked after and waited on
by M. de Rosarges, and maintained by the governor."
In a second register, supplementary to the first, in which du Junca
records details of the liberation or the death of the prisoners, we
read, under date November 19, 1703:--
"On the same day, November 19, 1703, the unknown prisoner, always masked
with a mask of black velvet, whom M. de Saint-Mars, the governor,
brought with him on coming from the Isles de Sainte-Marguerite, whom he
had kept for a long time, the which happening to be a little ill
yesterday on coming from mass, he died to-day, about ten o'clock at
night, without having had a serious illness; it could not have been
slighter. M. Giraut, our chaplain, confessed him yesterday, 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, kept
here for so long, was buried on Tuesday at four o'clock p.m., November
20, in the graveyard 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."
And in the margin:--
"I have since learnt that they called him M. de Marchiel on the
register, and that forty livres was the cost of the funeral."
The registers of du Junca were preserved among the ancient archives of
the Bastille, whence they passed to the Arsenal library, where they are
now kept. They are drawn up in the clumsy handwriting of a soldier, with
little skill in penmanship. The spelling is bad. But the facts are
stated with precision, and have always proved accurate when checked.
[Illustration: Notice in Du Junca's Journal of the death of the masked
prisoner in the Bastille (November 19, 1703).]
The extract from the second register shows that the mysterious
prisoner wore, not a mask of iron, but one of black velvet.
Further, the entry on the register of St. Paul's church has been
discovered. It reads:--
"On the 19th, Marchioly, aged 45 years or thereabouts, died in the
Bastille, whose body was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul, his
parish, the 20th of the present month, in the presence of M. Rosage
(_sic_), major of the Bastille, and of M. Reglhe (_sic_), surgeon major
of the Bastille, who signed.--(Signed) ROSARGES, REILHE."
Such are the fundamental documents for the story of the Iron Mask; we
shall see by and by that they are sufficient to establish the truth.
_The Letter of the Governor of Sainte-Marguerite._--We have just seen,
from the register of du Junca, that the masked man had been at the Isles
of Sainte-Marguerite under the charge of Saint-Mars, who, on being
appointed governor of the Bastille, had brought the prisoner with him.
In the correspondence exchanged between Saint-Mars and the minister
Barbezieux, occurs the following letter, dated January 6, 1696, in which
Saint-Mars describes his method of dealing with the prisoners, and the
masked man is referred to under the appellation "my ancient prisoner."
"MY LORD,--You command me to tell you what is the practice, when I
am absent or ill, as to the visits made and precautions taken daily
in regard to the prisoners committed to my charge. My two
lieutenants serve the meals at the regular hours, just as they
have seen me do, and as I still do very often when I am well. The
first of my lieutenants, who takes the keys of the prison of _my
ancient prisoner_, with whom we commence, opens the three doors and
enters the chamber of the prisoner, who politely hands him the
plates and dishes, put one on top of another, to give them into the
hands of the lieutenant, who has only to go through two doors to
hand them to one of my sergeants, who takes them and places them on
a table two steps away, where is the second lieutenant, who
examines everything that enters and leaves the prison, and sees
that there is nothing written on the plate; and after they have
given him the utensil, they examine his bed inside and out, and
then the gratings and windows of his room, and very often the man
himself: after having asked him very politely if he wants anything
else, they lock the doors and proceed to similar business with the
other prisoners."
_The Letter of M. de Palteau._--On June 19, 1768, M. de Formanoir de
Palteau addressed from the château of Palteau, near Villeneuve-le-Roi,
to the celebrated Fréron, editor of the _Année Littéraire_, a letter
which was inserted in the number for June 30, 1768. The author of this
letter was the grand-nephew of Saint-Mars. At the time when the latter
was appointed governor of the Bastille, the château of Palteau belonged
to him, and he halted there with his prisoner on the way from the Isles
of Sainte-Marguerite to Paris.
"In 1698," writes M. de Palteau, "M. de Saint-Mars passed from the
governorship of the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite to that of the Bastille.
On his way to take up his duties, he stayed with his prisoner on his
estate at Palteau. The masked man arrived in a conveyance which preceded
that of M. de Saint-Mars; they were accompanied by several horsemen. The
peasants went to meet their lord: M. de Saint-Mars ate with his
prisoner, who had his back turned to the windows of the dining-hall
looking on the courtyard. The peasants whom I have questioned could not
see whether he ate with his mask on; but they observed very well that M.
de Saint-Mars, who was opposite him at table, had two pistols beside his
plate. They had only one footman to wait on them, and he fetched the
dishes from an ante-room where they were brought him, carefully shutting
the door of the dining-hall behind him. When the prisoner crossed the
courtyard, he always had his black mask over his face; the peasants
noticed that his lips and teeth were not covered, that he was tall and
had white hair. M. de Saint-Mars slept in a bed that was put up for him
near that of the masked man."
