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THE MAN 
IN THE IRON MASK 


BY 


TIGHE HOPKINS, 


AUTHOR OF “AN IDLER IN OLD FRANCE,” ETC. ETC. 


COPYRIGHT EDITION. 


LEIPZIG 
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 


1901, 


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VOL. 3491. 


THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 
; BY 
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IN ONE VOLUME. 


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TO 


MY WIFE. 


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PROLOGUE. 


“TELL me, I pray thee, thy name,” cried Jacob, 
wrestling with the dark adversary at Peniel. So have 
successive generations of writers striven with that plaguy 
ghost of history, the Man in the Iron Mask, and have 
vainly entreated his name. But it has at last been 
spoken. The mask has dropped from him, behind 
which he lurked, it seemed, impregnably. 

The solution of this diplomatic mystery of two cen- 
turies, the “ultimate dim Thule” of so many specula- 
tions, brings forward no new appellant. It disposes 
finally of a host of pretenders (whose claims have been, 
however, for the most part, quite abandoned in this 
century), but it seeks the tragic honours of the mask for 
no fresh candidate. This may be a disappointment to 
some, for what is most fabulous in this history has at 
least been richest in dramatic surprises; but to others, 
and especially to those who have followed the progress 


of research in France, and who are not unacquainted 


8 PROLOGUE. 


with the earliest true surmises on the subject, it will be 
rather gratifying to discover in the victim of Louis XIV.’s 
vengeance that Mattioli who was first put forward a 
hundred and thirty years ago—whose pretensions to the 
mask have been canvassed, debated, approved, assailed, 
rejected, renewed, and are now reduced to demonstration. 

History has allowed a long innings to guesswork, 
tradition, and invention in all that has concerned the 
Man in the Iron Mask. But the truth is that she has 
been ready to come into her own, to yield up the secrct 
of the Mask, almost any time since the opening of the 
century. The mght kind of research, and the dogged 
patience which nothing but Q. E. D. will satisfy: so much 
she asked in payment. The unlocking of Archives has 
left few problems of history unresolved; and when, after 
the Revolution, those curious documents were disclosed 
which Louis, his ministers, his ambassadors, and _ his 
gaolers had penned in full security, it was certain that 
the true tale of the Masked Man must some day get the 
benefit of print. Louis XIV. had his revenge of Mattioli. 
History has had hers of Louis XIV. I cannot think that 
the story misses much in human interest by the elimina- 
tion of the large element of fable; but the fact remains 


PROLOGUE. 9 


that to a reader of old French history it presents no 
extraordinary feature. The mask itself excepted (and 
the unimportant character of that too celebrated disguise 
is hereafter shown), the fate of Mattioli was neither ex- 
ceptional nor uncommon. It accorded, if not entirely 
with French jurisprudence, at all events with the ad- 
ministration of French justice. It was of a piece with 
the system under which political and other offenders 
always might be, and usually were, dealt with: arbitrary 
arrest, arbitrary imprisonment, and arbitrary punishment, 
with or without the form of trial by a court, packed as 
Richelieu generally packed his, to ensure conviction. 
Trial and sentence were both dispensed with in Mattioli’s 


case; but in the days of the ‘“‘bon plaisir royal et 
ministériel,”’ which were long before and long after the 
days of Richelieu, those formalities were easily forgone. 
So lightly were subjects of all degrees imprisoned under 
the monarchy, and so readily forgotten in prison, that 
when a prisoner died after years of captivity, the very 
Minister by whose order he had been confined, and who 
. had been informed of his demise, would often request 
to be told the reason of his detention. The close of the 


nineteenth century has shown us that justice in France 


10 PROLOGUE, 


can still be a thing of very small security to a prisoner 
at the bar; and the epoch under consideration in this 
volume begins in the last quarter of the seventeenth 
century. That a needy and obscure Italian diplomat 
and adventurer, having tricked, flouted, and infuriated a 
sovereign of the temper of Louis XIV., should end his 
days in the Bastille, is not a matter to excite even the 
most trifling degree of wonder. Still, the documents to 
be offered to the reader present, with some new lights, 
a remarkable picture of more than one phase of im- 


prisonment under the old régime; and in Saint-Mars we 


have the typical State gaoler of the age, incorruptibly © 


faithful to his charge, inflexible almost to cruelty, callous 
to the sufferings of his prisoners, and in his private 
aspect a miser growing richer and richer at the expense 
both of the prisoners and of the public treasury. 

The credit of the identification of Mattioli with the 
Mask belongs, as one thinks it should belong, to France. 
The beginnings of what constitute history on this subject 
—history more or less exact at the outset—are set forth 
in the Introduction, and more minutely in the second 
part of the volume. Delort, whose Historie de l’ Homme 
au Masque de Fer is seventy-five years old, was the first 


PROLOGUE, If 


to publish a really useful collection of documents. Else- 
where I have explained how, owing to the incompleteness 
of the series he had access to, his system came to grief. 
Forty-five years later appeared Marius Topin’s ? Homme / 
au Masque de Fer, which is still as a whole the best and 
most complete narrative extant. But even Topin left 
something undone; and his proof is not absolute. His 
is the merit, nevertheless, of having first spread the light 
upon the whole field of enquiry; and he it was who 
brought the case for Mattioli triumphantly to the front 
again, when the one signal error of Delort and his con- 
temporaries seemed to have left it for ever in uncertainty. 
Had the investigation ceased with Topin, an impartial 
critic of his work might well have decided that unless 
and until this hypothesis were completely overset, Mattioli 
should be received as the Man in the Iron Mask. The 
crowning proof, decisive and irrefutable, might be to 
seek; but testimony and inference alike fastened the mask 
upon Mattioli. This hypothesis has not been overset. 
It has been carried further, and confirmed. The solu- / 
tion of M. Frantz Funck-Brentano, ratified by the com- 
mon assent of scholars in France, has satisfied every 


doubt. Scarcely glancing at the history of the affair, 


12 PROLOGUE. 


summarising all in a few pages of irresistible and trans- 
lucent argument, he has laid the great enigma bare.* 

There is a Legend of the Iron Mask, and there is a 
History of the Iron Mask. Of the Legend, only a small 
portion (and that, perhaps, the most ridiculous) is known 
to the generation of to-day: with the History, the detail 
of it, this generation is almost of necessity unfamiliar, 
since no volume has yet embraced the whole. Legend 
and History are here brought together and contrasted. 
The best and the most foolish stand side by side; the 
incredible transmutations of the Legend, and the precise 
facts of the true and rather simple History. A certain 
political transaction, not of the highest importance, nor 
of the most unusual kind, took place two hundred years 
ago in France. Out of this transaction has arisen the 
most extraordinary fable of modern times. But truth 
has done her tardy office; and the moral, somewhat 
worn, speaks for itself. 

* I refer to the chapter, “L’Homme au Masque de Fer,” in 
M. Funck-Brentano’s Légendes et Archtves de la Bastille, Paris: 
Hachette et Cie., 1898. Second edition 1899. Crowned by the 


French Academy. An excellent translation from the pen of Mr. George 
Maidment has since been published by Messrs. Downey and Co. 


CONTENTS. 


PROLOGUE. Paes 
INTRODUCTION.—The Sphinx of French History . . . . 21 


Part L—THE MAN IN THE MOON. 


CHAPTER L. 
THE DEATH OF VERMANDOIS. 


Points worth Remembering.—Sources of the Legend.—“A 
Contribution to the History of Persia.”—A “Persian” 
Romance of the Court of Louis XIV.—Louise de la Val- 
lidre.—The Count of Vermandois.—The anonymous Ro- 
mance examined.— Vermandois at the Siege of Courtrai.— 

His Sickness and incontestable Death.—Burial at Arras. 
—Vermandois not the Man in the Iron Mask . . . . 41 


CHAPTER IL. 
THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE TWIN. 


Branches of this System.— Developments under the First 
Empire.— Baron de Gleichen.— Louis XIV. ‘‘a mere 
Bastard.”—A Discovery missed by Dumas.— Voltaire and 
the Elder Brother.—This Version perishes with the Re- 
volution.—Queen and Cardinal.—Absurdities of Voltaire’s 
Story.—Soulavie and the Twin.—Soulavie’s eta ral —_ 
Choice of Dates. . ... . 6 we 52 


14 CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE INFATUATION OF BUCKINGHAM. aoe 
Buckingham at the Court of Louis XIII.—Paris amazed at 
his Prodigality.— A Retinue of six or seven hundred Per- 
sons.—Buckingham falls in Love with Anne of Austria.— 
Anne never alone with him.— Amiens.— Buckingham’s 
Declaration.— Amiens again.—The Scene in the Queen’s 
Chamber.—Anne sees Buckingham for the last Time.— 
Marie de Medici’s Statement to Louis XIII.—Not a Ves- 

ge of Proofer te ens eee see re OO 


| 
CHAPTER IV. | 
THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. | 


Early Days of Anne of Austria and Louis XII.—The Girl’s 
Enthusiasm and the Boy’s Indifference.—The Marriage— 
“Almost a Question of State.”—Richelieu and the young 
Queen.—TIllness of Louis XIII. in 1630.—Reconciliation. 
—Birth of Louis XIV.—Ceremony and Precautions at the 
Birth of a Child of France.—What of the Twin?— 
Soulavie’s Story examined in Detail.—Louvois’s Visit to 
the Mask disproved.—The Silver Dish and the Linen Shirt. 
—History repeats that ‘“‘the Iron Mask was not a Son of 
Anne‘of Austria” <2) -) 5 3s eer eee 7 A. 


CHAPTER V. 
THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH, 


Character of Monmouth.—His Conduct at Sedgemoor.—In 
the Presence of James II.—The System which makes Mon- 
mouth the Man in the Iron Mask.—Extraordinary Char- | 
acter of Saint-Foix’s ‘“Proofs.”—-From the Café Procope | 
to the Boudoir of the Duchess of Portsmouth.—Execution 
and Burial of Monmouth . . as ey ete 6 teumeeinOO, 


CONTENTS. : 15 


CHAPTER VIL. 
“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” 


The Systéme Beaufort is the especial Snare of Age.—Lenglet- 
Dufresnoy, Lagrange-Chancel, and Anquetil.— Beaufort and 
Monmouth.—Beaufort a Lumpkin at Court but a Leader 
in the Field.—The Market-People dub him their King.— 
Beaufort appointed Admiral.—His Change of Front.— 
Lenglet-Dufresnoy’s Theory.— The Siege of Candia.— Panic 
and Rout of the French.—Beaufort missing.—The Dates. 

— Was the Man in the Mask a Nonogenarian? . . . . 103 


Page 


CHAPTER VU. 
THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. 


Bibliophile Jacob makes Fouquet the masked Man.—An 
xxx 

i j — ar ei OR it = 
earlier Conjecture 64,389,000 Ketsadiou’ The Au 
thor of this jest unknown.—The Fable revived by Lacroix. 
—Louis XIV. resolves upon the Overthrow of Fouquet. 
—His Arrest at Nantes in 1661.—A special Court formed 
o try him.—“A Seventeenth Century Warren Hastings 
Affair.” —The Judges in Favour of Banishment.—Louis’s 
Decree of perpetual Imprisonment.—Supposition on which 
Lacroix’s Hypothesis rests.—Fouquet in the Dungeon of 
Pignero].— Gradual Improvement in his Lot.—His Wife 
and Family allowed to visit and stay with him.—Fouquet’s 
Death from Apoplexy, March 23rd, 1680.—Impossibility of 
g with Lacroix.—Theories of Ravaisson, Sagas 

and Iung.—“ Oblivion has looked upon them all” . . 116 


Part IL—-THE MAN IN THE MASK. 


CHAPTER I. 
THE INTRIGUE FOR CASALE. 
Italian Policy of Richelieu.—Gradually abandoned by 
Louis XIV.—The ‘Military Diplomacy” of Louvois.— 
Character and Situation of Charles [V., Duke of Mantua, 


16 ; CONTENTS. 


—Casale.—Louis covets this Stronghold.—Intrigue begun 
in 1676.—Abbé d’Estrades.—Ercole Antonio Mattioli.— 
D’Estrades employs Giuliani to sound Mattioli . . . 


CHAPTER IL 
THE RIPENING PLOT. 


The Situation.—D’Estrades to Louis XIV.—Mattioli selected 


to conduct the Affair.— He wins the Duke of Mantua’s 
Consent to the Sale of Casale-—The Duke ambitious of a 
military Command under Louis.—Mattioli to Louis.— 
Louis to Mattiolii_Louis to send an Army into Italy.— 
100,000 Crowns to be paid for Casale.—Louis’s Conditions. 
—Everything agreed to.—Charles in a Hurry to conclude 
the Affair.— Midnight Conference between Charles and 
d’Estrades.— Mattioli to go to Paris . . 2 ene 


CHAPTER IIL 
THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 


Delays are now upon the French Side.— Mattioli’s Journey 
postponed.—D’Estrades precedes him to France.— Mattioli 
ill.—Off at last—The Treaty.—Mattioli has Audience of 
Louis.—Preparations on the Frontier.—Louis to Charles 
of Mantua.—The French impatient while the Italians be- 
gin to lag.—Alarms.—D’Asfeld seized by the Governor of 
Milan.—Mattioli suspected.—D’Estrades to Mattioli.—Mat- 
tioli betraysithe Plot 75 2 2) 2 <=) 3) 2%: eS hc 


CHAPTER IV. 
THE VENGEANCE OF “THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 


Details of Mattioli’s Treason.—His Motives?—Rage at the 
Court of France.—How shall Mattioli be dealt with ?— 
Louis sanctions the Proposal of d’Estrades.—The King’s 
Orders.—The Abbé’s Ruse.—The Rendezvous.—Mattioli 
falls into the Trap.—Is made Prisoner by Catinat.—Search 
for the Papers.—The King is avenged. — Mattioli ein out 
as dead.—_ His Family . . . . . . ... 


: 


140 


151 


168 


CONTENTS, 17 


CHAPTER V. 
THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. Page 


Pignerol in the 17th Century.— Saint-Mars: the Gaoler quint- 
essentialised.— His Manner of Guarding his Prisoners.— 
Mattioli becomes the “Sieur Lestang.’’—Is to be treated 
“ with Severity.”——Temporarily insane.—The mad aio 
—The Ring.—Fifteen Years in Pignerol . . . 185 


CHAPTER VI. 
THE INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 


The first Attempts to prove that Mattioli was the Man in the 
Mask.— Delort.— His Omissions.—Mattioli’s Fellow-Pri- 
soners at Pignerol.—Saint-Mars receives the Command of 
Eniles.—The Question is, What Prisoners went with him? 
Who was the Prisoner who died of Dropsy?—Sudden 
Disap: ce of Mattioli’s Name from the Correspondence 

of Louvois and Saint-Mars.—Deductions of Loiseleur . . 197 


CHAPTER VIL 
THE MISSING LINK REVEALED BY TOPIN. 


The History of the Mask not contained in any single Set of 
Documents.—Topin takes up the Trail.—Reasons why 
Saint-Mars should have been afraid to take Mattioli to 
Casale.— Was Mattioli at Exiles or not?—The Missing 
Link.— Mattioli was never at Exiles.— He pens oad ac- 


cordingly in the History . . . A 207 


CHAPTER VIIL 
THE PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 
The Isles of Sainte-Marguerite.—Arrival there of Saint-Mars 
in 1687.—Mattioli still in Pignerol.—Saint-Mars at his 
Ease.—The Mandate of February 26th, 1694.—Reasons 


for the Transfer of the three Prisoners from Pignerol.— 
Louis XIV. falling on his evil Days——The mysterious 


The Man in the Iron Mask. 2 


18 CONTENTS. 


Journey.—After the Death of Fouquet and the Release of 
Lauzun, Mattioli was the only “ Prisoner of Consequence” 

at’ Pignerol.—New Measures of Precaution. — Mattioli, 

“your ancient Prisoner” . . . - - - + - - = + 254 


CHAPTER IX. 
THE SILVER DISH. 


