Man in the Iron Mask (essay) | Page 2

power of suffering. How we
long to pierce the thoughts and feel the heart-beats and watch the
trickling tears behind that machine-like exterior, that impassible mask!
Our imagination is powerfully excited by the dumbness of that fate
borne by one whose words never reached the outward air, whose
thoughts could never be read on the hidden features; by the isolation of
forty years secured by two-fold barriers of stone and iron, and she
clothes the object of her contemplation in majestic splendour, connects
the mystery which enveloped his existence with mighty interests, and
persists in regarding the prisoner as sacrificed for the preservation of

some dynastic secret involving the peace of the world and the stability
of a throne.
And when we calmly reflect on the whole case, do we feel that our first
impulsively adopted opinion was wrong? Do we regard our belief as a
poetical illusion? I do not think so; on the contrary, it seems to me that
our good sense approves our fancy's flight. For what can be more
natural than the conviction that the secret of the name, age, and features
of the captive, which was so perseveringly kept through long years at
the cost of so much care, was of vital importance to the Government?
No ordinary human passion, such as anger, hate, or vengeance, has so
dogged and enduring a character; we feel that the measures taken were
not the expression of a love of cruelty, for even supposing that Louis
XIV were the most cruel of princes, would he not have chosen one of
the thousand methods of torture ready to his hand before inventing a
new and strange one? Moreover, why did he voluntarily burden himself
with the obligation of surrounding a prisoner with such numberless
precautions and such sleepless vigilance? Must he not have feared that
in spite of it all the walls behind which he concealed the dread mystery
would one day let in the light? Was it not through his entire reign a
source of unceasing anxiety? And yet he respected the life of the
captive whom it was so difficult to hide, and the discovery of whose
identity would have been so dangerous. It would have been so easy to
bury the secret in an obscure grave, and yet the order was never given.
Was this an expression of hate, anger, or any other passion? Certainly
not; the conclusion we must come to in regard to the conduct of the
king is that all the measures he took against the prisoner were dictated
by purely political motives; that his conscience, while allowing him to
do everything necessary to guard the secret, did not permit him to take
the further step of putting an end to the days of an unfortunate man,
who in all probability was guilty of no crime.
Courtiers are seldom obsequious to the enemies of their master, so that
we may regard the respect and consideration shown to the Man in the
Mask by the governor Saint-Mars, and the minister Louvois, as a
testimony, not only to his high rank, but also to his innocence.
For my part, I make no pretensions to the erudition of the bookworm,
and I cannot read the history of the Man in the Iron Mask without
feeling my blood boil at the abominable abuse of power--the heinous

crime of which he was the victim.
A few years ago, M. Fournier and I, thinking the subject suitable for
representation on the stage, undertook to read, before dramatising it, all
the different versions of the affair which had been published up to that
time. Since our piece was successfully performed at the Odeon two
other versions have appeared: one was in the form of a letter addressed
to the Historical Institute by M. Billiard, who upheld the conclusions
arrived at by Soulavie, on whose narrative our play was founded; the
other was a work by the bibliophile Jacob, who followed a new system
of inquiry, and whose book displayed the results of deep research and
extensive reading. It did not, however, cause me to change my opinion.
Even had it been published before I had written my drama, I should still
have adhered to the idea as to the most probable solution of the
problem which I had arrived at in 1831, not only because it was
incontestably the most dramatic, but also because it is supported by
those moral presumptions which have such weight with us when
considering a dark and doubtful question like the one before us. It will,
be objected, perhaps, that dramatic writers, in their love of the
marvellous and the pathetic, neglect logic and strain after effect, their
aim being to obtain the applause of the gallery rather than the
approbation of the learned. But to this