Man in the Iron Mask (essay) | Page 9

thus
speaks:--
"It was to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite that the famous prisoner with the
iron mask whose name has never been discovered, was transported at

the end of the last century; very few of those attached to his service
were allowed to speak to him. One day, as M. de Saint-Mars was
conversing with him, standing outside his door, in a kind of corridor, so
as to be able to see from a distance everyone who approached, the son
of one of the governor's friends, hearing the voices, came up;
Saint-Mars quickly closed the door of the room, and, rushing to meet
the young man, asked him with an air of great anxiety if he had
overheard anything that was said. Having convinced himself that he
had heard nothing, the governor sent the young man away the same day,
and wrote to the father that the adventure was like to have cost the son
dear, and that he had sent him back to his home to prevent any further
imprudence.
"I was curious enough to visit the room in which the unfortunate man
was imprisoned, on the 2nd of February 1778. It is lighted by one
window to the north, overlooking the sea, about fifteen feet above the
terrace where the sentries paced to and fro. This window was pierced
through a very thick wall and the embrasure barricaded by three iron
bars, thus separating the prisoner from the sentries by a distance of over
two fathoms. I found an officer of the Free Company in the fortress
who was nigh on fourscore years old; he told me that his father, who
had belonged to the same Company, had often related to him how a
friar had seen something white floating on the water under the
prisoner's window. On being fished out and carried to M. de Saint-Mars,
it proved to be a shirt of very fine material, loosely folded together, and
covered with writing from end to end. M. de Saint-Mars spread it out
and read a few words, then turning to the friar who had brought it he
asked him in an embarrassed manner if he had been led by curiosity to
read any of the writing. The friar protested repeatedly that he had not
read a line, but nevertheless he was found dead in bed two days later.
This incident was told so often to my informant by his father and by the
chaplain of the fort of that time that he regarded it as incontestably true.
The following fact also appears to me to be equally well established by
the testimony of many witnesses. I collected all the evidence I could on
the spot, and also in the Lerins monastery, where the tradition is
preserved.
"A female attendant being wanted for the prisoner, a woman of the
village of Mongin offered herself for the place, being under the

impression that she would thus be able to make her children's fortune;
but on being told that she would not only never be allowed to see her
children again, but would be cut off from the rest of the world as well,
she refused to be shut up with a prisoner whom it cost so much to serve.
I may mention here that at the two outer angles of the wall of the fort
which faced the sea two sentries were placed, with orders to fire on any
boat which approached within a certain distance.
"The prisoner's personal attendant died in the Iles Sainte- Marguerite.
The brother of the officer whom I mentioned above was partly in the
confidence of M. de Saint-Mars, and he often told how he was
summoned to the prison once at midnight and ordered to remove a
corpse, and that he carried it on his shoulders to the burial- place,
feeling certain it was the prisoner who was dead; but it was only his
servant, and it was then that an effort was made to supply his place by a
female attendant."
Abbe Papon gives some curious details, hitherto unknown to the public,
but as he mentions no names his narrative cannot be considered as
evidence. Voltaire never replied to Lagrange-Chancel, who died the
same year in which his letter was published. Freron desiring to revenge
himself for the scathing portrait which Voltaire had drawn of him in the
'Ecossaise', called to his assistance a more redoubtable adversary than
Lagrange-Chancel. Sainte-Foix had brought to the front a brand new
theory, founded on a passage by Hume in an article in the 'Annee
Litteraire' (1768, vol. iv.), in which he maintained that the Man in the
Iron Mask was the Duke of Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II, who
was found guilty of high treason and beheaded in London on the 15th
July 1685.
This