A Prisoner of State under the Monarchy.—Mattioli and other 
State Prisoners.—Fable does Duty for History.—Origins 
of the Legends of the Silver Dish and the Linen Shirt.— 
The Guitar.—Fact and Fable in the oe a of the Iron 
Masks 7: *..r au ee eh 225 


CHAPTER X. 
THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 


Saint-Mars is transferred from Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille. 
—He is to bring with him his “ancient Prisoner.” From 
the Isles to Paris.—The Halt at Palteau.—Letter of the 
Grand-nephew of Saint-Mars.—The Entry in Du Junca’s 
Journal.—The Mask is a Mystery, and remains a Mystery, 
to the Staff of the Bastille.—But in the Course of Time his 
Importance ceases.—He is displaced in the Bastille by a 
Fortune-teller.— Effect of this upon the Legend.—Origin of 
the Story of the whitewashed Cell.—Death and Burial of 
the Mask. — His Bay his oe —‘*Marchioly,” ‘‘Mar- 
thioli,” Mattioli . . . Sop S (erie Saete CERI 


CHAPTER XL 
OED: 


The Mask itself unimportant in the History.—But the Mask 
gives Rise to the Legend.—Mattioli the Man in the Mask? 
—The Proof set out.—The Five Prisoners.—Louis XV. 


and Louis X VI.—Madame conga ae —Charles of Mantua 
in Paris \ C 250 


THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


INTRODUCTION. 


2° 


re a 
rr 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 


Aw arrival at the Bastille, September, 1698, has 
been the cause of more discussion than any other event 
in the notable history of that fortress. It was Thursday, 
18th of the month, and three of the afternoon. Armed 
men on horseback surrounded a closed litter, from which, 
when all was sure, descended a meagre, silent figure, 
Saint-Mars, Louis XIV.’s most trusted gaoler. He had 
come to the Bastille for the first time, having just re- 
ceived its command. The entry of a new governor 
would naturally be of no small moment to the staff, 
whose future lay between his hands; but curiosity was 
immediately transferred from Saint-Mars to the prisoner 
who accompanied him. The prisoner's face was hidden 
by a mask of black velvet, a disguise in which no one 
had ever before been brought to the Bastille. The un- 


ia THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


happy man was already a mystery, before even he had 
set foot within the prison which was to be the third and 
last of his long captivity. No one knew him, who he 
was or what he had done that Saint-Mars should have 
him in this extraordinary keeping. Together, Gaoler 
and Mask, they had traversed France from far Provence, 
travelling always in this secure fashion, by silent ways. 
At the chdteau and domain of Palteau, a property of 
Saint-Mars, a halt had been made; and the peasants of 
the estate who came out to meet their lord preserved 
and passed on as a tradition the memory of that strange 
visit. The mask, once seen, seems to have haunted the 
dullest fancy. In itself it was no way remarkable; a 
little black velvet mask: what affected the mind was the 
circumstance that the person who wore it was a prisoner. 
This was something entirely unwonted. The peasants 
observed that when the table was served, the prisoner 
was always kept with his back to the window, they 
noted the pistols at the hand of the vigilant Saint- 


Mars, and the two beds ranged together in the sleeping- 
room. 


The officers of the Bastille had been apprised, and 
the King’s lieutenant, Du Junca, whose careful diary will 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 23 


be opened, had prepared for the prisoner “the third room 
of the Bertaudiére tower.” 

Five years later, after one day’s illness, November 
1g, 1703, this prisoner died in the Bastille. His end 
was so rapid that he did not receive the solace of the 
sacrament; the chaplain “exhorted him a moment before 
he died.” As dusk fell on the next afternoon the draw- 
bridge was lowered, and a sorry funeral passed out, 
which took its way to the graveyard of the church of 
St. Paul: behind a rude coffin, two turnkeys of the prison. 
A furtive, perfunctory burying, scarcely even decent; 
into his hasty grave, probably by lantern-light, the turn- 
keys unknown lowered the unknown dead, and that was 
the end. On the church’s register was inscribed the 
name _of Marchioly.. In the Bastille they had known him .; 
as the prisoner from Provence. 

This is that mysterious creature, the problem of whose 
identity has bewitched, impassioned, and embroiled six 
generations of enquirers. The incontestable facts are 
these: that in 1698 Saint-Mars conducted to the Bastille 
a prisoner who died there five years later; that he was 
known in the Bastille as the prisoner from Provence; 


that his unique, unhappy memory survived his death in 


24 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


the prison, and overran the world. These are the 
simplest data of the problem that lies before us. Twenty- 
four years (1679—1703) in the obscurity of prison; at 
the end of that period, an obscure, untended death-bed, 
and a hurried and obscure interment; some further years 
of oblivion, and then there arises and steals from that 
graveyard of St. Paul this ghost that shrouds its face, 
intent upon an odd revenge, the torment and insoluble 
conundrum of historian, fabulist, novelist, dramatist, 
essayist and gossip—the Sphinx of French history: the 
Man in the Iron Mask. 

The sole question to resolve is: Whose was the face 


' which the mask concealed? 


The happy acumen of Topin instructs him at once 
as to the false path on which his predecessors, with 
scarcely an exception, had set forth. Voltaire had said: 
«What ts doubly astonishing is this, that when the 
prisoner in question was sent to the Isles of Sainte-Mar- 
guertte, there did not disappear from Europe any per- 
sonage of note.” The Mask had lain fifteen years 
in the dungeon of Pignerol before they transferred him 
to Sainte-Marguerite, but Voltaire, than whom never a 
writer has approached this theme with so complete a 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 25 


lack of information, did not take that fact into account. . 
The statement just brought forward stimulated and ob- 
sessed all minds. Who of note dd vanish from Euro- 
pean scenes between the date of Mazarin’s death (1661) 
and 1703? That must be the way to seek the truth 
about the Iron Mask! Thus was begun the “monstrous 
brood” of all those theories and systems which have 
darkened counsel on this subject. In pieces of sundry 
sorts, waiting to be sifted and joined together; in official 
despatches, epistles, reports, memoranda; in certain live 
pages of the Bastille’s archives, the true history of the 
Masked Man was lying all this while unheeded, unthought 
of. The hunt was elsewhere—anywhere, everywhere but 
where the quarry couched. They were all wanting to 
come upon the track of that “person of importance” 
who must have been thrust out of sight while Louis XIV. 
was on the throne! Was it a brother of Louis? Was 
it Vermandois? Was it Monmouth? Was it Beaufort? 
Was it Fouquet? The least resemblance found or 
imagined, the mask was clapped on, and a new dis- 
covery given to the world. “Never an Indian deity,” 
says Paul de Saint-Victor, “has undergone so many 


metempsychoses, so many avatars.” To one incarnation 


26 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


of the Mask succeeds another and another; system topples 
upon system; but the Sphinx keeps hold on the secret. 
During thirty years (says Topin) Voltaire, Fréron, Saint- 
Foix, Lagrange-Chancel and Pére Griffet were cutting 
and slashing one another most brilliantly, in a joust in 
which each adversary found it easier to demolish the 
opinions opposed to him than to maintain and win ac- 
ceptance for his own. In Topin’s day fifty-two writers, 
sharing among them twenty-five different hypotheses, 
had essayed to look behind the mask, and Vicomte 
Maurice Boutry extends the list to sixty, not embracing 
the legion of anonymous contributors to periodicals and 
dictionaries.** Would the problem ever be expounded? 
This interminable series of defeats—system and system 
built up in years and shattered in an hour—ended by 
producing one curious but not unnatural result. Since 
no one could identify the Mask, might it not be that 
the Mask had never lived? Here was perhaps some 


* In how many works on the Bastille there is mention of the 
Man in the Iron Mask, I cannot pretend to say. The library of the 
British Museum contains 40,000 treatises on this famous dungeon 
of pre-Revolutionary Paris. Thus, reading at the impossible rate 
of one a day, it would take above a hundred years to exhaust the 
collection. 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 27 


prodigious myth, and nothing more. Critics less sceptical, 
but despairing of the truth, averred the question beyond 
human ken. “The history of the Iron Mask,” says 
Michelet, “will probably remain for all time in obscurity.” 
And Henri Martin: “History is debarred from giving 
judgment on what will never pass beyond the confines 
of conjecture.” 

But the curiosity of the world has never been ap- 
peased. Irritated, checked, baffled, and a hundred times 
defeated, it has come again to the quest. The itch 
spread far; England, Germany, and Italy helped France 
to confuse the issue, to draw the mask a little tighter 
over those inscrutable features. 

A secret well kept during many years is greatly liable 
to distortion when it begins at last to emerge from the 
comfortable dark of legend and tradition. Indeed, it 
may become twenty or more dissimilar histories before it 
has been properly divulged. At one era and another 
the secret of the Iron Mask has been five-and-twenty 
secrets at the very least. In the lifetime of Louis XIV. 
it was preserved with a cunning and fastness scarcely to 
be believed. Was ever gaoler so mum as Saint-Mars? 


That mute, uneasy shadow, perpetually plagued by fears 


28 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


for the safety of his prisoners, now with an eye at the 
keyhole and now crouched among the branches of a 
tree to spy unseen, never in four-and-twenty years gave 
up the secret which he held inviolable by order of the 
King. In the fifteen years the prisoner was captive at 
Pignerol, in the four years he lay at the Isles, in the five 
that brought his tragedy to a term in the Bastille, no 
subordinate officer of either place had learned so much 
as his name. From Du Junca’s journal we shall see pre- 
sently that even the King’s lieutenant got it by mere 
hazard after the prisoner’s death. And the Court was 
not better informed than the Bastille. The omniscient 
Saint-Simon, the Greville of France, had never an inkling 
of the matter. That unbridled gossip, the Princess Pala- 
tine, who spent half the day at her desk inditing scandal 
to her family and friends abroad, was completely wide 
of the mark.* Supposed at one time to rank among the 
prerogatives of the crown, history has proved that this 


* “T have just leamed,” writes Madame from Versailles, 
October 22, 1711, who was the masked man who died in the 
Bastille. His wearing a mask was not due to cruelty. He was 
an English lord who had been mixed up in the affair of the Duke 
of Berwick (natural son of James II.) against King William. He 
died there so that the King might never know what became of him.” 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 29 


was not the case with the sombre secret of the mask. 
Madame Campan will show us that it was unknown to 
Louis XVI. Napoleon expressed a lively regret at not 
being able to satisfy his curiosity. Louis-Philippe dis- 
cussed the problem frequently, but confessed his ignor- 
ance of the solution; and if certain other sovereigns pre- 
tended to the knowledge, the contradictions of their 
statements sanction the inference that they were not more 
correctly instructed.* 

Here, then, indeed was a Secret of the State con- 
summately preserved, not only during, but after, the life- 
time of the monarch whose interest it was to safeguard 
it. ‘See that no one knows what becomes of this 
man.’’** Such was the private peremptory order of 
Louis XIV. to his minister, Abbé d’Estrades; and he was 
obeyed. Clearly, therefore, this would be a hard secret 
to come at, until the sole right method—the search 
for, and disentombing of, the documents—was chanced 
upon. 

But both the writers on this mystery and their readers, 


* Topin. 
** “7 faudra que personne me sgache ce que cet homme sera 
devenu,’’ Louis XIV. to d’Estrades: April 28th, 1679. 


30 THE MAN IN THE JRON MASK. 


in England as in France, have displayed, for the most 
part, a rather singular perversity. It would be fastidious, 
if not altogether idle, at this day to make inquest on the 
motives which led so many authors of erudition, ingenuity, 
and exceeding patience to beguile the public with the 
notion that they had found beneath the mask the features 
of Vermandois, or Monmouth, or Beaufort, or the Arme- 
nian patriarch Avedick—nay, even of Moliére himself! 
Assuredly the scandal-hunters were not for nothing in 
this affair, and no doubt some private vengeances were 
served by certain theories which offered not the veriest 
semblance of reality** In some other instances, when 
mere malignity has not motived the enquiry, the pre- 
possessions of authors with fixed ideas have lured them 
far, and left them, in the end, the victims of irreducible 
dilemmas. A conjecture is reared into a system; such 
facts as favour it are adopted as readily as the facts in 
opposition are rejected. When the list of famous men 


* Thus, there were those who pretended to discover under the 
mask a son of the Duchess Henrietta of Orléans and Louis XIV.; 
a son of Henrietta of Orléans and the Comte de Guiche; a son of 
Christine of Sweden and Monaldeschi; a son of Marie-Thérése (wife 
of Louis XIV.) and the negro servitor whom she had brought from 
Spain; a son of Cromwell, etc. 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 31 


comprised within the historical period is exhausted, the 
period is audaciously extended; and a complacent public 
has been asked to accept some effigy of an Iron Mask 
alive in 1706, three years after the attested death of 
the prisoner of Saint-Mars. Avedick, the Armenian 
patriarch, whose claims to the mask were advocated by 
the Chevalier de Taulés, was not carried off until 1706. 
M. Emile Burgaud fixed on General Vivien Labbé de 
Bulonde; but ‘“M. Geoffroy de Grandmaison published in 
the Univers of January 9, 1895, two receipts signed by 
General de Bulonde, one in 1699, when the Masked Man 
was in rigorous isolation in the Bastille; the other in 1705, 
when he had been two years dead.”* It would seem, 
indeed, that scarcely an author has come quite single- 
minded to this task. There need be no general im- 
plication of bad faith; it is sufficient to suggest that the 
majority of these defenders of systems not defensible 
were anxious first to get their literary profit out of a 
topic of perennial interest, and unwilling afterwards to 
admit the truth that must undo them. It is not, how- 
ever, in this way that things are proved, this is not the 
way of science; and perhaps no subject perplexing to 


* Funck-Brentano. 


32 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


history has remained longer in doubt from the common 
disregard of the just historical method. 

But the offence in chief, the mischief of the fable 
which has run throughout the world to the hurt of a 
woman and a queen, should be attached. It attaches 
immediately to Voltaire. Here, indeed, we must con- 
clude, was malice prepense. First he prepares his 
audience by an attractive hint or two; retires then, and 
watches the effect. Nothing could be better; we are all 
agog: as much more of this as you please. So, without 
the least embarrassment on the author’s part, the horrid 
hoax is launched, and starts forthwith upon its travels, 
It was a piece of quite unscrupulous sensationalism, skil- 
fully imagined, but—as there will be occasion to show— 
elaborated with little art, and with less than no regard 
for consistency. None the less, there were in it all the 
elements of an abiding popularity; it had the romantic 
quality, it was royally scandalous, it disclosed a seeming 
State secret of capital significance, it soiled the honour 
of a queen: for a hundred and fifty years it has repre- 
sented to the many the whole entrancing truth of the 
Man in the Iron Mask. But the proofs? Ah! there, 
indeed, we are speedily confounded. M. Voltaire ap- 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 33 


parently forgot that history, sooner or later, would be 
wanting to know what he meant by it—this titillating 
fable of her Majesty’s amours and the semi-royal child 
resulting from them, who was to end his days as the 
prisoner of the mask. On Voltaire’s part not an ounce 
of real proof was ever offered, and the researches of 
scholars have clearly demonstrated that none ever could 
have been offered, since none was ever in existence. Of 
all the systems of the mask this one is the most denuded 
of testimony. The utmost rigour of investigation has 
failed to show that Anne of Austria had any part in the 
affair of the Iron Mask; on the other hand, it has shown 
conclusively that she had none. At the time it was 
begun the queen had been dead nearly twelve years. 
Let it be added that this baseless hypothesis has “long 
been abandoned. The last writers who adhered to it 
date from the revolutionary period.” * 

But the public partiality for Voltaire’s egregious ver- | 
sion is perhaps not wonderful. A king’s brother in the 


* Funck-Brentano.—In fiction, the system which is an exten- 
sion of Voltaire’s has enjoyed, of course, the prepotent champion- 
ship of Dumas, in the novel beloved of Louis Stevenson, The 
Vicomte de Bragelonne. 

