PAGE 2
The Man With The Iron Mask
by
Of the life of this remarkable state prisoner in the Bastille we have more detailed accounts. Dujunca, the chief turnkey of that prison, has left a journal, which contains the following entry: “On Thursday, the 18th September, 1698, at three o’clock in the afternoon, M. de Saint Mars, the governor, arrived at the Bastille for the first time from the islands of Sainte Marguerite and Sainte Honnat. He brought with him in his own litter an ancient prisoner formerly under his care at Pignerol, and whose name remains untold. This prisoner was always kept masked, and was at first lodged in the Basiniere tower…. I conducted him afterwards to the Bertaudiere tower, and put him in a room, which, by order of M. de Saint Mars, I had furnished before his arrival.”
Throughout the life of this mysterious personage in the Bastille, the secrecy which had so far environed him was rigidly observed. So far as is known, no one ever saw him without his mask. Aside from this, and his detention, everything that could be was done to make his life enjoyable. He was given the best accommodation the Bastille afforded. Nothing that he desired was refused him. He had a strong taste for lace and linen of extreme fineness, and his wishes in this particular were complied with. His table was always served in the most elegant manner, while the governor, who frequently attended him, seldom sat in his presence.
During his intervals of ailment he was attended by the old doctor of the Bastille, who, while often examining his tongue and parts of his body, never saw his face. He represents him as very finely shaped, and of somewhat brownish complexion, with an agreeable and engaging voice. He never complained, nor gave any hint as to who he was, and throughout his whole prison life no one gained the least clue to his identity. The only instance in which he attempted to make himself known is described by Voltaire, who tells us that while at Sainte Marguerite he threw out from the grated window of his cell a piece of fine linen, and a silver plate on which he had traced some strange characters. This, however, is an unauthenticated story.
The detention of this mysterious prisoner in the Bastille was not an extended one. He died in 1703. Dujunca’s journal tells the story of his death. “On Monday, the 19th of November, 1703, the unknown prisoner, who had continually worn a black velvet mask, and whom M. de Saint Mars had brought with him from the island of Sainte Marguerite, died to-day at about ten o’clock in the evening, having been yesterday taken slightly ill. He had been a long time in M. de Saint Mars’ hands, and his illness was exceedingly trifling.”
There is one particular of interest in this record. The “iron mask” appears to have been really a mask of black velvet, the only iron about it being the springs, which permitted the lower part to be lifted.
The question now arises, Who was the “man with the iron mask”? It is a question which has been long debated, without definite conclusion. Chamillard was the last minister of Louis XIV. who knew this secret. When he was dying, his son-in-law, Marshal de Feuillade, begged him on his knees to reveal the mystery. He begged in vain. Chamillard answered that it was a secret of state, which he had sworn never to reveal, and he died with it untold.
Voltaire, in his “Age of Louis XIV.,” was the first to call special attention to this mystery, and since then numerous conjectures have been made as to who the Iron Mask really was. One writer has suggested that he was an illegitimate son of Anne of Austria, the queen-mother. Another identifies him with a supposed twin brother of Louis XIV., whose birth Richelieu had concealed. Others make him the Count of Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis XIV.; the Duke of Beaufort, a hero of the Fronde; the Duke of Monmouth, the English pretender of 1685; Fouquet, Louis’s disgraced minister of finance; a son of Cromwell, the English protector; and various other wild and unfounded guesses. After all has been said, the identity of the prisoner remains unknown. Mattioli, a diplomatic agent of the Duke of Mantua, who was long imprisoned at Pignerol and at Sainte Marguerite, was for a long time generally thought to be the Iron Mask, but there is good reason to believe that he died in 1694.
Conjecture has exhausted itself, and yet the identity of this strange captive remains a mystery, and is likely always to continue so. The fact that all the exalted personages of the day can be traced renders it probable that the veiled prisoner was really an obscure individual, whom the caprice of Louis XIV. surrounded with conditions intended to excite the curiosity of the public. There are on record other instances of imprisonment under similar conditions of inviolate secrecy, and it is not impossible that the king may have endeavored, for no purpose higher than whim, to surround the story of this one with unbroken mystery. If such were his purpose it has succeeded, for there is no more mysterious person in history than the Man with the Iron Mask.