This account is marked throughout with the stamp of truth. M. de
Palteau, the writer, makes no attempt to draw inferences from it. He
declares for none of the hypotheses then under discussion in regard to
the identity of the mysterious unknown. He is content to report the
testimony of those of his peasants who saw the masked man when he passed
through their lord's estates. The only detail in the story which we are
able to check--a characteristic detail, it is true--is that of the black
mask of which M. de Palteau speaks: it corresponds exactly to the mask
of black velvet mentioned in du Junca's register.
The château of Palteau is still in existence. In his work on
Superintendent Fouquet, M. Jules Lair gives a description of it. "The
château of Palteau, situated on an eminence among woods and vines,
presented at that time, as it does to-day, the aspect of a great lordly
mansion in the style of the time of Henri IV. and Louis XIII. First
there is a wide courtyard, then two wings; within, the principal
building and the chapel. The lower story is supported on arches, and its
lofty windows go right up into the roof, and light the place from floor
to attic." Since the eighteenth century, however, the château has
undergone some modifications. The room in which Saint-Mars dined with
his prisoner is now used as a kitchen.
_The Notes of Major Chevalier._--In addition to the entries in du
Junca's Journal which we have transcribed, scholars are accustomed to
invoke, as equally worthy of credence though later in date, the
testimony of Father Griffet, chaplain of the Bastille, and that of Major
Chevalier.
The extracts from du Junca quoted above were published for the first
time in 1769 by Father Griffet, who added the following comments: "The
memory of the masked prisoner was still preserved among the officers,
soldiers, and servants of the Bastille, when M. de Launey, who has long
been the governor, came to occupy a place on the staff of the garrison.
Those who had seen him with his mask, when he crossed the courtyard on
his way to attend mass, said that after his death the order was given to
burn everything he had used, such as linen, clothes, cushions,
counterpanes, &c.: that the very walls of the room he had occupied had
to be scraped and whitewashed again, and that all the tiles of the
flooring were taken up and replaced by others, because they were so
afraid that he had found the means to conceal some notes or some mark,
the discovery of which would have revealed his name."
The testimony of Father Griffet happens to be confirmed by some notes
from the pen of a major of the Bastille named Chevalier. The major was
not a personage of the highest rank in the administration of the
Bastille, since above him were the governor and the king's lieutenant:
but he was the most important personage. The whole internal
administration, so far as the prisoners were concerned, was entrusted to
him. Chevalier fulfilled these duties for nearly thirty-eight years,
from 1749 to 1787. M. Fernand Bournon's estimate of him is as follows:
"Chevalier is a type of the devoted hard-working official who has no
ambition to rise above a rather subordinate rank. It would be impossible
to say how much the administration of the Bastille owed to his zeal and
to his perfect familiarity with a service of extraordinary difficulty."
Among notes put together with a view to a history of the Bastille,
Chevalier gives in condensed form the information furnished by du
Junca's register, and adds: "This is the famous masked man whom no one
has ever known. He was treated with great distinction by the governor,
and was seen only by M. de Rosarges, major of the said château, who had
sole charge of him; he was not ill except for a few hours, and died
rather suddenly: interred at St. Paul's, on Tuesday, November 20, 1703,
at 4 o'clock p.m., under the name of Marchiergues. He was buried in a
new white shroud, given by the governor, and practically everything in
his room was burnt, such as his bed, chairs, tables, and other bits of
furniture, or else melted down, and the whole was thrown into the
privies."
These notes of Father Griffet and Major Chevalier have derived great
force, in the eyes of historians, from their exact agreement; but a
close examination shows that the testimony of Chevalier was the source
of Father Griffet's information; in fact, Chevalier was major of the
Bastille when the Jesuit compiled his work, and it is doubtless upon his
authority that the latter depended.
Documents recently published in the _Revue Bleue_ upset these
assertions, which appeared to be based on the firmest foundations.
In the Journal of du Junca, which we have already mentioned, we read
under date April 30, 1701: "Sunday, April 30, about 9 o'clock in the
evening, M. Aumont the younger came, bringing and handing over to us a
prisoner named M. Maranville, alias Ricarville, who was an officer in
the army, a malcontent, too free with his tongue, a worthless fellow:
whom I received in obedience to the king's orders sent through the Count
of Pontchartrain: whom I have had put along with the man Tirmon, in the
second room of the Bertaudière tower, with the _ancient prisoner_, both
being well locked in."
The "ancient prisoner" here referred to is no other than the masked man.