The Man in the Iron Mask. 3 


34 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


mask—it was really a very fine notion! The acces 
sories, too, were all so captivating to the fancy. If that 
damning resemblance to Louis XIV. existed (a pity 
Voltaire could not contrive to prove it!), the necessity 
for the mask is patent; and pray let it be, not the 
“light Venetian mask” of velvet which in reality it was, 
and which was of universal use among the upper classes 
in Italy, but the right melodramatic article, the “iron 
mask” with the steel chinpiece, a medieval instrument 
of torture, which could not have been bome for a 
week; and let the poor Highness wear this day and 
night for four-and-twenty years.* Zhis was something 
like romance! 

Nor was this all. Who parts willingly with the 
other adjuncts which time has grouped about the in- 
domitable legend?—the “boundless deference” shown 

* I have never seen the old-fashioned play on the subject of the 
Mask, which, no longer known to London, is still faring up and 
down the country; a version possibly of the once-admired piece, 
Le Masque de fer, by Fourier and Amould, first given at the 
Paris Odéon in 1831. But, cycling through Canterbury in the 
falling light of an October afternoon, I observed the placid thorough- 
fares of that city aflame with pictures of the drama. Here was the 


Man in the Iron Mask with a vengeance. The mask itself as de- 
picted on the posters had the appearance of a small boiler. 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 35 


to the prisoner, Saint-Mars never seating himself in his 
presence, addressing him “with bared head,” serving 
him with his own hands on silver plate, and supplying 
him with “the most luxurious raiment his fancy could 
desire”; the notable tale of the silver dish which the 
prisoner flings out of window, after carving a message 
on it with a knife, and which nearly costs his life to the 
fisherman who restores it; or the version of Pére Papon, 
in which a shirt of fine linen, with a letter written on 
the inside, takes the place of the dish: who yields up 
willingly these lively figments, long as they have gone 
by the board? 

It is enough to recall the reception, cool in some 
quarters and in others hostile, which those scholars met 
with who first untied the knot. Few problems of history 
have held so many vested interests, and no vested 
interests in a problem of history have been more tena- 
ciously fought for. What innumerable pens, French: 
and alien, were mortgaged in this affair! Baron Heiss’s . 
affirmation, the first true note upon the Mask in French, © 
was received “with indifference.” * 

Voltaire, an old man now and jealous high priest of 


* Vte. Maurice Boutry. 
a 


36 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


his own inspired myth, was moved to peevishness. 
“Why,” he cries, “they have even given him an Italian 
name!” Heiss’s epistle was merely in the nature of a 
suggestion, but at last the right word had been uttered. 
The unravelling remained to do, however, and for a 
long time it was a task not less thankless than laborious: 
the true heir was no Prince of the blood, and there 
was no investing him with fine linen or feeding him 
on silver dishes. Voltaire’s pretender, “young, and 
with features of rare nobility and beauty” (though no 
one ever saw them!) was still the fairy hero of the mul- 
titude. Came Topin finally, and the fairy prince got 
his coup de grdce. Not talent and not genius will ever 
again make a Canterbury Tale of the Man in the Iron 
Mask. History lighted her lamp at Topin’s hands, and 
was avenged. M. Funck-Brentano has shown con- 
clusively that Topin was right, and has furnished the 
proofs that were still to seek. 

But will the facts uproot the fable? In historical 
circles in France, discussion on the question of the Mask 
is at an end, but, for the general public, there are, as 
M. Sardou says, “The guides, the showmen to reckon 
with—those faithful guardians of legends, whose propa- 


ee Oe wees eee 


THE SPHINX OF FRENCH HISTORY. 37 


ganda is more aggressive than that of scholars.”* And 
among ourselves the Voltaire tractate is still occasionally 
reprinted; Dumas is very much alive; and audiences at 
country theatres are perennially regaled with the spec- 
tacle of the suffering prince, his head encased in an 
iron boiler. 

Meanwhile, for those who will read it, the true tale 
as revealed by history is not bereft of interest or romance. 
The treason of the rash Italian, who flouted Louis the 
Magnificent in the face of Europe, and was so terribly 
despoiled for the same, needed only its Dumas, or our 
own dear Stevenson, to be borne to the rim of the uni- 
verse. In any event, it seems good to speed the Man 
in the Moon, and admit in his place the corporeal Man 
in the Mask. 


* Victorien Sardou.—Preface to Funck-Brentano. M. Sardou j 
adds: ‘When you reflect that every day, at the Isles of Sainte- | 
Marguerite, the masked man’s cell is exhibited to visitors by a good | 
woman who retails all the traditional fables about the luxurious life ; 
of the prisoner, his lace, his plate, and the attentions shown him by 
Saint-Mars, you will agree that a struggle with this daily discourse ; 
would be hopeless. And you would not come off with a whole: 
skin!” —ZJbid. 


POAGR leek. 


THE MAN IN THE MOON. 


CHAPTER IL. 


THE DEATH OF VERMANDOIS. 


Ir will be of profit to remember:— 

1. That the mysterious prisoner was no myth. 

2. That, while quite unknown, legend was already 
busy with him before his death. 

3. That the hypotheses of the 18th century are 
without the support of history. 

4. That since, from the era of the French Revo- 
lution, access to the Archives became possible, these 
hypotheses have been one by one abandoned. 

5. That the expression “iron mask”—“masque de 
fer” —does not occur in any official document: it is a 
“mask,” a “velvet mask,” or a “black velvet mask.” 

6. That the tradition of a royal secret, passed on 
from king to king, is disproved. 

7. That the Legend owes everything to the imagina- 
tion of men of letters, that it is entirely at variance with 


42 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


facts, and that it has held its ground by reason mainly 
of the prevailing voice of Voltaire, and the enduring 


fascination of Dumas. 


We can proceed now to determine the source and 
origin of the Legend. In 1745 there appeared at 
Amsterdam, under the auspices of the Compagnie des 
libraires associés, a small romance entitled “A Contn- 
bution to the History of Persia.””* It was published 
anonymously, and the authorship has remained a secret. 
Several critics have assigned it (“not without some 
reason,” says M. Funck-Bretano) to Madame de Vieux- 
Maisons; others to the Duc de Nivernais; and others 
again to the Chevalier de Rességnier, an officer in the 


Guards, whom Madame de Pompadour had sent to the: 


Bastille. General Iung inclines to Paul Lacroix’s opinion 
that Voltaire himself was the author. The identity of 
the author is, however, quite unimportant. What is of 
interest is, that this slender novel was very soon the 
talk of France. It said the first public word about that 
hidden prisoner of Saint-Mars whose misfortunes were 
just beginning to engage attention. 


* “ Mémotres secrets pour servir a l’htstotre de Perse.’’ 


—~ el 


SS ee ee 


THE DEATH OF VERMANDOIS, ‘43 


a“ 
** Cha-Abas,’’* says the anonymous author, “had a ~ 


legitimate son, Sephi-Mirza,** and a natural son, 
Giafer.*** The children were almost of an age, but 
their characters agreed in nothing. Gutafer was never 
tired of saying that the French were greatly to be 
pitied for their subjection to a monarch who had not 
the wit to rule them. These treasonous words were 
carried to Cha-Adas, but the father was stronger in 
him than the king, and he could not bring himself to 
exert his authority over a son who had abused his 
tenderness. At last, Gzafer so far forgot himself as 
to strike Sépht-Mirza in the face. This was at once 
reported to Cha-Abas, who, trembling for the culprit, 
and willing even now to overlook the offence, could not 
but regard it as an attempt against himself and his 
crown; and, as the affair had scandalised the court, he 


could no longer yield to the promptings of a father’s 


love. He constrained himself, and summoned the most - 


intimate of his courtiers; showed them his grief, and 
demanded their voice upon the matter. For a crime of 
* Louis XIV. 


** Louis the Dauphin. 
*** Louis de Bourbon, Comte de Vermandois. 


-_ 


44 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, 


this magnitude, they declared, the laws of the State 


awarded death. What a verdict for the doting father! 
Then, one of the ministers, more sensible than the 
others of the affliction of Cfa-Abas, proffered a means 
of punishing Giafer without putting him to death. “Let 
the prince,” said this counsellor, “‘be sent to the army 
which was then on the frontiers of Fe/dran.* Shortly 
after his arrival let it be given out that he had sickened 
of the plague, which would be a sure way of detaching 
from him his friends and admirers, and, a few days 
later, let it be announced that the malady had carried 
him off. Then whilst, in the presence of the whole 
army, his obsequies should be celebrated in a manner 
befitting his birth, he must be borne away by night, and 
taken secretly to the citadel of the Jsle of Ormus,” ** 
This advice was very generally approved, and above all 
by the afflicted father. Persons faithful and discreet 
were chosen for the conduct of the affair; and Giafer, 
with a splendid retinue, set forth for the army. There 
it fell out as the plot had been ordered, and while all the 
camp lamented that untimely fate, the unhappy prince 


* Flanders. 
** Isles of Sainte-Marguerite. 


es 


— —_ SS 


— ge 


THE DEATH OF VERMANDOIS. 45 


was hurried by privy ways to the Js/e of Ormus, where 
they delivered him into the hands of the governor, 
whom Cha-Abas had commanded that no one should 
ever obtain sight of his prisoner. One attendant only, 
who shared the secret, was taken with the prince; but 
this man dying by the way, the escort slashed his face 
with their poniards that he might not be recognised, 
and left him stripped and stark upon the road. When 
Cha-Abas, to reward the governor’s fidelity, bestowed 
on him the command of the citadel of Jspahan, * 
Gtafer was removed there. At the Js/e of Ormus, as 
in the citadel of Jspahan, he was compelled to wear a 
mask when, by reason of sickness or for any other 
cause, it was necessary to let him be seen.” ** 

Such was the story which set all minds in France to 
work upon the enigma of the prisoner of Saint-Mars. 
“No sooner had it appeared,” says Iung, “than the 
problem of the mysterious prisoner became the question 
of the day. Refutations, criticisms, pamphlets, letters, 
memoirs, and ever new solutions succeeded one an- 
other’ rapidly from 1750 to 1790.” The “History of 


* The Bastille. 
** Mémotres secrets pour servir a l’histoire de Perse. 


46 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Persia” continued to be credited even after Voltaire’s 
more romantic nonsense had seduced the multitude. 
Let us examine its pretensions. It represents, as Topin 
observes, a kind of compromise between the impos- 
sibility of accepting the imaginary hero of Voltaire and 
the desire to see in the Masked Man some person of 
exalted birth. 

In Vermandois we have at all events a live man, 
and the natural son of a King to boot. His mother 
was that beautiful and sympathetic Louise de la Vallié¢re 
who touches us more closely than any other of the 
heroines of the court of Louis XIV. Yielding with re- 
luctancé to the passion of the King, la Valliére was no 
courtesan and no fortune-hunting adventuress. Strong 
in her very weakness, she subjugated without art or wile 
the most imperious sovereign in Europe, and from the 
torments of a love, ceaselessly combated, she passed to 
the rigors of a penance courageously endured for thirty 
years. Sweetest and most captivating figure of the 
great reign, she has engaged the hearts of posterity. * 

The graces of the mother were innate in Louis de 
Bourbon, Count of Vermandois. Tall and finely formed, 


* Topin. 


re 


THE DEATH OF VERMANDOIS. 47 


he possessed la Valliére’s instinctive gift of pleasing. 
Kindly and generous, he had his own peculiar ways of 
conferring favours, and the most fastidious of men, it 
was said, could never reject or be offended by his bene- 
fits. From a child he had the love of Louis XIV., who 
was as proud as he was tender of him. In the army, 
he won the officers as completely as he had won the 
common soldiers, and his personal courage was of the 
highest; with the troops in Flanders, on one occasion, 
he concealed a grave malady, that he might not miss 
his part in an attack. As if under the influence of that 
subtle warning which often strikes those whose death 
is to be premature, he seemed eager to ensure for his 
memory the renown of some signal act: but his day was 
too short for glory. 

A posthumous celebrity of a most uncommon kind 
was, however, in store for him. Sixty years after his 
death, it occurred—Heaven knows how!—to the un- 
known author of these Mémoires secrets pour servir & 
Phistoire de Perse to add to the too-brief life of the 
' gracious Vermandois twenty years of captivity in prison, 
and to render his destiny sadder by presenting him as 
the incognisable victim of Louis XIV.’s tyranny. 


48 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


What proofs, or failing proofs, what probabilities 
does the story carry? In the seventh volume of Madlle. 
de Montpensier’s interminable “Memoirs” there is a 
definite statement that Vermandois was under a cloud 
at court when he set out for the siege of Courtrai; that 
the King, annoyed about his gallantries in the town, 
and the company the young man kept, had banished 
him from the presence. There is no word of a quarrel 
with the Dauphin, or of a blow in the face, a scandal 
which could scarcely have remained unknown to Mdlle. 
de Montpensier, and one which, since she was no friend 
to the brilliant Vermandois,* she would not have 
scrupled to divulge. As for Vermandois’s pretended 
disgrace, and the King’s refusal to see him, we find 
that on the earliest rumour of his illness at Courtrai, 
Louis sends word that he is to be brought back to 
court as quickly as possible, “where he can be sur- 
rounded with every care.” ** 

“Is there need,” asks Topin, “to insist upon the im- 
possibility of admitting that a son and heir of Louis XIV. 


* “J was not sorry for the death of M. de Vermandois,” she 
says in this same volume of the Ménorres. 
** The King to the Marquis de Montchevreuil, Nov. 4, 1683. 


—_—-—-e- 


THE DEATH OF VERMANDOIS. © 49 


could receive the gravest insult in the midst of the court, 
and no allusion be made to the fact by a single con- 
temporary writer?” Further to diminish the probability 
of the tale, the author of the Mémotres Secrets shows us 
in Vermandois, that mirror of courteous chivalry, an un- 
mannerly and treasonable cub, unable to keep his hands 
from the brother who was one day to he his king. 
Finally, the brothers are described as “a peu prés du 
méme Gge,” whereas there were six years between them; 
Vermandois at the period of this display of ungovern- 
able temper being but sixteen, while the Dauphin was 
already the father of the Duc de Bourgogne. The un- 
timely death of Vermandois is a fact that cannot be 
disputed, nor is there in his last earthly moments, or in 
the transport of his remains to Arras, where they were 
interred, a circumstance which provokes the faintest 
degree of suspicion. 

It was on the 6th of November, 1683, that the 
young Count took to his bed at Courtrai. He had 
been sickening for some days, but would not admit, so 
determined was he to take part in the attack on Menin, 
“where he gave proofs of the highest courage.” 


- His fever increased rapidly; on the 12th of the 
The Man sn the Iron Mask. 4 


50 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


month Marshal d’Humiéres communicated his condition 
to the minister Louvois; on the 13th word was sent to 
the court. Three days later, on the 16th, it is an- 
nounced* that the patient has just received the sacra- 
ment, and that /’on n’espére plus que dans sa jeunesse, 
On the second day from this, November 18th, the son 
of la Valliére died of malignant fever in the presence of 
Marshal d’Humiéres, the Marquis de Montchevreuil, and 
Lieutenant-General Boufflers. “In the camp, distress 
was general. They wept for the good he had achieved, 
and for the promises of greatness unfulfilled.” Made- 
moiselle de la Valliére “is all day at the foot of her 
crucifix.” 

