The Valets Tragedy | Page 5

records the arrival of the new Governor of
the Bastille, M. de Saint-Mars, bringing with him, from his last place,
the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, in the bay of Cannes, 'an old prisoner
whom he had at Pignerol. He keeps the prisoner always masked, his
name is not spoken. . . and I have put him, alone, in the third chamber
of the Bertaudiere tower, having furnished it some days before with
everything, by order of M. de Saint-Mars. The prisoner is to be served
and cared for by M. de Rosarges,' the officer next in command under
Saint-Mars.*
*Funck-Brentano. Legendes et Archives de la Bastille, pp. 86, 87, Paris,
1898, p. 277, a facsimile of this entry.
The prisoner's death is entered by du Junca on November 19, 1703. To
that entry we return later.
The existence of this prisoner was known and excited curiosity. On
October 15, 1711, the Princess Palatine wrote about the case to the
Electress Sophia of Hanover, 'A man lived for long years in the Bastille,
masked, and masked he died there. Two musketeers were by his side to
shoot him if ever he unmasked. He ate and slept in his mask. There
must, doubtless, have been some good reason for this, as otherwise he
was very well treated, well lodged, and had everything given to him
that he wanted. He took the Communion masked; was very devout, and
read perpetually.'
On October 22, 1711, the Princess writes that the Mask was an English
nobleman, mixed up in the plot of the Duke of Berwick against
William III.--Fenwick's affair is meant. He was imprisoned and masked
that the Dutch usurper might never know what had become of him.*
* Op. cit. 98, note 1.
The legend was now afloat in society. The sub-commandant of the
Bastille from 1749 to 1787, Chevalier, declared, obviously on the
evidence of tradition, that all the Mask's furniture and clothes were
destroyed at his death, lest they might yield a clue to his identity. Louis

XV. is said to have told Madame de Pompadour that the Mask was 'the
minister of an Italian prince.' Louis XVI. told Marie Antoinette
(according to Madame de Campan) that the Mask was a Mantuan
intriguer, the same person as Louis XV. indicated. Perhaps he was, it is
one of two possible alternatives. Voltaire, in the first edition of his
'Siecle de Louis XIV.,' merely spoke of a young, handsome, masked
prisoner, treated with the highest respect by Louvois, the Minister of
Louis XIV. At last, in 'Questions sur l'Encyclopedie' (second edition),
Voltaire averred that the Mask was the son of Anne of Austria and
Mazarin, an elder brother of Louis XIV. Changes were rung on this
note: the Mask was the actual King, Louis XIV. was a bastard. Others
held that he was James, Duke of Monmouth--or Moliere! In 1770 Heiss
identified him with Mattioli, the Mantuan intriguer, and especially after
the appearance of the book by Roux Fazaillac, in 1801, that was the
generally accepted opinion.
It MAY be true, in part. Mattioli MAY have been the prisoner who
died in the Bastille in November 1703, but the legend of the Mask's
prison life undeniably arose out of the adventure of our valet, Martin or
Eustache Dauger.

2. THE VALET'S HISTORY

After reading the arguments of the advocates of Mattioli, I could not
but perceive that, whatever captive died, masked, at the Bastille in 1703,
the valet Dauger was the real source of most of the legends about the
Man in the Iron Mask. A study of M. Lair's book 'Nicholas Foucquet'
(1890) confirmed this opinion. I therefore pushed the inquiry into a
source neglected by the French historians, namely, the correspondence
of the English ambassadors, agents, and statesmen for the years 1668,
1669.* One result is to confirm a wild theory of my own to the effect
that the Man in the Iron Mask (if Dauger were he) may have been as
great a mystery to himself as to historical inquirers. He may not have
known WHAT he was imprisoned for doing! More important is the
probable conclusion that the long and mysterious captivity of Eustache

Dauger, and of another perfectly harmless valet and victim, was the
mere automatic result of the 'red tape' of the old French absolute
monarchy. These wretches were caught in the toils of the system, and
suffered to no purpose, for no crime. The two men, at least Dauger,
were apparently mere supernumeraries in the obscure intrigue of a
conspirator known as Roux de Marsilly.
*The papers are in the Record Office; for the contents see the following
essay, 'The Valet's Master.'
This truly abominable tragedy of Roux de Marsilly is 'another story,'
narrated in the following essay. It must suffice here to say that, in 1669,
while