When he entered the Bastille, as we have seen, on September 18, 1698, he
was placed in the third room of the Bertaudière tower. In 1701, the
Bastille happened to be crowded with prisoners, and they had to put
several together in one and the same room; so the man in the mask was
placed with two companions. One of them, Jean-Alexandre de Ricarville,
also called Maranville, had been denounced as a "retailer of ill speech
against the State, finding fault with the policy of France and lauding
that of foreigners, especially that of the Dutch." The police reports
depict him as a beggarly fellow, poorly dressed, and about sixty years
old. He had formerly been, as du Junca says, an officer in the royal
troops. Maranville left the Bastille on October 19, 1708. He was
transferred to Charenton, where he died in February, 1709. It must be
pointed out that Charenton was then an "open" prison, where the
prisoners associated with one another and had numerous relations with
the outside world.
The second of the fellow-prisoners of the man in the mask,
Dominique-François Tirmont, was a servant. When he was placed in the
Bastille, on July 30, 1700, he was nineteen years old. He was accused of
sorcery and of debauching young girls. He was put in the second room of
the Bertaudière tower, where he was joined by Maranville and the man in
the mask. On December 14, 1701, he was transferred to Bicêtre. He lost
his reason in 1703 and died in 1708.
The man in the mask was taken out of the third room of the Bertaudière
tower, in which he had been placed on his entrance to the Bastille, on
March 6, 1701, in order to make room for a woman named Anne Randon, a
"witch and fortune-teller," who was shut up alone in it. The masked
prisoner was then placed in the "second Bertaudière" with Tirmont, who
had been there, as we have just seen, since July 30, 1700. Maranville
joined them on April 30, 1701. Not long after, the masked man was
transferred to another room, with or without Maranville. Tirmont had
been taken to Bicêtre in 1701. We find that on February 26, 1703, the
Abbé Gonzel, a priest of Franche-Comté, accused of being a spy, was shut
up alone in the "second Bertaudière."
These facts are of undeniable authenticity, and one sees at a glance the
consequences springing from them. At the time when the masked prisoner
shared the same room with fellow-captives, other prisoners at the
Bastille were kept rigorously isolated, in spite of the crowded state of
the prison, so much more important did the reasons for their
incarceration seem! The man in the mask was associated with persons of
the lowest class, who were soon afterwards to leave and take their
places with the ruck of prisoners at Charenton and Bicêtre. We read in a
report of D'Argenson that there was even some talk of enlisting one of
them, Tirmont, in the army. Such, then, was this strange personage, the
repository of a terrible secret of which Madame Palatine[38] was already
speaking in mysterious terms, the man who puzzled kings, Louis XV.,
Louis XVI., who puzzled the very officers of the Bastille, and caused
them to write stories as remote as possible from the reality!
2. THE LEGEND.
If the very officers of the Bastille indulged such wild freaks of
imagination, what flights into dreamland might not the thoughts of the
public be expected to take? The movement is a very curious one to
follow. To begin with, we have the light Venetian mask transforming
itself into an iron mask with steel articulations which the prisoner
was never without. The consideration--imaginary, as we have seen--with
which the prisoner is supposed to have been treated, and which is
referred to in the notes of Major Chevalier, becomes transformed into
marks of a boundless deference shown by the jailers towards their
captive. The story was that Saint-Mars, the governor, a knight of St.
Louis, never spoke to the prisoner except standing, with bared head,
that he served him at table with his own hands and on silver plate, and
that he supplied him with the most luxurious raiment his fancy could
devise. Chevalier says that after his death his room at the Bastille was
done up like new, to prevent his successor from discovering any
tell-tale evidence in some corner. Speaking of the time when the masked
man was at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, Voltaire relates: "One day
the prisoner wrote with a knife on a silver dish, and threw the dish out
of the window towards a boat moored on the shore, almost at the foot of
the tower. A fisherman, to whom the boat belonged, picked up the dish
and carried it to the governor. Astonished, he asked the fisherman,
'Have you read what is written on this dish, and has anyone seen it in
your hands?' 'I cannot read,' replied the fisher, 'I have only just
found it, and no one has seen it.' The poor man was detained until the
governor was assured he could not read and that no one had seen the
dish. 'Go,' he said, 'it is lucky for you that you can't read!'"
In Father Papon's _History of Provence_, linen takes the place of the
dish. The upshot is more tragic: "I found in the citadel an officer of
the Free Company, aged 79 years. He told me several times that a barber
of that company saw one day, under the prisoner's window, something
white floating on the water; he went and picked it up and carried it to
M. de Saint-Mars. It was a shirt of fine linen, folded with no apparent
care, and covered with the prisoner's writing. M. de Saint-Mars, after
unfolding it and reading a few lines, asked the barber, with an air of
great embarrassment, if he had not had the curiosity to read what was on
it. The barber protested over and over again that he had read nothing;
but, two days after, he was found dead in his bed."
And the fact that Saint-Mars had had the body of the prisoner buried in
a white cloth struck the imagination, and was developed in its turn into
an extraordinary taste on the part of the prisoner for linen of the
finest quality and for costly lace--all which was taken to prove that
the masked man was a son of Anne of Austria, who had a very special
love, it was declared, for valuable lace and fine linen.