On the 27th of November, before an immense and 
brilliant crowd of witnesses, Vermandois was laid with 
pomp in the choir of the cathedral church of Arras. By 
the King’s command, a requiem mass was said in the 
same place every day during the remainder of the year; 
and provision- was ordered to be made for a solemn 
service, preceded by vigils, on the 18th of November, 
each year, “a perpétuite.” Doles were to be given to 


* Archives du ministére de la guerre. De Boufflers & Louvois, 
Cited by Topin. 


2 Ne ee ee ee ee 


THE DEATH OF VERMANDOIS. 51 


the poor of Arras on this day, “that they might pray 
for the soul’s welfare of the Comte de Vermandois.” 
Up to the year of the Revolution 1789, all these stipula- 
tions of the act drawn up with the chapter of the cathedral, 
in the name of Louis XIV., “were scrupulously fulfilled.” 

To sum up. If the amiable and chivalrous Ver- 
mandois struck the Dauphin, as the legend of the “Con- 
tribution to the History of Persia” maintains, the proof 
has not come down to us. If for this deed Louis XIV. 
condemned a favourite son to lifelong imprisonment, the 
proof is not less in request. The dispatches concerning 
the successive phases of the illness of Vermandois, his 
death at Courtrai, his burial in the cathedral of Arras, 
are in existence. And, as regards Louis XIV. (who held 
such things profoundly sacred), what an awful and most 
impious derision is in that pomp of burial, and in those 
masses celebrated during a hundred years, if the coffin 
in the choir were tenantless and Vermandois a living 
prisoner in the dungeon of Pignerol! 

There is but to add that this version of the mystery, 
adopted by Fréron in 1768, and by the unknown author 
of the Histotre du fils @un Rot, in 1789, has lain for 
above a century in well-merited neglect, 

4* 


52 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE TWIN. 


THE syst2me Vermandois was a choice regale in its 
way, but a dish more delectable was preparing. The 
Legend was not to be world-famous till it had made of 
the Iron Mask a brother of Louis XIV. Of this system 
there were several branches. Thus, the Mask was:— 

1. A son of Anne of Austria and some lover un- 
discovered. 

z. A son of Anne of Austria and the Duke of 
Buckingham. 

3. A son of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin; 

or 

4. A twin brother of Louis XIV. 

Later, under the First Empire, there were new and 
_very elegant conceits. Taking up the theory of the twin 
brother, the Baron de Gleichen had asserted, and had 
been at pains to prove, “that it was the true heir to the 
throne who was put out of sight, to the profit of a child 


ee ee —— 


See Ne 


THE ELDER BROTHER AND. THE TWIN. 53 


of the Queen and the Cardinal. Having become masters | 
of the situation on the death of the King [Louis XII], 
they substituted their son for the Dauphin, the substitu- . 
tion being facilitated by a strong likeness between the - 
. children.”* The dire consequences of this hypothesis | 
strike the eye at once: it nullifies in the most absolute 
fashion the legitimacy of all the remaining Bourbons. 
After a period of repose in the shades, the ghost of 
the Baron de Gieichen awoke and stalked forth into the 
First Empire, where all the talents were probing the 
dust of the Man in the Iron Mask. Here is the con- 
tribution of the Baron’s ghost to the bewildering topic 
of debate. “Louis XIV. had been a mere bastard, the 
child of foreigners. The lawful heir had been imprisoned 
at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, where he had married 
the daughter of one of his gaolers. Of this marriage a 
child was born, who, as soon as he was weaned, was 
despatched to Corsica, and there entrusted to a safe 
person, as a child coming of ‘good stock’—in Italian, 
Buona-parte. It is from this child that the Emperor 
was directly descended. The true claim of Napoleon I. 
to the throne of France established by the Iron Mask! 


* Funck-Brentano. 


54 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


—How came the great Dumas to miss that great dis- 
covery?” * 

Note has been made of the suggestion that Voltaire 
was the author of the unsigned “Contribution to the 
History of Persia.” He affected to treat it in public as 
an “obscure, ridiculous pamphlet,” but he was ex- 
ceedingly quick to appreciate the interest it had aroused. 
Surely that tale of Vermandois and the Dauphin, and 
the fond King who would not slay his son, might be 
improved upon! Now Voltaire had, as Matthew Arnold 
says of Macaulay, “his own heightened and telling way 
of putting things;” and of that heightened and telling 
way of his there is no more effective illustration than 
the surmise upon the Mask with which he witched the 


world. People have gone on repeating it—not as surmise . 


but as history—even to the present day. In how many 
minds does not the mention of the Man in the Iron 
Mask conjure up the image of a brother of the Grand 
Monarque? This story, nevertheless, is unsupported by 
any document that ever yet was vouched for; not in all 
the archives of France is there one single piéce to stay 
it on; nor will it tally (and this were indispensable) with 
* Funck-Brentano. 


ee ee eee ee — 


THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE TWIN. 55 


the dates of the changing periods in Saint-Mars’s career. 
In a word, from the day that the State papers of France 
became available, no seeker of the truth could continue 
his belief in the divination of Voltaire: so far as criticism 
was concerned it perished, accordingly, in the cataclysm 
of the Revolution. 

Let us see how adroitly Voltaire went to work, In 
the first edition of his “Age of Louis XIV.,” published 
in 1751, he wrote:—“Some months after the death of 
Mazarin, an event happened which is without a parallel 
in history. Moreover, and this is not less remarkable, 
the event has been passed over in silence by every 
historian. There was sent with the utmost secrecy to 
the castle of the Isles of Sainte-Marguente, in the Sea 
of Provence, a prisoner unknown, of a stature above the 
average, young, and with features of rare nobility and 
beauty. On the way, the prisoner wore a mask, the 
chin-piece of which was furnished with springs of steel, 
so that he could eat without removing it. Order had 
been given to Kill him if he ventured to uncover. He 
remained at the Isles until a trusted officer, Saint-Mars 
by name, governor of Pignerol, having been appointed 
in 1690 to the command of the Bastille, came to 


56 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Sainte-Marguerite to fetch him, and bore him thence— 
always in his mask—to the Bastille. Before his removal, 
he was seen in the Isle by the Marquis de Louvois, who 
remained standing while he spoke to him with a con- 
sideration savouring of respect. In the Bastille, the 
unknown was as well bestowed as was possible in that 
place, and nothing that he asked for was refused him. 
He had a passion for lace and fine linen; he amused 
himself with the guitar; and his table was furnished 
with the best. The governor rarely sat down in his 
presence. An old doctor ot the Bastille, who had often 
attended this interesting prisoner, said that, although he 
had examined his tongue and the rest of his body, he 
had never seen his face. He was admirably made, said 
the doctor, and his skin was of a brownish tint. He 
spoke charmingly, with a voice of a deeply interesting 
quality; never complaining of his lot, and never letting 
it be guessed who he was. This unknown captive died 
in 1703, and was buried by night in the parish of Saint- 
Pau]. What is doubly astonishing is this: that when he 
was sent to Sainte-Marguerite there did not disappear 
from Europe any personage of note. This was he, 
beyond a doubt, for observe what happened within a 


THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE TWIN. 57 


few days of his arrival at the Isle. The governor him- 
self laid the prisoner’s table, and then withdrew and 
locked the door. One day the prisoner wrote something 
with a knife on a silver plate, and threw the plate out 
of the window towards a boat on the shore, almost at 
the foot of the tower. A fisherman, to whom the boat 
belonged, picked up the plate and carried it to the 
governor, who, surprised beyond measure, asked the 
man: ‘Have you read what is written on this plate, and 
has anyone seen it in your hands?’ ‘I cannot read,’ 
answered the fisherman; ‘I have only just found it, and 
no one else has seen it.’ He was detained until the 
governor had made sure that he could not read, and 
that no other person had seen the plate. ‘Go,’ he then 


said, ‘It is well for you that you cannot read.’”* 


* The reader will be interested in comparing with this the 
version which Pére Papon gives in his Histotre Générale de Provence. 
Here, it will be observed, the issue is more tragical. Says Father 
Papon: “I met in the Citadel an officer of the Freé Company, aged 
seventy-nine. He told me more than once that a frater of that 
company saw one day, under the prisoner’s window, some white 
thing floating on the water. He brought it to shore, and carried it 
to M. de Saint-Mars. It was a shirt of very fine linen, carelessly 
folded, which the prisoner had completely covered with writing. 
Unfolding it, and reading a few lines, M. de Saint-Mars, with an air 


58 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


It will be seen that Voltaire does not say as yet 
who his extraordinary prisoner was. ‘He observed the 
impression his story had produced. Then, growing 
bolder, he insinuated in the first edition of the 
‘Questions on the Encyclopedia’ that, if the prisoner 
were masked, it was a precaution taken to prevent the 
recognition of a certain striking likeness. He still with- 
held the name, but every ear was straining now for some 
imposing revelation.” * 

It came at last, in the second edition of the 
“Questions on the Encyclopedia.” This time Voltaire, 
afraid to captain his fantasy, took cover behind his 
publisher. The paragraph had better be translated at 
length :— 

“The Iron Mask was without doubt a brother, and 
an elder brother, of Louis XIV., whose mother had that 
taste for fine linen with which M. de Voltaire has re 
enforced his case.** Reading the contemporary Memoirs 


of great embarrassment, asked the frater if he had not had the 
curiosity to read it himself. The frater declared over and over 
again that he had read nothing; nevertheless, two days later, he was 
found dead in his bed.” 

* Funck-Brentano. 

** “Tt was made to appear—although nothing has ever been 


THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE TWIN. 59 


in which this anecdote of the Queen finds mention, I 
had not a doubt that this was her son, a conclusion to 
which various other circumstances had already guided 
me. It is known that Louis XIII. had long ceased to 
share the Queen’s couch, and that the birth of Louis XIV., 
was the fruit of a happy accident. Here, as I believe, 
is the history pf the affair: The Queen had come to 
persuade herself that hers alone was the fault which 
had deprived Louis XIII. of an heir. The birth of the 
Iron Mask undeceived her on that point. The Cardinal,* 
to whom she had confided her secret, saw where his 
advantage lay in it. He could shape it at once to his 
own profit and to the profit of the State. Satisfied, by 
what had occurred, that the Queen was able to give 
children to France, he arranged to bring her Majesty 
and the King together. But both Queen and Cardinal 
being equally persuaded of the necessity of concealing 
from Louis XIII. the existence of the Iron Mask, they 


advanced in proof—that the Mask was addicted to the wearing of 
fine linen; and Anne of Austria, we know, was particularly fond of 
laces and embroideries. But this taste is not exactly confined to 
royal families, and is perhaps a little insufficient to convict a queen 
of adultery.””—Vte. Maurice Boutry. 

* Richelieu. 


60 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


had the child removed in secret. Louis XIV. remained 
in ignorance of the matter until after the death of 
Cardinal Mazarin. Then, and not till then, did it come 
to the knowledge of the King that he had a brother 
living, an elder brother, moreover, whom his mother 
could not possibly disown, and in whom some signal 
likeness might not improbably declare his origin. Re- 
flecting that this Prince, born in wedlock, could not, 
without the gravest consequences and most dire scandal, 
be pronounced illegitimate after the decease of Louis XII, 
Louis XIV. could have fallen on no measure wiser or 
more just than the one which he adopted; and that 
measure, in addition, while securing his own safety and 
the tranquillity of the State, spared him an act of cruelty 
which a sovereign less conscientious and less magna- 
nimous would have accepted as necessary.” 

“What unlikeliness, what contradictions, what abound- 
ing errors have we here,” exclaims Topin, within the 
compass of a page or two! This strange unknown 
whom no one is allowed to look upon, whose doctor 
even may never see him unmasked, yet who is con- 
fidently asserted to be beautiful and noble of feature: 
Saint-Mars appointed to the Bastille in 1690 (eight 


THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE TWIN. 61 


years before he received that command), and traversing 
all France to seek a prisoner for whom, during twenty- 
eight years, some other gaoler has sufficed: this mask 
with the steel springs which covers the prisoner’s visage 
night and day without destroying his health: that beatific 
resignation to his lot, and unwillingness to disclose his 
identity, on the part of a prisoner who flings silver plates 
out of window after committing to them some history 
which all but sends the governor into an apoplexy: her 
Majesty’s taste for fine linen, so extremely unfortunate, 
since it is presently to be transformed into invincible 
proof of the birth of an unlawful child: this Queen, 
again, who has been already three times enceinte, heap- 
ing herself with reproaches that she can give the King 
no heir: her infatuated resolve to share with Richelieu, 
a sworn enemy, the secret of a guilty intrigue: a Queen 
of France, in the momentous hour of childbirth, with 
no confidant but the prime minister: and these two 
tremendous events, the birth and stealthy removal of a royal 
child, so shrewdly dissimulated that not a single Memoir 
of the period has mention of them—these are among 
the first reflections which this amazing narrative suggests.* 


* Adapted from Topin. 


62 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


And now for the history, not less diverting and 
equally veracious, of the Twin. This is the invention 
wrought by the Abbé Soulavie into his apocryphal 
Mémoires du Marechal Duc de Richelieu, first published 
in London in 1790. Written in a not inelegant French, 
we are asked to accept it as the composition of Saint- 
Mars,* who, incapable of a literary sentence, groaned 
over the spelling of a six-line despatch. 

“The unhappy Prince whom I brought up,” said the 
governor, “and of whom I had charge to the end of 
his days, was born the 5th of September, 1638, at half- 
past eight in the evening, while the King was at supper. 
His brother, now reigning as Louis XIV., was born at 
twelve noon, his father being at dinner. The pomp and 
ceremony which attended the birth of the King con- 
trasted wretchedly with that of his brother, which was 
closely concealed. Louis XIII. was informed from the 
Queen’s chamber that her Majesty was about to be 
delivered of a second child; and this double birth had 


* “Relation de la natssance et de l’éducation du prince in- 
Jortuné soustratt par les cardinaux Richelieu et Masarin a la 
société et renfermé par Vordre de Lours XIV., composée par le 
gouverneur de ce prince au lit de mort,’’—Mém., vol. W1., ch, Iv. 


—- ee me. 


THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE TWIN. 63 


already been predicted to him by two shepherds, who 
had said in Paris that if the Queen should bring two 
Dauphins into the world, the State were lost. Cardinal 
de Richelieu, consulted by the King, replied that, “if 
two children were born, the second must be put out of 
sight, since he might one day claim the throne. Tor- 
mented by uncertainty as to what course he should 
follow, the King’s distress was overwhelming when the 
pains of the second accouchement began.” The twin 
was born, “daintier and prettier than his elder,” and 
the midwife was charged with his safe keeping! Where 
the luckless infant was secreted we are not told; merely 
that dame Péronnette, the pearl of midwives, reared him 
as one of her own, and that he was given out for some 
nobleman’s love-child: an ideally simple little method of 
disposing of a Child of France. 

At first, it is the great Richelieu himself who under- 
takes the education of this untimely prince, destined, in 
the event of the Dauphin’s death, to succeed to the 
throne. Then, to resume the legend so absurdly fathered 
on Saint-Mars, “the cardinal confided him to the 
governor, who was to bring him up as the son of a 
king, but in strict secrecy. The governor took him to his 


64 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


own estate in Burgundy. The Queen-mother seemed to 
fear that if the birth of this young Dauphin became 
known the malcontents of the kingdom would mise in 
his behalf, because of the belief (held from certain of 
the faculty) that the last-born of twin brothers is the 
first conceived, and, in consequence, the rightful heir. 
Nevertheless, Anne of Austria could not bring herself to 
destroy the documents which established the birth of 
her son. At the age of nineteen, this State secret was 
discovered by the prince while spying in a casket of his 
governor, where he came upon letters of the Queen and 
of the Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin.... 

“The governor wrote to the Court asking for in- 
structions, and both he and his charge were ordered to 
be imprisoned,” &c. 

Soulavie had had for his principal supporters Dulaure, 
in his Histotre de Paris (1821); Fournier and Arnould, 
in the drama put forward at the Odéon; Alexander 
Dumas, in the Vicomte de Bragelonne,; Levasseur, in a 
volume of the Mémotres pour Tous (1835); and the 
historians Sismondi and Michelet. 

