THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK.

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 462, 4 July 1871, Page 2

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK.

WHO WAS HE ?—HISTOBY OF HIS IMFBI6ON-

MENT AND DEATH. It was into one of the bombproofs of the fortress of St. Marguerite that, on the 30th day of April, 1668, a man was introduced by Mons. de St. Mars. He had conducted him from Pignerol, in Piedmont, then a province in Prance, where he had been incarcerated since 1662. This prisoner wore upon his face, night and day, a mask of black velvet fastened upon bands of copper, so constructed as to permit the free use of the mouth. The furniture of his prison was of the most sumptuous description. The vessels of his toilette and his table were of silver, and St. Mars, who served him with his food, never persumed to sit in his presence. The order was to kill him the moment he uncovered his face. The fame of the prisoner had gone through all the countries of the world, ai .....

THE HAW IK TBI IBON If ASK. One day the prisoner upon a silver plate with the point of his knife, and threw it cut of his window toward a fisherman's boat that lay just under the wall of his prison. The fisherman picked it up and carried it to the governor of the fortress, St. Mars. He took it, greatly astonished, and. asked the fisherman if! he had read what was written upon ' it; and upon his replying that he did not know how to read, he had been held in custody until he had the most positive proof of the fact, and that the plate had been seen by no one else j he then .dismissed him, sajing: "You are a fortunate fellow in not knowing how to read." Immediately after this occurrence the governor had fastened into the walls (about 12 feet thick), outside of the one window of his prison, a triple network of strong iron bars. They are still to be seen there, half consumed by rust.

No demand of the prisoner, possible to sup* ply, was refused to him. He had the greatest fondness, amounting to a kind of mania, for the finest linen and laces. The fact is well known that at the request of Madame de Saint Mars, Madame le Bret, hor intimate friend, busied herself at Paris in choosing the finest linens and most beautiful laces, which were sent to him in his prison.

One day a frater saw something white floating on the water under his prison. He crept around the foot of the wall and drew it up, and carried it to St. Mars. It was very tightly folded up. St. Mars unfolded it, and found it to be a fine linen shirt, upon which the prisoner had written from end to end. With an air of great concern, he asked the frater if he had the curiosity to read what was written upon the shirt." ..The latter protested many times that he had read nothing. Nevertheless, two days after, he was found dead in •his bed. i JL ....

At one time the arrogant minister of Louis XIV., the infamous Duke dv LouTois came to see the prisoner, and it was observed that he stood up in his presence, and spoke 'to him with tno greatest respect and humility. In September, 1698, ths prisoner was transferred, still under the conduct of St. Mars, to the Bastile, in Paris, where, as one may still read in the journal of Monsier dv Jone, the King's Lieatonant of the Bastile, "he died suddenly, on the 18th of November, 1703, at 4 o'clock, p.m." " Surprised by death," said the Lieutenant, "he was not able to receive the sacrament, but our almoner exhorted him a moment before he died." In the night after his deceaso they buried him in the cemetery of the parish of St. Paul's,

UNBEB THB NAME OF MASOHIAII,

age about 49 years. On the morrow of his interment, a person bribed the gravedigger to uncover the body, thinking to get a view of the unmasked face, as the faces of the dead are usually unmasked. "The old surgeon of ho Bastile," says Voltaire, " told me that he had often seen the tongue of this unknown, but never his face; he was a person admirably well made, with a slightly brown skin, and a most engaging voice. He never complained of his condition." When the people of Paris took the Bastile, in July, 1789, upon examining its register, it was found that the leaf, corresponding to the year 1698, the year of his entrance there, had been cut out. And who was "The Man in the Iron Mask P" Many volumes have been filled with conjectures and various conditions, and some women, too, have figured—The Duke of Beaufort, for instance surnamed

KING O_F TH X HAHES, who was the natural son of Csosar de Vendome, the natural son of Henry IV., by .Gabriel d'Estrees. But at the defence of Oandia, in 1669, the Turks took this King of the Halles, cut off his head and sent it to Constantinople. ' The Duke of Monmouth was another. But well-authenticated state records prove that the blessed King James had him publicly executed in the city of London in 1685. . . Mathioh, secretary of the duke of Mantua was another. And an old physician of Cannesi who was called to see him professionally in his prison at St. Marguerite, declared that " The Man in the Iron Mask" was a womaa j that he knew it by the feeling of his pulse. Whatever he was, it was quite evident that that old fox, Cardinal Bichelieu, and the powers he served, did not wish to have his "face seen. Nor did he deem it expedient to conceal it at once and forever in the grave ; it served him better to keep it as a menace for bis enemies.

In " an addition of the editor" to the work of Voltaire, published in 1771, and consequently, while he, Voltaire ivas still living, and which " addition" the learned bibliographer, Beuchot, ascribes to Voitaire himself, it is written: "The Man in the Iron Mask was without doubt,

THE SOir OF ANNE OF ATTBTBIA, and consequently the brother of Louis XIV., 5k but not the son of Louis XIII., her husband. \ Whoever would know the whole argument 4 may consult the said " addition of the editor" I in tho published works of Voltaire, or by a jf shorter cut may be read ura letter of Benja« U mm IVanklin, written while he was embas- W ■ador at the Court of Versailles, to John Jay, as follows:

" Yesterday I had a conversation with the Duke, de Richelieu. He seems favorably, disposed towards our oause. I flattered him very much in speaking of the administration of his glorious relative, the Cardinal Riphejieu. I took the advantage of this occasion to ask him if he was ignorant as to who the Mag, in the Iron Mask was, since it" was quite evident that 1m must have ,been born during the administration of the Cardinal. My interlocutor "ajfc first took an air qf great mystery; then, telling me that the matter in Question was a secret of State, he revealed to »• wM fcljowii, ana which, -without fear, I

confide to you. The Iron Mask was a child of Anne of Austria, and probably, the Duke of Buckingham was his father. The Queen having no one in whom she dared confide, threw herself in the arms of her enemy, the Cardinal, who arranged everything so as to hide the. affair from the King. It was this event which determined Richelieu to bring the King and the Queen together—the latter up to this time having been considered barren; then the birth of Louis XIV. and of Monsieur. The illegitimate child, at first confided to Madame Motteville, was, after the deathof Richelieu, taken away from her hy Mazarin, who from the age of sixteen years until his death, kept him shut up in prison. The resemblance of tbe captivoto Louis XIV. was astonishing ; and thence tho mask they made him wear. They wished to avoid political complications as well as to hide the weakness of Anne of Austria."

The story runs that Louis XIV. only knew of the existence of this elder brother from Cardinal Mazarin at the hour of his death, and then when near his own end he confided the secret to the Regent d'Orleans, from whose daughter, M'lle de Vallois, afterwards Duchess of Modena, the Duke de Richelieu obtained it at a period when he was her lover.