_A Brother of Louis XIV._--We are able to fix with precision, we
believe, the origin of the legend which made the Iron Mask a brother of
Louis XIV. Moreover, it was due to this suggestion, which was hinted at
from the first, that the story of the prisoner made so great a noise.
The glory of it belongs to the most famous writer of the eighteenth
century. With a boldness of imagination for which to-day he would be
envied by the cleverest journalistic inventor of sensational paragraphs,
Voltaire started this monstrous hoax on its vigorous flight.
In 1745 there had just appeared a sort of romance entitled _Notes
towards the History of Persia_, which was attributed, not without some
reason, to Madame de Vieux-Maisons. The book contained a story within a
story, in which the mysterious prisoner, who was beginning to be talked
about everywhere, was identified with the Duke de Vermandois, and to
this fact was due the sensation which the book caused. Voltaire
immediately saw how he could turn the circumstance to account. He had
himself at one time been confined in the Bastille, which was one reason
for speaking of it; but he did not dare put in circulation suddenly,
without some preparation, the terrible story he had just conceived, and,
with a very delicate sensitiveness to public opinion, he contented
himself with printing the following paragraph in the first edition of
his _Age of Louis XIV._: "A few months after the death of Mazarin there
occurred an event which is unexampled in history, and, what is not less
strange, has been passed over in silence by all the historians. There
was sent with the utmost secrecy to the château of the Isle of
Sainte-Marguerite, in the Sea of Provence, an unknown prisoner, of more
than ordinary height, young, and with features of rare nobility and
beauty. On the way, this prisoner wore a mask the chinpiece of which was
fitted with springs of steel, which allowed him to eat freely with the
mask covering his face. The order had been given to kill him if he
uncovered. He remained in the island until an officer in whom great
confidence was placed, named Saint-Mars, governor of Pignerol, having
been made governor of the Bastille, came to the Isle of
Sainte-Marguerite to fetch him, and conducted him to the Bastille,
always masked. The Marquis de Louvois saw him in the island before his
removal, and remained standing while he spoke to him, with a
consideration savouring of respect." Voltaire, however, does not say who
this extraordinary prisoner was. He observed the impression produced on
the public by his story. Then he ventured more boldly, and in the first
edition of his _Questions on the Encyclopædia_ insinuated that the
motive for covering the prisoner's face with a mask was fear lest some
too striking likeness should be recognized. He still refrained from
giving his name, but already everyone was on tip-toe with the
expectation of startling news. At last, in the second edition of
_Questions on the Encyclopædia_, Voltaire intrepidly added that the man
in the mask was a uterine brother of Louis XIV., a son of Mazarin and
Anne of Austria, and older than the king. We know what incomparable
agitators of public opinion the Encyclopædists were.
Once hatched, the story was not long in producing a numerous progeny,
which grew in their turn and became a monstrous brood.
We read in the _Memoirs_ of the Duke de Richelieu, compiled by his
secretary the Abbé Soulavie, that Mdlle. de Valois, the Regent's
daughter and at this date the mistress of Richelieu, consented, at the
instigation of the latter, to prostitute herself to her
father--tradition has it that the Regent was enamoured of his
daughter--in order to get sight of an account of the Iron Mask drawn up
by Saint-Mars. According to this story, which the author of the
_Memoirs_ prints in its entirety, Louis XIV. was born at noon, and at
half-past eight in the evening, while the king was at supper, the queen
was brought to bed of a second son, who was put out of sight so as to
avoid subsequent dissensions in the state.
The Baron de Gleichen goes still farther. He is at the pains to prove
that it was the true heir to the throne who was put out of sight, to the
profit of a child of the queen and the cardinal. Having became masters
of the situation at the death of the king, they substituted their son
for the Dauphin, the substitution being facilitated by a strong likeness
between the children. One sees at a glance the consequences of this
theory, which nullifies the legitimacy of the last Bourbons.
But the career of imagination was not yet to be checked. The legend came
into full bloom under the first empire. Pamphlets then appeared in which
the version of Baron de Gleichen was revived. Louis XIV. had been only a
bastard, the son of foreigners; the lawful heir had been imprisoned at
the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, where he had married the daughter of one
of his keepers. Of this marriage was born a child who, as soon as he was
weaned, was sent to Corsica, and entrusted to a reliable person, as a
child coming of "good stock," in Italian, _Buona-parte_. Of that child
the Emperor was the direct descendant. The right of Napoleon I. to the
throne of France established by the Iron Mask!--there is a discovery
which the great Dumas missed. But, incredible as it seems, there were
men who actually took these fables seriously. In a Vendéan manifesto
circulated among the Chouans,[39] in Nivose of the year IX,[40] we read:
"It is not wise for the Royalist party to rely on the assurances given
by some emissaries of Napoleon, that he seized the throne only to
restore the Bourbons; everything proves that he only awaits the general
pacification to declare himself, and that he means to base his right on
the birth of the children of the Iron Mask!"