These, then, are the two main branches of the 
system which sets up the Iron Mask as a brother of 


THE ELDER BROTHER AND THE TWIN. 65 


Louis XIV.; Voltaire’s prevailing story of an elder 
brother, with Mazarin at the putative father; and 
Soulavie’s creation, more romanesque, if possible, of 
the twin who vanished in the instant of his appearance. 
With these is linked, and will fall naturally into line, 
the story of the Queen and Buckingham. Topin sets 
out upon his refutation of the entire system by asking 
when and in what circumstances this most equivocal 
brother of Louis XIV.—whether elder or twin—could 
have contrived to slip unseen into the world? His birth 
has been placed at three different dates. Choice may 
be made, for instance, of 162 5, after the famous visit 
of the Duke of Buckingham to France; of 1631, follow- 
ing on that grave sickness of Louis XIIL, which had 
given rise to fears that his hated brother, Gaston 
d’Orléans, might be called to the throne; or, lastly, 
1638, eight or nine hours after the birth of Louis XIV. 
If the refutation is to be decisive, it should leave no 
doubt upon the mind that the birth of another Dauphin 
was as mythical as his subsequent misfortunes. 


The Man sn the Iron Mask. 5 


66 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER IIL 


THE INFATUATION OF BUCKINGHAM. 


Ir was in May, 1625, that the brilliant Buckingham 
went to Paris, charged by Charles I. to conduct to Eng- 
land his bride Henrietta Maria. Charles’s ambassador 
had been welcomed in advance by Louis XIII. “I do 
assure you,” that King had written, “you will be re- 
garded here, not as a stranger, but as a true French- 
man, for indeed you are one at heart.” And Richelieu 
had said to the Marquis d’Effiat: “M. de Buckingham 
will find in me a brother.” Indeed, Buckingham knew 
France well, and had acquired in that country not a 
little of the grace and gloss of manner which have been 
worth so much to his memory. We are not at this day 
to bestow much praise upon this elegant and handsome 
trifler, no fit counsellor for kings, though he had been 
counsellor to two; but the courtier shone very fine in 
him, and he was an eminently splendid figure in a 
pageant. He made a superb entry at the Court of 


a a er ——— 


P-. . 


Sas Sq) a 


THE INFATUATION OF BUCKINGHAM. 67 


France, “with more pomp and glitter than if he had 
been King,” says La Rochefoucauld. Madame de 
Motteville adds that the Duke seemed to have treasuries 
at command, and all the Crown Jewels of England to 
heighten the splendour of his wardrobe. In the first 
volume of the Hardwicke State Papers is an account of 
the “vastly rich cloaths” he took with him, “the number 
of his servants, and of the noble Personages in his train.” 
A suit of purple satin, “embroidered all over with rich 
orient pearls,” was valued at £20,000, and another of 
“white satin uncut velvet, set all over with diamonds,” 
at four times that amount. Paris was amazed at the 
prodigality of his display. Certain jewels on the costumes 
that he changed incessantly were sewn with such in- 
genious lack of skill that they detached themselves and 
rolled away, “and when they were brought back to him 
the Duke would by no means receive them.” Great 
noblemen were in his suite; he had seven grooms of the 
chamber, thirty chief yeomen, and twenty-two cooks, with 
pages, footmen, grooms, huntsmen, outriders, musicians, 
and watermen. Three coaches lined with velvet and 
smothered in gold lace had eight horses and six coach- 


men apiece; and the Duke had his barge, with twenty- 
5* 


68 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


two rowers “all in sky-coloured taffety.” What with his 
attendant knights, and the pages of the knights, his 
train numbered six or seven hundred persons. He was 
the hero of the town and of the court. 

Dazzled, it may have been, by his own magnificence, 
giddy with the flatteries that were lavished on him, 
Buckingham at the Court of Louis XIIL could see none 
worthy of his own homage but the young, charming, 
and vivacious Queen. He fell violently in love with 
Anne of Austria, who was now between twenty-four and 
twenty-five years of age. The Queen, being a Spaniard, 
was a natural coquette; and Madame de Motteville, than 
whom no one knew her better, says that Anne of Austria 
was not disposed to blame a certain open and honest 
gallantry ‘‘o% on ne prend aucun engagement particulter”’ 
—in other words, which involves no notion of com- 
promise. “She accepted with a certain kindness and 
no seeming surprise a passion which, while evoking 
memories of her own country, and even pleasing her 
amour-propre, Offered no peril to her virtue.” If, how- 
ever, the numerous /éfes in Buckingham’s honour brought 
him often in the presence of the Queen, the Court was 
witness of their meetings; and though this was a circum- 


THE INFATUATION OF BUCKINGHAM. a 69 


stance which Buckingham might regret, it justified the 
confidence of her Majesty. 

A week of great parade came to an end, and 
Henrietta Maria, gorgeously escorted, began her progress 
towards England. Louis XIII, falling unwell, got no 
farther than Compiégne. Anne of Austria, with her 
mother-in-law, Marie de Medici, accompanied the bride 
to Amiens, where the ballets, the masques, and the 
banquets were renewed. Buckingham, it is said, in- 
vented causes of delay, that he might still be haunting 
the skirts of Anne. As Amiens contained no palace 
capable of lodging three queens together, their Majesties 
were separately housed; Anne of Austria in a sumptuous 
building in the midst of a great garden on the banks of 
the Somme. Here the young Queen and her Court 
would often stroll, and here she found herself with 
Buckingham one evening, but not alone. Lord Holland 
had the Duchesse de Chevreuse on his arm, and all the 
ladies of the Queen’s suite were in attendance. Bucking- 
ham conducted Anne; and it would appear that, em- 
boldened by the nearness of their hour of separation, he 
grew more ardent in his suit. Night was falling, and at 
the turning of an alley he threw himself at the Queen’s 


7O THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


feet and besought her passionately. She, “alarmed, 
and alive on a sudden to the danger she was in, gave 
a loud cry; and Putange, her equerry, who was walking 
a few paces behind, rushed up and seized Buckingham. 
In a moment the whole Court was on the scene, and 
Buckingham disappeared in the crowd.”* 

Two days later, Henrietta Maria was on her way to 
Boulogne; Marie de Medici, her mother, and Anne of 
Austria, her sister-in-law, going with her to the gates of 
Amiens. It was on the step of Anne’s carriage that 
Buckingham said his farewell; “burying his face in the 
window-curtain to conceal his tears.” The Princesse 
de Conti, who rode with the Queen, said to her (on 
Madame de Motteville’s assurance), that, “although she 
could answer to the King for the virtue of her Majesty, 
she would say less for her on the score of kindness— 
and she thought the Queen’s eyes held a kind of pity 
for the defeated lover.” 

But Anne had not seen quite the last of him. Con- 
trary winds stayed Charles’s bride at Boulogne, and 
Buckingham the proud, who had stormed Paris in a 
cuirass of diamonds, crept back to Amiens, with Lord 

* Topin. 


THE INFATUATION OF BUCKINGHAM. 71 


Holland for accomplice, pretending that a letter of im- 
portance for Marie de Medici had been forgotten. It 
was early morning when he presented himself at Anne’s 
palace; and the Queen, who had just been bled for 
some ailment, was in bed, with several of her ladies 
about her. In royal houses, up to the era of the 
Revolution, the bedchamber was scarcely more private 
than the boudoir, and Buckingham and Holland were 
introduced. Buckingham “fell on his knees at the bed- 
side, kissed the coverlet, and broke into a transport of 
passion, greatly to the scandal of the maids of honour. 
The Comtesse de Lannoi, entreating him to rise, said 
severely that these were not French ways.” “I am not 
a Frenchman,” replied the Duke and he continued to 
plead tenderly with the Queen. Her Majesty, greatly 
embarrassed, could find nothing to say, until she roused 
herself to reproach the Duke for his boldness. But this 
she did with no great show of indignation, and her heart 
was perhaps not quite untouched.”* Buckingham re- 
turned to Boulogne, and never saw Anne of Austria 
again. 

These are the two memorable scenes of Amiens with 


* Topin. 


72 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


which scandal was once very busy, but with which his- 
tory, seeking proofs, was never seriously concerned. 
During the troubles of the Fronde, and the heat of civil 
war, the hint of a criminal love between Buckingham 
and the Queen, whose honour he would very willingly 
have spoiled, was bruited often; but all the evidence 
goes to show that Anne of Austria outwitted a passionate, 
unscrupulous gallant, and was never for an instant his 
victim. A kind of Spanish tenderness she may have 
felt for him, and we may suspect her of no small skill 
in flirtation; but, as there is no particle of evidence to 
adduce, accusation may go no farther. It is abundantly 
clear that, so far as Buckingham was concerned, the 


Queen was never without witnesses to her conduct. Marie 


de Medici, who bore her daughter-in-law no very good « 


will at this period, took upon herself to assure Louis XII. 
that he need not concern himself with rumour; that even 
if the Queen had been willing to demean herself she 
was so perpetually surrounded that the opportunity could 
never have offered. As for the impetucus indiscretions 
of Buckingham, the Queen had not encouraged and 
could not well have prevented them: in her younger 
days, said Madame de Medici to her son, such things 


a 


THE INFATUATION OF BUCKINGHAM. 73 


had happened to herself.* Madame might have added 
that the Duc de Montmorency and the Duc de Belle- 
garde had both been in love with the fascinating Queen 
of Louis XTIL, and that neither of them had fared one 
whit better than Buckingham. 

Says Topin:—“Nothing seems to accuse the Queen 
save the persistent coldness towards her of Louis XIII. 
But does this conduct date from the visit of Buckingham 
to Paris? Was Louis so completely estranged from the 
Queen as has been supposed? And may we seek in 
this the proof of an act of infidelity on the Queen’s 
part, whether with Buckingham in 1625, as the result 
of love, or with some person unknown, in 1630, as the 
result of deliberate calculation, and to the end that, 
after the death of Louis XIIL, which at that moment 
seemed imminent, she might reign in the name of her 
illegitimate child, who, on the King’s unexpected re- 
covery, must be hidden away, to become later.the Man 
in the Iron Mask?” 


* Mémoires of La Porte. 


74 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 


Born within eight days of one another, Anne of 
Austria, Infanta of Spain, and Louis, Dauphin of France, 
may be said to have been pledged in infancy. Astro- 
logers had announced that, delivered under one star, 
they were destined to love each other, married or not 
married. The little Anne lent a willing ear to the wise 
men’s predictions; and when, at the age of twelve, she 
was bidding good-bye to the Duc de Mayenne, who had 
come to Madrid to sign the marriage contract, she in- 
structed him to tel] the King that she was “extremely 
impatient to see him.” Her governess was shocked, but 
the Infanta replied that it had always been recommended 
to her to speak the truth. Two years later, in 1615, 
she was a bride of fourteen, and as enthusiastic as ever 
about the boy she had married. 

Much less enthusiastic was the boy. He had always 
declared that he hated the Spaniards, “because they 


ee 


THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 75 


are the enemies of Papa”; and on two occasions, when 
his father, Henri IV., talked to him of his future mar- 
riage with the Infanta, he gave stubborn answers in the 
negative. He was grave and observant for his years, 
intolerant of the King’s mistresses who tried to conciliate 
him, and precociously fierce against their children, whom 
he would not call his brothers and would not suffer at 
his table. After the death of Henry IV., the boy-King 
shewed himself less and less in sympathy with the gross 
speech and habits of the Court, and was fonder of 
hawking than of chambering. 

The idea of marriage seems always to have repelled 
him, and after four years of wedded life, Anne was a 
wife only to the extent that the church had made her 
one. The conduct of the King had become, indeed, al- 
most a question of State. His determined abstention 
had moved the French Court, it had offended the Court 
of Spain, it was regarded as a slight by the papal nuncio 
and the Court of Tuscany, whose aid had been con- 
siderable in bringing about the union. 

In January, 1619, some kind of rapprochement 
seems to have been effected, but the hopes that were 
built on it were disappointed. Again in 1622 it was 


76 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


said with confidence that an heir to the throne might be 
expected, but almost immediately afterwards the Queen 
was the victim of an accident. The visit of Buckingham 
left the King unmoved, and had no result in modifying 
his relations with the Queen. Having freed himself from 
his mother’s yoke, Louis XIII passed absolutely under 
that of Richelieu; and jealously as the cardinal-minister 
watched the young sovereign, he was yet more jealous 
in his surveillance of the Queen, an object of his im- 
placable resentment. Is it possible for one moment to 
believe in an intrigue of hers, with Buckingham, with 
Mazarin, or with another, which Richelieu fails to know 
of, whose spies penetrated to the inmost recesses of the 
Court? And knowing it, would he have hesitated an 
instant to ruin the woman whom he hated, by confiding 
his knowledge to the King? 

Let us consider next the circumstances of the illness 
of Louis XIIL in 1630. The King fell ill at Lyons, 
not, says Topin, at the beginning of August (which has 
been asserted), but on the 22nd of September; “and 
here the dates are of the utmost importance.” On the 
2gth, an exhausting dysentery added itself to a severe 
attack of fever, and at midnight the doctors despaired 


a. — et te 


THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 77 


of saving him. He took a tender farewell of the Queen, 
and entreated her forgiveness for all things. Towards 
noon of the next day the King still lingered, and the 
Archbishop of Lyons was preparing to administer ex- 
treme unction, when the doctors, who had already bled 
the enfeebled body six times, ordered a seventh bleed- 
ing. This would assuredly have carried off the patient, 
but before the operation could be performed the true 
cause of the malady revealed itself: an abscess in the 
stomach broke, and the King was saved. 

On his recovery, Louis XIII. quitted Lyons with the 
Queen, whose unaffected tenderness and solicitude at 
his sick-bed had touched him closely. “In that crisis, 
both had forgotten the past. The coldness of the one 
was overcome, the wounded pride of the other was 
healed.” Exulting in her unwonted empire, it was not 
enough for the Queen to have won a tardy place in her 
husband’s heart; she desired to complete her triumph 
by casting down the minister who had opposed himself 
between them, and, at one moment, she had nearly 
been successful-—but the King could rule only by the 
Cardinal. 


In January, 1631, the Queen was manifestly encernte. 


78 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Supposing this the result of a criminal intrigue, at what 
date should the commencement of the pregnancy be 
placed? 


“Ts it, as was asserted, at the moment and by reason 


of the apparently imminent death of Louis XIII.? But - 


the Queen was delivered within the first five days of 
April; consequently the child, conceived the 3oth of 
September, would by no means have attained the full 
period, and could not, therefore, have become the Man 
in the Iron Mask.* Was it on the arrival of Louis XIII. 
at Lyons early in the August of 1630? But at this date, 
Anne of Austria had not the vital motive for becoming 
a mother, which, according to her accusers, she had on 
the 30th of September, when the King lay on the 
threshold of death. Either, then, the child is born in- 
capable of living, or its conception mounts to an epoch 
which makes Louis XIII. the father, because the Queen 
had no need to procure herself an heir by unlawful 
means.” 

The truth is, that this, the third pregnancy of Anne 
of Austria, traces to the reconciliation which followed on 


* The medical science of the present day might succeed in 
saving such a child; but the chances would be very slight indeed. 


‘ THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 79 


the desperate illness of the King. Richelieu himself is 
a witness here. “If France should be blessed with this 
fortune,” he wrote, “it will be the fruit of God’s blessing, 
and of the kindly relations established of late between 
his Majesty and the Queen.”* Not a word on Richelieu’s 
part which inculpates or seeks to inculpate the Queen, 
and it has been observed with justice, that history could 
never hope to be better instructed than that “clairvoyant 
and pitiless minister.” 

