WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 51, 24 November 1926, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By T.D.H.)

The good folk of Cannes are reported this morning to be up in arms at a. proposal of the French Government to sell the little Isle of St. Margeurite there on whic hthe Man in the Iron Mask was once imprisoned. This island has noHiing of especial interest on it except a cell in its fortress occupied by this enigmatical prisoner, and although the mystery of who the prisoner was will probably never be celared up, there is nothing except imaginative speculation to indicate that he was a person of any great importance. Still a mystery that nobody has solved is always a good draw. Everybody of a curious disposition who goes to Cannes naturally likes to see the actual place wherae „ the Man in the Iron Mask was locked • up, and the Cannes people have the soundest grounds for their grumbling at the prospect of losing this show place.

One of the few things clear about the Man in the Iron Mask is that he wasn’t in an iron mask. The mask he wore was of black velvet. It was put on when the prisoner was allowed outside his cell for exercise, and effectually prevented anyone from recognising him. It was not the custom in the seventeenth century to advertise the names of the unhappy folk incarcerated in the prisons of France. Masks of velvet were used even _to shroud the features of common criminals. The Man in the Iron Mask died in the Bastille, in Paris, on November 20, 1703, and was bimed under the name of Marchioly. Forty- years later the author of an anonymous book declared him to have been _ a natural son of Louis XIV. Voltaire wrote a detailed account of the prisoner, making him out to be an elder brother of Louis XIV., whom that monarch would, naturally, have _ to keep well out of the way to continue as rightful King of France. •

It was Voltaire who first changed the mask from velvet into iron. Dumas in his great novel factory, where he had a staff of scribes grinding out fiction under his direction, found this material far too good to waste. To improve the occasion he made Louis XIV. and the Man in the Iron Mask twin brothers, and ended up by confronting the two brothers in a scene of terrific majesty.

From this time onwards it has been assumed that the mysterious prisoner was at least a person of great importance. Histofv has been ransacked for people who clied prematurely or mysteriously disappeared about the date that the Man in the Iron Mask first appeared in the prison of St. Marguerite’s Isle. That date is not known precisely, but it appears to have been somewhere between 1660 and 1670. It was in 169 b that the prisoner was transferred to the Bastille where he died five years lat«One writer has proved to his own satisfaction, if not to other people s, that the man of mystery was Moliere, the famous French dramatist. Another asserts that he was the Duke of Alonmouth, usually supposed to have been executed at London in 1685 after his rebellion. Other theories are that he was (1) Francois de Vendome, Duke ot Beaufort, and (2). an Armenian patriarch named Avedick.

When Napoleon appeared on the scene a new tnrn was given to the legends, and the credulous affirmed that a son had been bom to this elder brother of Louis XIV while m durance vile on St. Marguerite’s Isle and had been smuggled away to Corsica, where he grew up under the name of De Buoua Parte,” and ultimately rose to become the Emperor Napoleon, who thus sat bv right of birth upon the throne of France. Between these accounts there is very little to choose. Had there not been all the excitement raised the public would probably have accepted the explanation that the “Marchioly” of the burial register was Count Mattioli, an Italian spy and counter-spy who was kidnapped in France and imprisoned at St. Marguerite. w

Industrious research has led, however, to a theory that Count died on the island long before l<o3. Mr. Andrew Lang built up a theory that the prisoner was a valet named Martin, alias Dauger, who had been nrivv to some double-dealing negotiations bv Louis XIV to help the Roman Catholic Parity in Britain. More recently Monsignor Barnes has affianced the view that the Man in the Iron Mask was in reality that strange person James de la Cloche, the hrst of the numerous natural sons born to Charles 11. James de la Cloche disappears from history mysteriously in 1668, after receiving an assurance from his Roval parent that if he and the Duke of York (James II) died without legitimate issue he (James de_ la Cloche) must assuredly became King of England. » * •

However, immediately after James de la Cloche sinks from view, a gentleman well supplied with money and jewels, and calling himself Prince Janies Stewart, bobs up in Naples, and in a large and democratic way marries the beautiful Teresa Corona, daughter of an innkeeper. Whether this man was James de la Cloche or an imposter is another matter of dispute, but the more learned view is that he wasn’t. Monsignor Barnes turns the mysterious James into the Abbe Pregnani, who got into the inside of a lot of royal plots and learnt so much more than was good for anybody that Louis XIV in the end clapped him up in the alleged Iron Mask. The reader thus pavs his money and takes his choice, and the sceptics assert that the Man in the Iron Mask was nobody of any great account at all.

“My little boy knows more about the radio than I do.” . “Mine knows more about it than the manufacturer.”

"I ’ear Bill ’Awkins is suin’ the company fer damages.” “Why, wot ’ave thev done to im? "They blew the quitted whistlewhen ’e was carryin’ a ’eavy bit o’ wood an’ ’e dropped it on ’is foot.”

“I have onlv one request to make.” groaned the 'college man who had come to work in the harvest. "What is that, Mr. Smart?” returned the fanner. . . , , “Please let me stay m bed long enough for the lamp chimney to coo! off.” FAINT HEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN. At nine in the morning there passed a church, At ten there passed one by the sea, At twelve a town of smoke and smirch. At two a forest of oak and birch. And then, on a platform, she: A radiant stranger, who saw not me. I queried, "Get out to her do I dare? But T kept my seat in my search for a plea, . And the wheels moved on. O con.a it but be That I had alighted there! —Thomas Hardy.