We shall not stay to refute the hypothesis which makes the Iron Mask a
brother of Louis XIV. Marius Topin has already done so in the clearest
possible manner. The notion, moreover, has long been abandoned. The last
writers who adhered to it date from the revolutionary period.
_The Successive Incarnations of the Iron Mask._--"Never has an Indian
deity," says Paul de Saint-Victor, speaking of the Iron Mask, "undergone
so many metempsychoses and so many avatars." It would take too long
merely to enumerate all the individuals with whom it has been attempted
to identify the Iron Mask: even women have not escaped. We shall cite
rapidly the theories which have found most credence amongst the public,
or those which have been defended in the most serious works, in order to
arrive finally at the identification--as will be seen, it is one of
those proposed long ago--which is beyond doubt the true one.
The hypothesis which, after that of a brother of Louis XIV., has most
powerfully excited public opinion, is that which made the mysterious
unknown Louis, Comte de Vermandois, admiral of France, and son of the
charming Louise de la Vallière. This was indeed the belief of Father
Griffet, chaplain of the Bastille, and even of the officers of the
staff. But the conjecture is disproved in a single line: "The Comte de
Vermandois died at Courtrai, on November 18, 1683." A precisely similar
fact refutes the theory identifying the Iron Mask with the Duke of
Monmouth, the natural son of Charles II. and Lucy Walters. Monmouth
perished on the scaffold in 1683. Lagrange-Chancel throws much ardour
and talent into a defence of the theory which made the Iron Mask Francis
of Vendôme, Duke de Beaufort, who, under the Fronde, was called "King of
the Markets." The Duke de Beaufort died at the siege of Candia, June 25,
1669.
To Lagrange-Chancel succeeds the Chevalier de Taulès. "I have discovered
the Man in the Mask," he cries, "and it is my duty to impart my
discovery to Europe and posterity!" This discovery brings forward one
Avedick, an Armenian patriarch of Constantinople and Jerusalem,
kidnapped in the East at the instigation of the Jesuits, and transported
to France. Vergennes, on entering the ministry for foreign affairs, set
investigations on foot. They confirmed the statement that Avedick had
actually been arrested in the circumstances indicated, but after 1706;
and so he could not be identified with the Iron Mask.
Such were the theories of the eighteenth century. We come now to those
of our own time. Since mystery and sinister machinations were involved,
the Jesuits could not be long left out of the business. We have just
seen them at their tricks with the Armenian patriarch. People dreamt of
an innocent youth thrown into a dungeon at their instigation for having
written a couple of verses against them. But even this fancy was
completely cast into the shade in a work published in 1885 under the
pseudonym of "Ubalde," the author of which was unquestionably M. Anatole
Loquin. This is his conclusion: "The more I reflect, the more I believe
I recognize in the Man in the Iron Mask, without any elaborate theory,
without prejudice on my part, no other than J. B. Poquelin de Molière."
The Jesuits have got their revenge for _Tartufe_!
Let us come now to the conjectures which have almost hit the truth and
have been defended by genuine scholars.
Superintendent Fouquet is the solution of the bibliophile Jacob (Paul
Lacroix). M. Lair has shown that Fouquet died at Pignerol, of a sort of
apoplexy, on March 23, 1680, at the very moment when there was an idea
at court of sending him to the waters at Bourbon, as a first step
towards his final liberation.
François Ravaisson, the learned and charming keeper of the Arsenal
library, whose work in classifying the archives of the Bastille we have
had the honour to continue, believed for a moment that the celebrated
prisoner might have been the young Count de Kéroualze who had fought at
Candia under the orders of Admiral de Beaufort. Ravaisson put forth his
theory with much hesitation, and as, in the sequel, he was himself led
to abandon it, we need not dwell any longer upon it.
M. Loiseleur, in the course of his brilliant controversy with Marius
Topin, suggested "an obscure spy arrested by Catinat in 1681," and his
opponent refuted him in the most piquant manner by discovering Catinat
in the very prisoner he was said to have arrested!
General Jung published a large volume in support of the claims of a
certain Oldendorf, a native of Lorraine, a spy and poisoner, arrested on
March 29, 1673, in a trap laid for him at one of the passages of the
Somme. The theory was refuted by M. Loiseleur. As M. Lair pointed out,
General Jung did not even succeed in proving that his nominee entered
Pignerol, an essential condition to his being the Man in the Mask.
Baron Carutti urged the claims of a mad Jacobin, a prisoner at Pignerol
whose name remains unknown; but this Jacobin died at Pignerol towards
the close of 1693.'