Not for seven years were the ardent hopes of the 
nation to be realised. On the 5th of September, 1638, 
Anne of Austria gave birth to a son who was to ascend 
the throne as Louis XIV. This is also the day which 
has been assigned to the birth of the Iron Mask by 
those who, rejecting the theory of an illegitimate child, 
have pronounced for that of a twin brother, born in the 
evening, “and condemned, for his tardy arrival, to per- 
petual imprisonment.” The problem of the twin is 
briefly to be considered. In no country in Europe, 

* Lettres et papriers de Richelieu. Found among the letters 
and documents which passed from the hands of the Duchesse 
d’Aiguillon, Richelieu’s niece, to the Archives de V Etat, and which 


were published by the learned Avenet in his collection of Documents 
inédits de l’histoire de France. 


80 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, 


perhaps, was the birth of a royal child more jealously 
scrutinised, more elaborately and minutely attested, than 
in the France of the Monarchy. Such an event might 
overwhelm the expectations of a collateral heir, or might 
ruin the prospects of a party. Precautions the most 
extraordinary were employed, precautions which may be 
said, practically, to have excluded the possibility of fraud 
or deception. Not only were the greatest persons in the 
State compelled to be eye-witnesses of the event, but 
the people itself was summoned “to assist” at the birth 
of the Chsld of France. The doors of the royal dwelling 
were flung open in this solemn hour, the people 
thronged in and passed freely into the innermost 
chambers of the palace. Madame Campan relates how, 
at the birth of the first child of Marie Antoinette, the 
room in which the Queen lay was so intolerably crowded 
that Louis XVI. broke a window to let in more air. 
Indeed, this practice, so distressing and humiliating 
to the royal mother, was invariable and all but im- 
memorial. 

It was not omitted at the birth of Louis XIV. At 


five o’clock on the morning of the 5th of September, — 


1638, Louis XII. was summoned to the Queen’s 


THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 81 


chamber, where he remained until he had the happiness 
to know that a son and heir had been born to him. 
At six, there arrived in succession at Saint-Germain, the 
King’s brother, Gaston d’Orléans (who had a vital in- 
terest in assuring himself that the birth was genuine), 
the Princesse de Condé, Madame de Vendéme, the 
Chancellor, Madame de Lansac (the future governess of 
the prince) and Mesdames de Senecey and de la Flotte 
of the royal household. Close to the Queen’s couch an 
altar had been raised, where the Bishops of Lisieux, 
Meaux, and Beauvais pronounced mass in turn. Pressing 
up to the altar and flowing out into the room beyond, 
were princesses, dukes, duchesses, and bishops, “with a 
vast crowd of the common folk who had invaded 
the palace from an early hour, and who now completely 
‘filled it.” 

At eleven am. precisely the Queen’s pangs were 
over, and the birth of a prince was announced. The 
resentment, ill-concealed, of Gaston d’Orléans did not 
escape a few observant eyes, but passed almost unnoticed 
amid the general joy. The melancholy Louis XIL broke 
into smiles, and called on those around him to admire 


the fine proportions of his son. Shortly afterwards, and 
The Man in the Iron Mask. 6 


82 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


in the Queen’s chamber, the Child of France was 
baptised by the Bishop of Meaux, chaplain-in-chief. A 
King’s messenger was despatched in all haste to bear 
the great news to Paris, but the joyous cries of the 
populace outran his horse all along the route, and as 
the messenger galloped into the capital, the bells were 
already swinging in every church. | 
Meanwhile, what of the Twin? The statement of 
Soulavie was, it will be remembered, that the Queen was 
delivered at eight in the evening of a second son, who, 
conformably to Richelieu’s counsel, was privily and at 
once put away. The ré/e here invented for Richelieu 
was of such immense importance that Soulavie should 
at least have been careful to know where the Cardinal 
was at this capital moment. For the truth is that 
Richelieu was not at Saint-Germain at all. He had 
quitted the Court at the end of July; he was at Saint- 
Quentin on the day of Louis XIV.’s birth, and he did 
not return to Paris until the 2nd of October. The letter 
of congratulation which he wrote to their Majesties from 
Saint-Quentin is printed in his Lettres et papters. 
Richelieu, then, is summoned in vain as a principal in- 
strument of the plot imagined by Soulavie. As the 


THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 83 


Queen’s enemy, he had every interest to denounce her 
to the King; as her suppositious friend and accomplice, 
he could scarcely have aided, at the distance of Saint- 
Quentin, the conspiracy which must have been com- 
pressed within an hour at the utmost in the palace of 
Saint-Germain. 

But let Richelieu be dismissed from the case. We 
are to receive as plausible the suggestion that a twin 
brother of Louis XIV. is born without the knowledge of 
the Court. The birth is nine hours late, but the palace 
is still swarming with the princes of the family—and no 
one has heard of it. Or, it is known to all, and all are 
agreed, for no conceivable reason, to keep the secret. 
The secret is so well kept, moreover, that never once is 
it divulged or even hinted at in any Memo:r of the 
period. We have contemporary notices of Anne of 
Austria which are scarcely discreet, and we have others 
which are less than discreet; but we have no record of 
her by any writer of her own day which contains the 
faintest reference to the surreptitious birth of a twin 
brother of Louis XIV. 

Let this birth, however, be admitted. Let it be 


supposed that, at eight in the evening, the witnesses were 
6* 


84 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


few, and had pledged themselves to secrecy. Was there 
any reason for secrecy? Why should Louis XIII. be, as 
Soulavie says, on the point of fainting when he learns 
that he has two heirs instead of one? The question of 
the trouble that might arise from the idea that the 
second born is the first conceived is not admissible; for, 
never sanctioned in medicine, this empirical theory had 
no recognition in the law of France. From commoner 
to King, the first-born was the heir. Far, therefore, 
from being alarmed by the birth of a twin, Louis XIII. 
had reason to praise his fortune, for the right of 
inheritance was now doubly consolidated in his own 
family. 

Once more, however, for the rounding off of the 
argument, let the impossible be received and acquiesced 
in. This ambiguous son of Anne of Austria is born, 
we will say. He is brought into the world shortly 
before 1625, and Buckingham is his father; or in 1631, 
when Louis XIII. is believed to be dying, and Mazarin, 
or some gallant unknown, is his father; or in 1638, 
when he is presented to us as the most interesting, the 
most romantic, and the most unfortunate of twins. En- 


trusted to some creature of consummate devotion and 


ae 


THE: ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 85 


discretion, he is reared in the country; and if, in the 
course of time, there is developed a rather striking 
likeness to a certain Queen-mother or a King, no one 
perceives it, or those who do perceive it are polite 
enough to refrain from questions. But at what epoch 
was he imprisoned, and for what cause? “From the 
day that he becomes the famous prisoner whom Saint- 
Mars conducts in 1698 from Sainte-Marguerite to the 
Bastille, we have the right to ask when, how, and in 
what circumstances he was arrested and confided to his 
gaoler?” 

He was allowed his liberty, we will suppose, during 
the lifetime of Anne of Austria; that would be not un- 
reasonable, provided he were kept out of sight. Was 
he imprisoned after her death? But Anne of Austria 
died in January, 1666, and Saint-Mars receives no 
prisoner. Did the arrest take place, as Voltaire affirms, 
in 1661, after the death of Mazarin? But at this date, 
and three years later, Saint-Mars was still an officer of 
musketeers. It was. not until December, 1664, that he 
was appointed to the governorship of Pignerol, where, in 
the following month, he received Fouquet into his keep- 
ing. On the 2oth of August, 1669, arrives at Pignerol 


86 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. = 


a second prisoner, one Eustache Dauger. But cea 
is known to us: an obscure spy, he was given as a 
servant to Fouquet. Is it likely that Saint-Mars would 
have appointed to wait on Fouquet—who had pas 
all his life near Louis XIV. and Anne of Austria—a 
prince whose features recalled the King’s? From the 
date of Dauger’s imprisonment no other prisoner is sent 
to Saint-Mars until the Comte de Lauzun goes to 
Pignerol in 1671. After that, at long intervals, other 
prisoners are led thither, but they are all identified, their 
crimes or their faults are known. 

“We see them sometimes not too well treated; and 
when, in 1681, Saint-Mars passes from the command of 
Pignerol to that of Exiles, he takes with him two prisoners 
only, whom he styles contemptuously “a pair of gaol- 
birds.” At Exiles, at Pignerol, at Sainte-Marguerite 
(which dungeon was taken over by Saint-Mars in 1687), 
if new prisoners are entrusted to him, we know to what 
motives their incarceration may be attributed; and no- : 
thing in their past, nothing in their treatment in prison, 
nothing in their conduct allows us to suspect in any one 
of them a brother of Louis XIV. Needless to say, Saint- 
Mars would not be likely to designate his prince by 


THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 87 


name in any official despatch, nor should proof of that 
kind be demanded. But when, after having examined 
in turn all the prisoners whom the future governor of 
the Bastille had in his charge—-and among whom must 
of necessity be found that mysterious one with whom he 
traversed France in 1698—we have satisfied ourselves 
as to the causes of their arrest, and have penetrated 
into their past; when a hundred authentic despatches* 
render it absolutely certain that beyond these prisoners 
there was no other, have we not reason to conclude 
with the question: Where then is the son of Anne 
d’Autriche ?” ** 

Tradition, fable, legend, ensnare us at every turn in 
this enquiry. Truth and fiction are interwoven in the 
strangest manner. Around every legendary hero the 
adventures of other persons gradually group themselves, 
and this has been signally the case with the Man in 
the Mask. How interesting—in its relation to the hypo- 
thesis of the king’s brother—is the story of the bound- 


* Archives du ministére de la marine.— Archives du ministére 
de la guerre.—Archtves du ministere des affaires ¢trangéres.— 
Archives impériales, 

** Topin. 


88 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


less deference shown to the prisoner, and the visit he 
received at Sainte-Marguerite from the minister Louvois, 
who addresses him “with a consideration savouring of 
respect.” But we shall see presently that no one goes 
out of his way to show deference to the Mask; and, as 
for the visit of Louvois, that is pure invention. In 1680 
(eight years, be it noted, before Saint-Mars took the 
Man in the Mask to the Isles) Louvois, who had broken 
his leg, went to Baréges for a few weeks to complete 
his cure. In Russet’s Histotre de Louvois, we have the 
detailed itinerary of the journey, and Sainte-Marguerite 
is not found in it; nor, after this, was Louvois ever again 
in the south of France. The piquant episode of the 
silver plate (transformed by Pére Papon into a linen 
shirt) is bound up with the theory of a brother or a 
twin brother of Louis XIV., and is highly interesting as 
an example of the commingling of fact with fiction in 
the popular history of the Mask. The story of the plate, 
as will be plain, has its origin in the attempt at escape 
of a Protestant minister confined at Sainte-Marguerite 
in 1692. Indeed, it was scarcely even an attempt at 
escape; the Protestant minister writes some complaint 


on his pewter-plate or vessel (is it necessary to say- that 


THE ACQUITTAL OF THE QUEEN. 89 


State prisoners of the 17th century were not served on 
silver?), and flings it out of window. Out of this com- 
monplace fact has arisen the pungent tale of the silver 
dish which is nearly the death of the fisherman who 
rescues it. It was believed—and it has still a kind of 
illiterate currency. 

There are legends which, doing hurt to no one’s 
memory, it seems almost a pity to displace by fact; but 
it is always grateful to slay a fable which has involved 
a reputation in disgrace. This has been the interest 
and the motive of refuting once again the discarded 
and long-contemned invention of Voltaire, which, modi- 
fied variously by successive writers, has crammed the 
mind of Christendom. It may lessen the charm of the 
story to remove from it the captivating person of a 
brother of Louis XIV., but the ard truth of history 
repeats that the Iron Mask was not a son of Anne of 
Austria. Who has proved the birth of the pretended 
prince? Who will give the date of his imprisonment? 
Not even in the France of the old Monarchy were royal 
infants delivered by the gods, and inscrutably concealed 
by them. The malign concept of Voltaire returns again 


to the rag-bag of Time—alms meet for oblivion. 


go THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. 


ENGLISH readers will not expect to be detained long 
over the case of Monmouth. Monmouth’s claims to 
the mask were the imagination of an ex-officer of French 
cavalry, by name Germain-Frangois Poullain de Saint- 
Foix.* Single-handed he defended them, but with the 
valour of six. His hypothesis was only too easily 
destroyed, and perhaps its most valid title to respect 
during the lifetime of Saint-Foix lay in his perfect 
readiness to prove it at the point of the rapier. 

The early career of Monmouth scarcely concerns us. 
The natural son of Charles II. and Lucy Walter or 
Walters (the “browne, beautiful, bold, but insipid crea- 
ture” whom the diarist Evelyn encountered in Paris), 
his father doted on him, the Court spoiled him, and, in 
the prime of manhood he was, for the general people— 


* Born February 5, 1698; died August 25, 1776.—Iung. 


THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. gt 


The young men’s vision, and the old men’s dream! 


The line is Dryden’s, and the famous flattery of the 
picture in “Absalom and Achitophel” may once again 
be cited: — 

Early in foreign fields he won renown, 

With kings and states allied to Israel’s crown: 

In peace the thoughts of war he could remove, 

And seem’d as he were only bom for love. 

Whate’er he did, was done with so much ease, 

In him alone ’twas natural to please: 

His motions all accompanied with grace; 

And Paradise was open’d in his face. 
History has rejected the verdict of Monmouth’s con- 
temporaries. A man of brilliant looks and most eminent 
graces of person, a polished courtier, a sportsman, and 
(save at the crisis of Sedgemoor) a brave man in battle: 
these were certainly his best recommendations to the 
general good-will. He lacked almost every element of 
greatness. His conduct of the rebellion against James II. 
showed that he was neither a leader nor an organiser; 
defeated, he left his devoted followers to their fate; and, 
in the most critical hour of his existence—the interview 
with the implacable James—he displayed a cowardice 
and a baseness of spirit which disgusted the King, 


g2 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


amazed and shocked the French ambassador, and 
drew down upon his memory the scathing rebukes 
of Macaulay. 

Day was not yet full come on the morning of the 
6th of July, 1685, when Monmouth, with Grey and the 
German Buyse beside him, was riding in flight from the 
lost field of Sedgemoor. It is but just to say that, up 
to the moment at which he knew himself defeated, he 
had fought, on foot and pike in hand, like a stalwart 
soldier. But the moment of defeat was surely the one 
in which a rebel of courage and of heart would re- 
member the men whom he had summoned to his flag. 
History has few more touching instances of devotion to 
a feeble cause than those which the wretched memory 
of Sedgemoor will eternally evoke. Those “Mendip 
miners” and poor peasants, with their scythes and blud- 
geons and a few old rusty guns, who shouted for “King 
Monmouth” while Monmouth was among them, and 
who tried to stem the whirlwind of James’s cavalry when 
Monmouth had abandoned them, deserved to die for a 
better treason, and for a nobler traitor. 

_ There is no need to rehearse again the details of 
the flight and capture of Monmouth. He must have 


5 ee 


THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. 93 


realised his doom in the hour of his arrest, and it re- 
mained to him only to meet it as the son of a king, 
and as the vanquished leader of an ineffectual revolt. 
But twice he failed, and despicably, in the fortitude that 
inspires the great insurgent. He had abandoned his 
heroic peasants when his military knowledge told him 
that the battle had gone to the King; and he abandoned 
his own manhood when he found himself in James’s 
clutches. His letter to the King from Ringwood is 
branded by Macaulay as “that of a man whom a 
craven fear had made insensible to shame”-—his be- 
haviour in the interview with the King degrades him 
deeper still. It was an interview which James II. 
should never have accorded. He was justified in send 
ing to the scaffold an enemy who had not only usurped 
the title of king, but whose proclamation was charged 
with hideous libels; but, having resolved upon the death 
of Monmouth, James should not, in common humanity, 
have admitted him to his presence. That cruel favour, 
worthy of the most resentful sovereign in English history, 
tempted the beaten and broken Monmouth to plead 
miserably and most ignominiously for the life which was 


already lost to him. 


