Man in the Iron Mask (essay) | Page 7

scholars thus set forth met with little credence, and were soon forgotten
in a new solution.
The third historian to write about the prisoner of the Iles Sainte-
Marguerite was Lagrange-Chancel. He was just twenty-nine years of
age when, excited by Freron's hatred of Voltaire, he addressed a letter
from his country place, Antoniat, in Perigord, to the 'Annee Litteraire'
(vol. iii. p. 188), demolishing the theory advanced in the 'Siecle de
Louis XIV', and giving facts which he had collected whilst himself
imprisoned in the same place as the unknown prisoner twenty years
later.
"My detention in the Iles-Saint-Marguerite," says Lagrange-Chancel,
"brought many things to my knowledge which a more painstaking
historian than M. de Voltaire would have taken the trouble to find out;
for at the time when I was taken to the islands the imprisonment of the
Man in the Iron Mask was no longer regarded as a state secret. This
extraordinary event, which M. de Voltaire places in 1662, a few months
after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, did not take place till 1669, eight
years after the death of His Eminence. M. de La Motte- Guerin,
commandant of the islands in my time, assured me that the prisoner
was the Duc de Beaufort, who was reported killed at the siege of
Candia, but whose body had never been recovered, as all the narratives
of that event agree in stating. He also told me that M. de Saint-Mars,
who succeeded Pignerol as governor of the islands, showed great
consideration for the prisoner, that he waited on him at table, that the
service was of silver, and that the clothes supplied to the prisoner were
as costly as he desired; that when he was ill and in need of a physician
or surgeon, he was obliged under pain of death to wear his mask in
their presence, but that when he was alone he was permitted to pull out
the hairs of his beard with steel tweezers, which were kept bright and
polished. I saw a pair of these which had been actually used for this
purpose in the possession of M. de Formanoir, nephew of Saint-Mars,
and lieutenant of a Free Company raised for the purpose of guarding
the prisoners. Several persons told me that when Saint-Mars, who had

been placed over the Bastille, conducted his charge thither, the latter
was heard to say behind his iron mask, 'Has the king designs on my
life?' To which Saint-Mars replied, 'No, my prince; your life is safe:
you must only let yourself be guided.'
"I also learned from a man called Dubuisson, cashier to the well-
known Samuel Bernard, who, having been imprisoned for some years
in the Bastile, was removed to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, where he was
confined along with some others in a room exactly over the one
occupied by the unknown prisoner. He told me that they were able to
communicate with him by means of the flue of the chimney, but on
asking him why he persisted in not revealing his name and the cause of
his imprisonment, he replied that such an avowal would be fatal not
only to him but to those to whom he made it.
"Whether it were so or not, to-day the name and rank of this political
victim are secrets the preservation of which is no longer necessary to
the State; and I have thought that to tell the public what I know would
cut short the long chain of circumstances which everyone was forging
according to his fancy, instigated thereto by an author whose gift of
relating the most impossible events in such a manner as to make them
seem true has won for all his writings such success--even for his Vie de
Charles XII"
This theory, according to Jacob, is more probable than any of the
others.
"Beginning with the year 1664.," he says, "the Duc de Beaufort had by
his insubordination and levity endangered the success of several
maritime expeditions. In October 1666 Louis XIV remonstrated with
him with much tact, begging him to try to make himself more and more
capable in the service of his king by cultivating the talents with which
he was endowed, and ridding himself of the faults which spoilt his
conduct. 'I do not doubt,' he concludes, 'that you will be all the more
grateful to me for this mark of my benevolence towards you, when you
reflect how few kings have ever shown their goodwill in a similar
manner.'" ( 'Oeuvres de Louis XIV', vol. v. p. 388). Several calamities
in the royal navy are known to have been brought about by the Duc de
Beaufort. M. Eugene Sue, in his 'Histoire de la Marine', which is full of
new and curious information, has drawn a very good