The recent work of M. Emile Burgaud, written in collaboration with
Commandant Bazeries, made a great sensation. He fixes on General Vivien
Labbé de Bulonde, whom Louvois arrested for having shown dereliction of
a general's duty before Coni. M. Geoffroy de Grandmaison published in
the _Univers_ of January 9, 1895, two receipts signed by General de
Bulonde, one in 1699, when the masked man was in rigorous isolation at
the Bastille, the other in 1705, when he had been dead for two years.
We come at last to the hypothesis which is the most probable of
all--after the true hypothesis, of course. Eustache Dauger, whom M. Lair
identifies with the masked prisoner, was a valet, who had been put into
jail at Pignerol on July 28, 1669. But it must be noted that the masked
prisoner was kept guarded in rigorous secrecy in the early days of his
detention, as long as he was at Pignerol and the Isles of
Sainte-Marguerite. Now, when Dauger went to Pignerol, his case seemed of
such slight importance that Saint-Mars thought of making him into a
servant for the other prisoners, and in fact, in 1675, Louvois gave him
as a valet to Fouquet, who for some time past had seen the rigour of his
confinement sensibly mitigated, receiving visits, walking freely in the
courts and purlieus of the fortress, Dauger accompanying him. Further,
we know that the masked man was transferred direct from Pignerol to the
Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, whilst Dauger was transferred in 1681 to
Exiles, whence he only went to the Isles in 1687.
We now come to the correct solution.
3. MATTIOLI.
To Baron Heiss, once captain in the Alsace regiment, and one of the most
distinguished bibliophiles of his time, belongs the honour of being the
first, in a letter dated from Phalsbourg, June 28, 1770, and published
by the _Journal encyclopédique_, to identify the masked prisoner with
Count Mattioli, secretary of state to the Duke of Mantua. After him,
Dutens, in 1783, in his _Intercepted Correspondence_; Baron de
Chambrier, in 1795, in a Memoir presented to the Academy of Berlin;
Roux-Fazillac, member of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, in
a remarkable work printed in 1801; then successively, Reth, Delort,
Ellis, Carlo Botta, Armand Baschet, Marius Topin, Paul de Saint-Victor,
and M. Gallien, in a series of publications more or less important,
endeavoured to prove that the Man in the Mask was the Duke of Mantua's
secretary of state. The scholars most intimate with the history of Louis
XIV.'s government, Depping, Chéruel, Camille Rousset, have not hesitated
to pronounce in favour of the same view; while against them,
singlehanded like his D'Artagnan, Alexandre Dumas resisted the efforts
of twenty scholars, and the _Vicomte de Bragelonne_--giving a new lease
of life to the legend about the brother of Louis XIV., put in
circulation by Voltaire, and reinforced by the Revolution--drove back
into their dust among the archives the documents which students had
exhumed.
We have no longer to deal with so formidable an adversary, and we hope
that the following pages will not leave the shadow of a doubt.
We know how, under the influence of Louvois, the able and insinuating
policy directed first by Mazarin, then by Lionne, gave way to a military
diplomacy, blunt and aggressive. Louis XIV. was master of Pignerol,
acquired in 1632. He was induced by Louvois to cast covetous glances at
Casal. In possession of these two places, the French armies could not
but dominate Upper Italy, and hold the court of Turin directly at their
mercy. The throne of Mantua was then occupied by a young duke, Charles
IV. of Gonzago, frivolous, happy-go-lucky, dissipating his wealth at
Venice in fêtes and pleasures. In 1677 he had pledged to the Jews the
crown revenues for several years. Charles IV. was also Marquis of
Montferrat, of which Casal was the capital. Noting with watchful eye the
frivolity and financial straits of the young prince, the court of
Versailles conceived the bold scheme of buying Casal for hard cash.
At this date, one of the principal personages in Mantua was Count
Hercules Antony Mattioli. He was born at Bologna on December 1, 1640, of
a distinguished family. A brilliant student, he had barely passed his
twentieth year when he was elected a professor at the University of
Bologna. Afterwards he established himself at Mantua, where Charles
III., whose confidence he had won, made him his secretary of state.
Charles IV., continuing the favour of his father, not only maintained
Mattioli in his office as minister of state, but appointed him an
honorary senator, a dignity which was enhanced by the title of Count.
Louis XIV. was employing at the capital of the Venetian republic a
keen-witted and enterprising ambassador, the Abbé d'Estrades. He saw
through the ambitious and intriguing nature of Mattioli, and, towards
the end of 1677, succeeded in winning over his support for the designs
of the French court on Casal.
On January 12, 1678, Louis XIV. with his own hand wrote expressing his
thanks to Mattioli, who by-and-by came to Paris. On December 8, the
contract was signed, the Duke of Mantua receiving in exchange for Casal
100,000 crowns. In a private audience, Louis XIV. presented Mattioli
with a costly diamond and paid him the sum of a hundred double louis.