94 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


With his arms bound, Monmouth grovelled on the 
floor at the King’s feet; tried to embrace him by the 
knees; begged for life, for life only. The champion of 
Protestantism—-a position which had disgraced him with 
his father, and the plea which had supported his re- 
bellion against his uncle—he offered, in his last 
desperate extremity, to become a Catholic. James 
turned from him in contempt, and Monmouth’s final 
hope was extinguished. 

It is at this dramatic moment that M. Germain- 
Frangois Poullain de Saint-Foix appropriates the doomed 
adventurer, hands him over to Louis XIV., who passes 
him on to Saint-Mars, who transforms him into the Man 
in the Mask. 

James the unforgiving, it is pretended, forgave his 
nephew on the very eve of the fate he had ordained for 
him; ‘and Louis of France consented to receive and 
lodge him for life in one of his convenient dungeons. 
This, of course, implies that it was not Monmouth, but 
some magnanimous substitute for that prince, whom 
Ketch, with the clumsiness of fright, mangled to death 
on Tower Hill, on the morning of the 15th of July, 
1685. How then was the fraud accomplished? With 


THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. 95 


the ease which might be expected, when a relenting 
sovereign and uncle needs fortune’s aid. An officer of 
Monmouth, condemned with him to the axe, and 
strikingly like the Duke, agreed to personate him on 
the scaffold! Prelates not acquainted with Monmouth 
were chosen to attend his last moments, and the execu- 
tion was hurried, that there might be no opportunity for 
a “dying speech” to the crowd, and no opportunity for 
the crowd to recognise the generous impostor. The 
situation would no doubt be an extremely taking one in 
the theatre; but it was not the situation on the morning 
of Monmouth’s death. The divines by whom he was 
accompanied to Tower Hill were the same who had ex- 
horted him in the Tower; and the scene on the 
scaffold, far from being hurried, was so protracted that 
it must have been an agony to the spectators who had 
thronged in thousands to see their idol die. Nor was 
there any unseemly eagerness on the part of those in 
attendance upon Monmouth to send their victim in 
silence to the block: on the contrary, as will be seen, it 
was Monmouth himself who held back, when urged by 
them to address the soldiers. 

It is when he comes to the proof that Saint-Foix, 


96 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


as may be imagined, is so terribly hard put to it. H> 
has not even stubble for his bricks. Beyond the tradition 
of the feigned execution of Monmouth (which was for 
many years a cherished belief of our own west-country 
peasants), he offers only the vaguest of rumours and the 
idlest of conjectures. He cites (with confession of little 
confidence) an anonymous libel published in Amsterdam 
and Paris, under the title Amours de Charles II. et de 
Jacques Il, rois @Angleterre, wherein Skelton, whom 
William of Orange had removed from the lieutenancy of 
the Tower, is reported as informing Lord Danby that 
“on the night after the pretended execution of the Duke 
of Monmouth, the King, accompanied by three men, 
came himself to remove him from the Tower. They 
covered his head with a kind of hood, and the King 
and ‘the three mounted with him into a coach.” Al- 
though this tract is put forward by Saint-Foix as one 
of his principal pséces, he spoils at a stroke whatever 
worth it may have had for him by the candid admission 
that it should be classed with “those books whose 
authors seek only to entertain their readers.” 

His next witness is one Nélaton, a surgeon, and a 
haunter of that hot-bed of gossip. the Café Procope, 


THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. : 97 


which has but lately disappeared from Paris. Nélaton’s 
friends of the Café were familiar with a story which he 
did not tire of rehearsing: how that, being chief as- 
sistant to a surgeon near the Porte Saint-Antoine, he 
was sent one day to bleed a prisoner of the Bastille; 
the governor took him into the chamber of the prisoner, 
whose head was covered with a long towel knotted on 
the neck; the prisoner complained of great pains in the 
head; -he wore a dressing-gown of black and yellow, 
ornamented with large fleurs d’or—and the surgeon’s 
assistant perceived by the prisoner’s accent that he was 
an Englishman. How and by whom the Englishman 
with his head veiled in a towel was identified with 
Monmouth, Saint-Foix omits to say. 

From the Café Procope the simple advocate con- 
ducts his audience to the boudoir of that light-behaved 
celebrity, the Duchess of Portsmouth. “Father Tourne- 
mine has often repeated to me that, paying a visit to 
the Duchess of Portsmouth with Father Sanders, the 
ancient confessor of King James, the Duchess told them 
that she should always reproach the memory of that 
sovereign with the execution of the Duke of Monmouth, 


remembering that Charles II., in the hour of his death 
The Man in the Iron Mask. 7 ; 


98 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


and on the point of receiving the sacrament, had made 
him promise before the Host (which the priest Huldeston* 
had secretly conveyed), that, whatever rebellion Mon- 
mouth might attempt, he would never put him to death. 
—‘Madame,’yanswered Father Sanders with vivacity, ‘he 
did not put him to death.’” 

And here, to conclude, is Saint-Foix’s crowning 
proof: On the rumour in London, which gathered as it 
rolled, that an officer resembling Monmouth had been 
decapitated in his stead, a “‘grande dame’’—not named 
to us—bribed certain persons—not named to us—to 
open the coffin; and, “having looked closely at the nght 
arm, exclaimed—‘This is not Monmouth!’” 

Thus, for the confusion of later generations, were 
systems of the Mask erected towards ‘the end of the 
eighteenth century. This is the case, and the whole 
case of Germain-Frangois Poullain de Saint-Foix. And 
this is to stand against the vouchers of eye-witnesses of 
Monmouth’s death, the written and extant testimony of 
the bishops who stood with him on the scaffold, the de- 
tailed despatches sent by the French Ambassador in 


* Huddleston, the priest who had saved Charles’s life after the 
battle of Worcester, and who received his last confession, 


— &: 


THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. 99 


London to Louis XIV. in Paris, the Memoirs of the age, 
and the impartial conclusions of history, based on what 
is described by Macaulay as “the strongest evidence by 
which the fact of a death was ever verified.” 

But let Saint-Foix not be dismissed top coldly from 
us. We owe him, at least, a “homage of amaze.” The 
callous invention of Voltaire, the light deceit of Soulavie, 
were certain of a hearing, and they have had it for an 
age; but we are dumbly to praise the forlorn pugnacity 
of this ex-officer of cavalry, ready and eager to pink the 
critic who would not be persuaded that a barber’s as- 
sistant had identified Monmouth through the folds of a 
towel tied over his face. For the purposes of fiction, 
by the way, this was a stronger story than the legend of 
the twin brother: it attaches itself to the fancy—on the 
one hand, an English peasantry fondly believing in the 
second coming of an idolised prince; on the other hand, 
the victim of Sedgemoor following Saint-Mars from one 
French dungeon to another, and after missing a throne 
and escaping a scaffold, buried in the murk of a 
November twilight by two turnkeys of the Bastille. * 

On the evening of Monday, 13th of July, Monmouth 

* Topin, nine 
fos 


100 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


knew that he was to die on Wednesday morning. 
Clarendon, Keeper of the Privy Seal, had visited him in 
the Tower, and had assured him that no hope re- 
mained. Two bishops came next, Turner of Ely and 
Ken of Bath and Wells, “with a solemn message from 
the King.” Monmouth, bloodless and terror-stricken, 
could not be brought to resign himself. If no pardon, 
might not a respite be obtained? ‘The prelates, more 
anxious at this crisis for his ghostly than for his physical 
welfare, exhorted him vainly; and were greatly scan- 
dalised by Monmouth’s heretical plea of the propnety 
“in the sight of God,” of his relations with his mistress, 
Lady Wentworth. They left him, after adjuring him to 
spend the night in prayer for spiritual enlightenment. 

Tuesday came and passed, bringing neither pardon 
nor respite; and Monmouth’s last day began. At an 
early hour he parted from his wife and children; show- 
ing, it is said, kindness but no emotion: he had sunk 
from terror to a dull despair. Lady Wentworth, who, in 
a few short months, was to follow her lover to the grave, 
did not see him. 

The hour of ten brought the coach of the lieutenant 
of the Tower; and now, with Death’s hand upon him, 


. 
. 


Se i a 


THE EXPIATION OF MONMOUTH. Io! 


Monmouth grew calm and dignified. At his request, the 
divines who had visited him in the Tower went with him 
to the scaffold, and continued to exhort him to the last: 
—‘“God accept your repentance! God accept your im- 
perfect repentance!” * 

Mournful faces thronged about the scaffold, and 
Tower Hill was “covered up to the chimney-tops with 
an innumerable multitude of gazers,” weeping, or silently 
indignant. Monmouth, as he passed between the ranks 
of the guards, saluted them with a smile; and he mounted 
the scaffold without a tremor. The crowd hungered for 
his words, but he said very little, protesting that he died 
“a Protestant of the Church of England.” The bishops © 
broke in upon this, saying that as a member of that 
church he must submit himself to his King, and acknow- 
ledge the sinfulness of his rebellion. Once again the 
prelates interfered, when Monmouth would have spoken 
of Lady Wentworth. He declared his sorrow for the 
sufferings he had brought upon his followers; then the 
bishops “prayed with him long and fervently,” and Mon- 
mouth, after a troubled pause, added a slow “Amen” to 
the closing prayer for the King. Entreated to speak to 

* Macaulay. 


102 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


the soldiers, “I will make no speeches,” he exclaimed; 
and addressed himself forthwith to the executioner, to 
whom he gave six guineas, with injunctions to despatch 
him swiftly, and not to hack him “as you did my Lord 
Russell.” But this command, and possibly also the long 
and painful scene he had been witness of, and the con- 
sciousness that the people loathed him for the dreadful 
work he had to do, unnerved the headsman utterly. 
Again and again the axe fell on Monmouth; the wretched 
Ketch flung it from him, took it up again at the sheriffs 
command, and finally severed the head from the shoulders 
with a knife,* amid screams of rage and horror from the 
' crowd. 

The vengeance of the relentless James, which history, 
nevertheless, cannot severely reproach, was satisfied. 
Monmouth’s head and body were gathered up, and 
buried privately the same day under the communion- 
table of St. Peter’s Chapel in the Tower of London. An 
abstract of his speech on the scaffold, published by his 
partisans, has been rejected as spurious. 


* He “severed not his head from his body till he cut it off 
with a knife.”— Verney MSS. 


“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” 103 


CHAPTER VI. 


“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” 


BETWEEN the years 1754 and 1789, three writers in 
succession espoused the cause of the Duc de Beaufort 
as a candidate for the mask. At the respected age of 
eighty (for he was born in 1674), the abd¢ Lenglet- 
Dufresnoy* first advanced this curious opinion, in his 
Plan de Phistotre générale et particuliere de la monarchie 
frangoise, a treatise in three volumes in-12, published in 


1754- 
The systéme Beaufort seems to have been the especial 


* The adb¢4, an ingenious student, had had the philosopher’s 
full share of imprisonment under the absolute monarchy, for he was 
twice confined in the Dungeon of Vincennes and six times in the 
Bastille. It was, in the eighteenth century especially, an approved 
method of recognising distinction in letters; and the add¢ did not 
complain. Far from it; he always obeyed his summons with the 
greatest alacrity, declaring that prison was the best place in the 
world to work in; packed a few clean shirts and his MSS.., and rode 
off with the officer who had come for him. 


104 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


snare of age, for Lagrange-Chancel,* of the Philippiques, 
carried fourscore years and three, when, in 1759, in an 
article in Fréron’s Annee litt¢ératre, he defended Lenglet- 
Dufresnoy. 

The historian Anquetil was nearing the seventies 
when he lent his support to the same theory in his 
Louis XIV., sa Cour et le Regent, 1789. 

Since the year of the Revolution, Beaufort’s claim 
has gone undefended. It shall engage us very briefly. 

Topin has noted the slight comparison that may be 
established between Beaufort and Monmouth. Both were 
royal princes, of illegitimate origin; both had a career 
of adventure; and both enjoyed the uncommon privilege 
of being fatuously loved by the people. During many 
years, the market-people of Paris refused as obstinately 
to believe in the death of Beaufort as did the peasants 
of the west of England in the death of Monmouth.** Ten 


* The satirist’s experience of dungeons was inferior to the 
abbé’s, but he had been a prisoner of Sainte-Marguerite. 
** These superstitions of the people are not peculiar to any age 
or country. The death of Mr. Charles Stuart Parnell is, I should 
suppose, pretty well attested; yet there are those in Ireland who de- 
clare that the lost leader lives and will reappear. Nay, by some it 
is maintained that he Aas reappeared—and in a character somewhat 
plaguing to our fighting-men. Has he not been identified in print 


“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” 105 


years after the siege of Candia, where Beaufort unques- 
tionably lost his life, the women of the markets were 
still having masses said, not for the repose of his soul, 
but for the prompt return of the man himself.* These 
persistent doubts, which, passing lightly over the neces- 
sity of proof, are always so easily propagated, have suf- 
ficed to place Beaufort at one era and Monmouth at an- 
other under the mask of Saint-Mars’s perplexing prisoner. 
The points of resemblance cease here: the characters of 
the two men were totally dissimilar. 

Monmouth breathed the air of Courts as a prince 
should do. Beaufort, not less a prince, floundered like 
a clown in the royal circle—the Tony Lumpkin of Ver- 
sailles. Grandson of Henri IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrées 
(his father was César de Vendéme), Beaufort came up 
from the country to the Court, a raw, handsome braggart, 
with one hand incessantly on his hip, and the other 
twirling up his moustaches; his conversation a ludicrous 
failure to mix the slang of the stable.gnd the hunting- 


with that elusive De Wet of the Boer War who (at the time of 
writing) is leading our Generals such a dance among the mountains 
and passes of South Africa! 

* Topin! 


106 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


field, which was his proper language, with the jargon of 
the elegants, which was exotic to him. He got so far 
as to introduce a vocabulary of his own, which had no 
imitators, and which Cardinal de Retz declared would 
have melted Cato into tears. But the stentorian, lubberly 
Duke had his revenge at the wars, where his idiosyncra- 
sies were “not noticed in him”; and he returned from 
Arras with a reputation for prowess in the field which 
rallied around him the courtiers by whom he had before 
been flouted. 

Indeed, he was presently in the way to become a 
strong man in the kingdom; for, on the eve of the death 
of Louis XIIL, we find Anne of Austria desirous of mak- 
ing him the guardian of her son, as “the most honest 
man in France.” It was not a sagacious choice, for 
“the most honest man” was in truth one of the vainest, 
most unstable, and most incompetent. In no long time 
he is observed talking very loudly in the rebellious ranks 
of the Fronde, leader of the ridiculous party whose pre- 
tensions obtained for them the nickname of Les Jmpor- 
tants. A truculent, inglorious figure in the Fronde, he 
gave trouble enough to Mazarin to make it worth the 
minister’s while to arrest him; he was confined for a time 


cE Se pest oe 


“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” 107 


in the State prison of Vincennes, and the Importants 
were dispersed. 

But Beaufort, for all his ambition, had no singleness 
or fixity of purpose; he severed the ties of party as 
easily as he formed them, and the Fronde knew him no 
more. After a period of idle opposition to the young 
king, he was sent into banishment; and returned to be 
reconciled to his old enemy, Mazarin. At no time was 
Beaufort a political adversary to be very seriously reckoned 
with. He had no real knowledge of affairs; he could 
act violently at any time, but with judgment at no time; 
and, wanting the ability to choose a course for himself 
in politics, he was pushed into one course and another 
by those whom he fancied he was leading by the ear. 

