Man in the Iron Mask (essay)

Man in the Iron Mask (essay)

The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Man in the Iron Mask, by Dumas,
Pere #20 in our series by Alexandre Dumas, Pere
This is the essay entitled The Man in the Iron Mask, not the novel [The
Man in the Iron Mask [The Novel] Dumas #28[nmaskxxx.xxx]2759]
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Title: The Man in the Iron Mask [An Essay]
Author: Alexandre Dumas, Pere
Release Date: August, 2001 [EBook #2751] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was last updated on November
14, 2002

Edition: 12
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN
IN THE IRON MASK ***

This eBook was produced by David Widger
Extensive proofing of this file was done by Trevor Carlson

ETEXT EDITORS NOTE:
We place little credence in a "story"--perhaps, a bit more faith in
"his-story". Dumas (Pere) has given us some of the world's finest
"stories", and as in this short monograph on "The Man in the Iron
Mask," some very well documented "history." He concluded 150 years
ago that these events were a mystery and now 300 years from the era of
Louis XIV--they remain so. Many historians from Voltaire down
through other famous authorities have given us the final answer to this
puzzle. But history students should keep always in mind the words of
the revered historian Will Durant:
"If you believe history--and you must not....."
D.W.
This is the essay entitled The Man in the Iron Mask, not the novel [The
Man in the Iron Mask [The Novel] Dumas #28[nmaskxxx.xxx]2759]

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK

For nearly one hundred years this curious problem has exercised the
imagination of writers of fiction--and of drama, and the patience of the
learned in history. No subject is more obscure and elusive, and none
more attractive to the general mind. It is a legend to the meaning of
which none can find the key and yet in which everyone believes.

Involuntarily we feel pity at the thought of that long captivity
surrounded by so many extraordinary precautions, and when we dwell
on the mystery which enveloped the captive, that pity is not only
deepened but a kind of terror takes possession of us. It is very likely
that if the name of the hero of this gloomy tale had been known at the
time, he would now be forgotten. To give him a name would be to
relegate him at once to the ranks of those commonplace offenders who
quickly exhaust our interest and our tears. But this being, cut off from
the world without leaving any discoverable trace, and whose
disappearance apparently caused no void--this captive, distinguished
among captives by the unexampled nature of his punishment, a prison
within a prison, as if the walls of a mere cell were not narrow enough,
has come to typify for us the sum of all the human misery and suffering
ever inflicted by unjust tyranny.
Who was the Man in the Mask? Was he rapt away into this silent
seclusion from the luxury of a court, from the intrigues of diplomacy,
from the scaffold of a traitor, from the clash of battle? What did he
leave behind? Love, glory, or a throne? What did he regret when hope
had fled? Did he pour forth imprecations and curses on his tortures and
blaspheme against high Heaven, or did he with a sigh possess his soul
in patience?
The blows of fortune are differently received according to the different
characters of those on whom they fall; and each one of us who in
imagination threads the subterranean passages leading to the cells of
Pignerol and Exilles, and incarcerates himself in the Iles
Sainte-Marguerite and in the Bastille, the successive scenes of that
long-protracted agony will give the prisoner a form shaped by his own
fancy and a grief proportioned to his own