Scarcely two months after Mattioli's journey to France, the courts of
Vienna, Madrid, Turin, and the Venetian Republic were simultaneously
informed of all that had taken place. In order to reap a double harvest
of gold, Mattioli had cynically betrayed both his master Charles IV. and
the King of France. Like a thunderbolt there came to Versailles the news
of the arrest of Baron d'Asfeld, the envoy appointed by Louis XIV. to
exchange ratifications with Mattioli. The governor of Milan had caused
him to be seized and handed over to the Spaniards. The rage of Louis
XIV. and of Louvois, who had urged the opening of negotiations, taken
an active part in them, and begun preparations for the occupation of
Casal, may well be imagined. The Abbé d'Estrades, not less irritated,
conceived a scheme of the most daring kind, proposing to Versailles
nothing less than the abduction of the Mantuan minister. But Louis XIV.
was determined to have no scandal. Catinat was charged with carrying out
the scheme in person. The Abbé d'Estrades, in his dealings with
Mattioli, feigned ignorance of the double game the Count was playing. He
led him to believe, on the contrary, that the balance of the sums
promised at Versailles was about to be paid. A meeting was fixed for May
2, 1679. On that day d'Estrades and Mattioli got into a carriage, the
passing of which was awaited by Catinat accompanied by some dozen men.
At two o'clock in the afternoon, Mattioli was in the fortress of
Pignerol, in the hands of jailer Saint-Mars. When we remember the rank
held by the Italian minister, we are confronted with one of the most
audacious violations of international law of which history has preserved
a record.
Early in the year 1694, Mattioli was transferred to the Isles of
Sainte-Marguerite; we have seen that he entered the Bastille on
September 18, 1698, and died there on November 19, 1703.
The details that we possess of the imprisonment of Mattioli at Pignerol
and afterwards at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite show that he was at the
outset treated with the consideration due to his rank and to the
position he occupied at the time of his arrest. Eventually the respect
which the prisoner had at first inspired gradually diminished: as years
went on the attentions shown him grew less and less until the day when,
at the Bastille, he was given a room in common with persons of the
basest class. On the other hand, the rigour of his confinement, so far
as the secrecy in which he was kept was concerned, was more and more
relaxed; what it was material to conceal was the circumstances under
which Mattioli had been arrested, and with the lapse of time this secret
continually diminished in importance. As to the mask of black velvet
which Mattioli had among his possessions when he was arrested, and which
he put on, without a doubt, only for the occasion, this in reality
constituted a relief to his captivity, for it permitted the prisoner to
leave his room, while the other state prisoners were rigorously mewed up
in theirs.
* * * * *
It remains to prove that the masked prisoner was really Mattioli.
1. In the despatch sent by Louis XIV. to the Abbé d'Estrades five days
before the arrest, the king approves the scheme of his ambassador and
authorizes him to secure Mattioli, "since you believe you can get him
carried off without the affair giving rise to any scandal." The prisoner
is to be conducted to Pignerol, where "instructions are being sent to
receive him and keep him there without anybody having knowledge of it."
The king's orders close with these words: "You must see to it that no
one knows what becomes of this man." The capture effected, Catinat wrote
on his part to Louvois: "It came off without any violence, and no one
knows the name of the knave, not even the officers who helped to arrest
him." Finally, we have a very curious pamphlet entitled _La Prudenza
triomfante di Casale_, written in 1682, that is, little more than two
years after the event, and--this slight detail 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, confirmed by a tradition
which in the eighteenth century was still rife in the district, where
scholars succeeded in culling it.
Is there any need to insist on the strength of the proofs afforded by
these three documents, taken in connection one with another?
2. We know, from du Junca's register, that the masked man was shut up at
Pignerol under the charge of Saint-Mars. In 1681, Saint-Mars gave up the
governorship of Pignerol for that of Exiles. We can determine with
absolute precision the number of prisoners Saint-Mars had then in his
keeping. It was exactly five. A dispatch from Louvois, dated June 9, is
very clear. In the first paragraph, he orders "the two prisoners in the
lower tower" to be removed; in the second, he adds: "The rest of the
prisoners in your charge." Here there is a clear indication of the
"rest": what follows settles the number: "The Sieur du Chamoy has orders
to pay two crowns a day for the board of these _three_ prisoners." This
account, as clear as arithmetic can make it, is further confirmed by the
letter addressed by Saint-Mars to the Abbé d'Estrades on June 25, 1681,
when he was setting out for Exiles: "I received yesterday the warrant
appointing me governor of Exiles: I am to keep charge of two jailbirds I
have here, who have no other name than 'the gentlemen of the lower
tower'; Mattioli will remain here with two other prisoners."
The prisoners, then, were five in number, and the masked man is to be
found, of necessity, among them. Now we know who these five were: (1) a
certain La Rivière, who died at the end of December, 1686; (2) a
Jacobin, out of his mind, who died at the end of 1693; (3) a certain
Dubreuil, who died at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite about 1697. There
remain Dauger and Mattioli. The Man in the Mask is, without possible
dispute, the one or the other. We have explained above the reasons which
lead us to discard Dauger. The mysterious prisoner, then, was Mattioli.
The proof is mathematically exact.
[Illustration:
Burial certificate of the masked prisoner (November 20, 1703),
reproduced from the facsimile in the sixth edition of _The Man in
the Iron Mask_, by Marius Topin, 1883. The original, in the city
archives of Paris, was destroyed in the conflagration of 1871.
]
3. Opposite this page will be found a facsimile reproduction of the
death certificate of the masked prisoner as inscribed on the registers
of the church of St. Paul. It is the very name of the Duke of Mantua's
former secretary that is traced there: "Marchioly." It must be
remembered that "Marchioly" would be pronounced in Italian "Markioly,"
and that Saint-Mars, governor of the Bastille, who furnished the
information on which the certificate was drawn up, almost always wrote
in his correspondence--a characteristic detail--not "Mattioli," but
"Martioly": that is the very name on the register, less distorted than
the name of the major of the Bastille, who was called "Rosarges," and
not "Rosage," as given on the register; and the name of the surgeon, who
was called "Reilhe," and not "Reglhe."
It has been shown above how, as time went on, the rigorous seclusion to
which the masked prisoner had been condemned was relaxed. What it had
been thought necessary to conceal was the manner in which Mattioli had
been captured, and with time that secret itself had lost its importance.
As the Duke of Mantua had declared himself very well pleased with the
arrest of the minister by whom he, no less than Louis XIV., had been
deceived, there was nothing to prevent the name from being inscribed on
a register of death, where, moreover, no one would ever have thought of
looking for it.
Let us add that, in consequence of error or carelessness on the part of
the officer who supplied the information for the register, or perhaps on
the part of the parson or beadle who wrote it, the age is stated
incorrectly, "forty-five years or thereabouts," while Mattioli was
sixty-three when he died. However, the register was filled up without
the least care, as a formality of no importance.
4. The Duke de Choiseul pressed Louis XV. to reveal to him the clue to
the enigma. The king escaped with an evasion. One day, however, he said
to him: "If you knew all about it, you would see that it has very little
interest;" and some time after, when Madame de Pompadour, at de
Choiseul's instigation, pressed the king on the subject, he told her
that the prisoner was "the minister of an Italian prince."
In the _Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette_ by her
principal lady in waiting, Madame de Campan, we read that the queen
tormented Louis XVI., who did not know the secret, to have a search made
among the papers of the various ministries. "I was with the queen," says
Madame de Campan, "when the king, having finished his researches, told
her that he had found nothing in the secret papers which had any bearing
on the existence of this prisoner; that he had spoken on the subject to
M. de Maurepas, whose age brought him nearer the time when the whole
story must have been known to the ministers (Maurepas had been minister
of the king's household as a very young man, in the early years of the
eighteenth century, having the department of the _lettres de cachet_),
and that M. de Maurepas had assured him that the prisoner was simply a
man of a very dangerous character through his intriguing spirit, and a
subject of the Duke of Mantua. He was lured to the frontier, arrested,
and kept a prisoner, at first at Pignerol, then at the Bastille."
These two pieces of evidence are of such weight that they alone would
be sufficient to fix the truth. When they were written, there was no
talk of Mattioli, of whose very name Madame de Campan was ignorant.
Supposing that Madame de Campan had amused herself by inventing a
fable--an absurd and improbable supposition, for what reason could she
have had for so doing?--it is impossible to admit that her imagination
could have hit upon fancies so absolutely in accord with facts.[41]
And so the problem is solved. The legend, which had reared itself even
as high as the throne of France, topples down. The satisfaction of the
historian springs from his reflection that all serious historical works
for more than a century, resting on far-reaching researches and
eschewing all preoccupations foreign to science--such, for example, as
the desire of attaining a result different from the solutions proposed
by one's predecessors--have arrived at the same conclusion, which proves
to be the correct solution. Heiss, Baron de Chambrier, Reth,
Roux-Fazillac, Delort, Carlo Botta, Armand Baschet, Marius Topin, Paul
de Saint-Victor, Camille Rousset, Chéruel, Depping, have not hesitated
to place under the famous mask of black velvet the features of
Mattioli. But at each new effort made by science, legend throws itself
once more into the fray, gaining new activity from the passions produced
by the Revolution.
The truth, in history, sometimes suggests to our mind's eye those white
or yellow flowers which float on the water among broad flat leaves; a
breeze springs up, a wave rises and submerges them, they disappear; but
only for a moment: then they come to the surface again.