Outside the sphere of the populace of Paris—indeed, 
it was narrower; it was the sphere of the markets— 
Beaufort did not possess the slightest influence; and his 
authority over these people, whom he bullied and joked 
with in their own argot, was much more that of a popular 
hero than of a political leader. He called the market- 
people his subjects, and they in return dubbed him their 
king: he was the King of the Markets. The porters and 
fish-wives followed him in the streets, proud beyond mea- 


108 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


sure of their débonnaire prince, who had condescended 
to choose his town house in the most populous quarter 
of Paris,* who would mount on a stone to hold an argu- 
ment, or show off his strength in a public brawl. 

On a sudden, however, the factious Beaufort ranged 
himself and grew submissive. In 1663, being then at 
the sane age of forty-seven, he received an appointment 
as Admiral, in succession to his father. Lagrange- 
Chancel would have his readers believe that Beaufort 
made use of this office to traverse the designs of Col- 
bert, controlling the navy; but this proves quite inexact. 
The opposition to the throne was exhausted at this 
time; the passions kindled during the Fronde were ex- 
tinguished; submission to authority had become or was 
becoming the policy of those princes and nobles erst- 
_ while the most restless and intractable. “The Prince 
de Conti married the niece of Mazarin; the great Condé 
received from the King with gratitude the Order of the 
Saint-Espnit;” and Beaufort, transformed into an Ad- 
miral, grew mild and malleable. On the quarter-deck, 
it is true, he swore and’ swaggered as of old, and was 
quite the pirate in the treatment of his officers, whom 


* Rue Quincampoix. 


TN 


“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” 109 


he was for ever threatening to pitch into the sea; but 
in his naval expeditions he endured cheerfully and with 
docility the authority of the expert whom Colbert had 
placed beside him.* It was his subordinates only who 
felt the natural violence of his character; the Court had 
nothing to fear from him. Far from choosing even to 
pretend himself dangerous, Beaufort had gone over, with 
characteristic ostentation, to the side of the young King 
and his advisers; and had he pretended danger, his 
gifts as a conspirator were too mediocre to excite alarm. 
At his proudest and most powerful, he was no more 
than the King of the Markets—/e Rot des Halles. 

The hypothesis which lifts Beaufort to the dignity of 
the Iron Mask rests on the assumption that his popularity 
threatened the safety of the State. He was given, in 
1669, the command of the expedition to Candia, to. the 
end, it was said, that he should return no more. He 
did not, it was said, die at Candia, as history has 
affirmed: from the midst of the fleet, and in the pre- 
sence of the army, he was adroitly whisked away, and 
conveyed into the keeping of Saint-Mars, at Sainte- 


* Relation de Gigéry faite au Rot par M. de Gadagne, 
liextenant-général. 


| @ fe) THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Marguerite. This is the story as we have it from 
Leglet-Dufresnoy, Lagrange-Chancel, and Anquetil— 
three savants who took the field at an age not usually 
nimble in critical speculation or research. If, however, 
the facts brought forward as to Beaufort’s popularity 
(considered as a source of danger to the State) possess 
any value, Louis XIV., it is clear, had not a reason in 
the world for ridding himself of the Duke. But Beau- 
fort did certainly disappear at the siege of Candia. 
Was he killed there, or was he carried thence into 
captivity? We have no proof whatever that he was 
carried away. Have we, then, the proofs of his death? 

On the 5th of June, 1669, the expedition for the 
relief of Candia, besieged by the Turks, set out from 
Toulon, with Beaufort in command; and on the morning 
of the 19th the western point of the island was sighted. 
In the evening, under cover of darkness, Beaufort, with 
Navailles (general of the 7,000 French troops who had 
sailed with the fleet), made for the shore with muffled 
oars, and succeeded in reaching the port. They soon 
convinced themselves of the desperate condition of the 
Venetian defenders of the place. In fact, of the 14,000 
whom the ambassador of the Venetian Republic had 


“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” IIt 


reported to be within the walls, there were not above 
6,000 who could be relied upon as combatants; and 
most of these had lost heart during a defence which 
was now regarded as hopeless. 

A council of war was held on the 2oth, when Beau- 
fort, Navailles, the Captain-General of the Venetians, 
and the other officers who took part in it, were un- 
animously agreed that a resolute sortie offered the sole 
prospect of success. The final plan of this was settled 
on the evening of the 24th, and its execution resolved 
upon for midnight of the 25th. By that hour, the 
whole of the French troops had been safely brought on 
shore. The one hope lay in taking completely by sur- 
prise the swarming legions of the Turks. The troops 
of the Venetians, useless at present within their bastions, 
were not advised. of the project of attack until one 
o’clock on the morning of the 26th, when, roused from 
sleep by their officers, they were hurried in silence to 
their posts. 

The French foot were marshalled on the esplanade, 
where as the hour of two sounded from the church of 
- Saint-Marc, they were joined by two hundred of the 
King’s musketeers and five companies of cayalry. Na- 


112 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


vailles and his men moved off towards the right, Beau- 
fort directing his march upon the left: the two corps 
were to re-unite at a signal given by Navailles. Ar- 
rived within a little space of the enemy, Beaufort made 
his troops lie down; while Navailles, who had a larger 
distance to cover, continued his stealthy advance. Some 
fifty minutes before the dawn, the drums of the Turks 
startled the silence; but a few of Beaufort’s marines, 
creeping up.to the camp, returned to say that the enemy 
were merely beating the réves//e, and were still in total 
ignorance of their danger. 

Navailles had got unimpeded to the extreme right, 
where he halted until his reserve and the rear-guard 
had come up. Beaufort, with growing impatience, was 
waiting for the signal, when, suddenly, a roar of mus- 
ketry burst from the distant right, and the red fire 
glowed over the camp of the Turks. In an instant, 
Beaufort was on his feet, his men with him; the charge 
was sounded; and, while the day had not yet dawned, 
the troops leaped blindly to the assault. The Turkish 
entrenchments were almost immediately stormed; the 
Turks, panic-stricken, fired off their pieces and fled, 
many casting themselves headlong into the sea. It 


oe ee rt Se Se en ee eS ee Sh 


“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” 113 


seemed as though victory were already with. the French; 
but just then a vast sheet of flame reared itself into 
the night, and a terrifying explosion shook the field. 
Beaufort’s troops and marines, not knowing what had 
happened, halted in alarm; and scarcely obeyed the 
rallying voice of their leader. 

Far other were the effects which that catastrophe 
had produced among the soldiers of Dampierre, who 
headed the detachment commanded by Navailles. A 
magazine containing twenty-five thousand-weight of 
powder had exploded, swallowing an entire battalion of 
the French guards, and spreading panic on every side. 
The troops, persuaded that the whole field was sown 
with mines, threw away their arms, and ran in all 
directions. In the semi-darkness of that hour ’twixt 
night and morning, Beaufort’s marines, meeting the 
flying troops of Dampierre and Navailles, fell on them 
as foes; and an indiscriminate and indescribable slaughter 
began. In vain did Beaufort, himself abandoned, essay 
to undo that fatal error. Covered with blood, his horse 
wounded, he threw himself amid the terrified French- 
men, crying: “‘A mot, mes enfants! Je suts votre amiral. 
Ralliez-vous pres de moi!” Brave, but futile effort! 

The Man in the Iron Mask. 8 


114 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


The dawn was growing, and the Turks realised that 
they were not pursued. Recovering their ranks as 
quickly as they had broken them they became in their 
turn the assailants; and, shouting the Prophet’s name, 
they chased the French to the gates of Candia. 

Under shelter of the ramparts, the French took a 
breathing - space, and roughly summed their losses. 
Beaufort was missing. His death was considered cer- 
tain by the army. He had been seen last, streaked 
with blood, and galloping on a wounded horse through 
that dense mé/ée in which Frenchmen were killing 
Frenchmen as Turks. Any Frenchman who died ob- 
scurely on that half-lighted field might easily have been 
posed by his partisans as the hero of a mystery. But 
no one raises a hint of foul play in the case of Beau- 
fort. The first despatch that reaches Colbert, from his 
brother Colbert de Maulevrier, signalises Beaufort’s 
death as the most deplorable result of the battle* And 
the army was not satisfied with the knowledge that the 
leader of the expedition was missing. Was it possible 
the Turks had taken him? A white flag was sent into 


* Manuscrits de la Bibliothéque imperiale, papiers Colbert : 
cited by Topin. 


_ a aeacecmnamncememmaiil| 


“THE KING OF THE MARKETS.” 115 


the Turkish lines, but Beaufort was not among the 
prisoners. It was then held for certain that he had 
fallen, an easy mark on horseback, among the lost files 
of the French whose death was never questioned; and 
not a hint or a line that has come down to posterity 
has disturbed this belief. 

The dates alone should suffice to disprove the case 
of Lenglet-Dufresnoy and his two adherents. Was the 
Man in the Mask a nonagenarian? Beaufort was born 
in 1616, and the prisoner of Saint-Mars died in the 
Bastille in 1703. And how does Saint-Mars receive 
Beaufort a prisoner at Sainte-Marguerite in 1669— 
eighteen years before he goes to that fortress? 


8° 


116 ‘THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. 


ENDLEsS indeed has been the perverse ingenuity of 
writers on the subject of the Iron Mask. That Nicolas 
Fouquet, Louis XIV.’s overweening Superintendent of 
Finance, died at Pignerol, March 23, 1680, is an 
historical fact which does not admit of question or of 
doubt; yet Paul Lacroix (the bibliophile Jacob, a 
voluminous and entertaining author), not content with 
the nineteen years of captivity which fate decreed the 
afflicted Surintendant, sentenced him to twenty-three 
more as the Man in the Iron Mask. 

Not that this folly was quite original with the biblio- 
phile. It glimmered first in an article published, in 
1789, in a journal called Loisirs d’un patriote frangais ; 
republished afterwards as a pamphlet, and sold to a 
confiding public under the title, Z’Homme au masque 
de fer, dtvotld d’apres une note trouvée dans les papters 
de la Bastille. The remarkable “note found among the 


ee ce et J 


a se ee A ee 


THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. 117 


papers of the Bastille” has long gone to keep company 
with the legend of the silver plate and the linen shirt; 
for neither Paul Lacroix nor anyone else succeeded in 
proving its existence, and the bibliophile prudently ab- 
stains from giving it a place of honour among his docu- 
ments. Here it is, for the entertainment of the curious: 
—Fouguet, arriving from the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite 
in an tron mask. The note carried the good round 
number, 64,389,000, and a double signature—the letters 
X X X superposed on the name Kersadiou. The author 
of the jest elected to remain in an obscurity which is 
and always has been destitute of interest. The erudition 
and inexhaustible versatility of Lacroix, from whose pen 
we have a little library of volumes on the curiosities of 
French history, were idly and unworthily employed in 
reviving, in 1840,* a fable which had died in the hour 
of its birth, sixty years earlier. 

The downfall, degradation, punishment, and death 
of Fouquet make an episode as striking and poignant as 
any in the reign of Louis XIV. He was at his height 
of power, the most dazzling figure at the Court, just 
when the King, at the age of twenty-three, had resolved 

* L’ Homme a masque de fer. (Paris, Mayen, 1840, in 8vo). 


118 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


to rule France alone. At the first Council he held after 
the death of Mazarin, Louis had said: “I shall be my 
own Prime Minister in future”;* and the Court, in- 
credulous at first, soon realised that the King meant to 
keep his word. Already devoted to pleasure and the 
chase, he began now to show himself energetic and 
vigorous in affairs; and from this time forward, during 
the ensuing fifty years, he devoted five hours a day to 
the business of the State. So long as Fouquet was in- 
dispensable, Louis retained him in his post; and that 
over-confident, rash minister promised himself the 
Chancellorship and the real government of France. But, 
though he would not see it, and was deaf to the warnings 
that reached him, Fouquet was very soon upon the brink 
of ruin. The fortune he had amassed out of the taxes 
was probably at this time the most considerable in 
France. Colbert, however (Fouquet’s arch enemy), con- 
veyed to the King the secret of a hoard of nearly 
eighteen millions of ready money, left by Mazarin. 
Search was made and the money found; and Louis, in- 
dependent of Fouquet from that moment, resolved forth- 
with upon his overthrow. Along with the King’s incense- 


* “Te serat a V’avenir mon premier ministre.’’ 


a a a te Pe ——<—_—_—_—— ~= 


DST fi a ee 


THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. 119g 


ment went a certain fear of the dazzling and fascinating 
minister, who was capable, as Louis imagined, of imped- 
ing if not of thwarting his schemes for the government 
of France after his own manner. During a summer of 
splendid /étes at Fontaineblau, to which the opulence of 
Fouquet contributed, the plot against him was elaborated 
by Louis, whose natural gift of dissimulation had ripened 
under Mazarin’s tuition. Had Fouquet been merely 
Superintendent of Finance, he could have been attacked 
and destroyed at once; but as Procureur-Général he 
enjoyed the protection of the Parlement. The King and 
Colbert had recourse to a stratagem to induce him to 
resign his office of Procureur-Géneral; he did so, or 
rather he sold the office; and Louis exclaimed exultingly: 
“* Tout va bien; il s’enterre de lui-méme!’’ Stripped of 
the shield of the Parlement, Fouquet was at the King’s 
mercy, and on the 5th of September, 1661, the blow 
fell. He was arrested in the Place de la Cathédrale at 
Nantes, whither Louis had gone to meet the Estates of 
Brittany. 

“The formation of a special court to try him, the 
length of his trial, which lasted three years, the obvious 
falseness of most of the charges, the influence exercised 


120 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


by Louis over the judges, the courage and ability shown 
by the prisoner, his intimate relations with all the ablest 
men of the day, his numerous and varied interests, all 
combined to focus the interest and the sympathy of 
France upon Nicolas Fouquet.”* 

Sympathy rose higher when it became evident that 
Louis had determined to obtain a conviction at any cost. 
It was “a seventeenth-century Warren Hastings trial.” 
Fouquet was accused of “corruption and dishonesty in 


the management of the finances, of appropriating to him- 


self public money, of preparing to revive civil war in ~ 


France, and for that purpose of fortifying Belle-isle.” 
The accusation of treason was ridiculous, but the charges 
of malversation were easily established. The truth is 
that, with rare intervals of sound administration, the 
financial system was rotten and immoral throughout the 
whole period of the monarchy, and later. Mazarin might 
have been impeached on this count as justly as Fouquet, 
who was not more unscrupulous than the majority of his 
contemporaries in the handling of public money. But 
Fouquet fell, as Louis intended he should fall. Nor was 
it enough for Louis to have broken and dishonoured 


* Hassall’s “Louis XIV.” 


ek 


-—te 


THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. I21t 


him: the King’s treatment of the sentence decreed by 
the judges was an anticipation of the chastisement with 
which, eighteen years later, he was to visit the Iron Mask. 
The judges were in favour of banishment; but the young 
sovereign, just entering upon the splendid heritage of 
France, holding in his hands a power tremendous enough 
to inspire generosity, and at an age when the heyday 
in the blood should cry pity upon all misfortune, de- 
liberately changed the sentence into one of perpetual 
imprisonment. Fouquet the magnificent, whose lordly 
motto had been, Qud non Ascendam! Whither may I 
not mount! sank into the shades of a dungeon. Once 
lodged in Pignerol, he never quitted it. 

The system of Lacroix rests almost entirely on the 
assumption—a perfectly gratuitous one—that Fouquet’s 
death at Pignerol was simulated. Thus, after leaving 
his victim in prison for nearly twenty years, and after 
having, towards the close of that period, eased his bonds 
considerably, Louis, for some cryptic reason which history 
has not penetrated to this day, suddenly gives him out 
as dead, separates him from the rest of the world, binds 
a mask over his features, and holds him in this double 
captivity twenty-three years longer. The death of Fouquet 


122 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


in 1680, says Lacroix, “is far from being certain.” Let 
us see. 

And first it is to be observed that the captivity of 
Fouquet was for many years an extremely rigorous one. 
He endured it with great fortitude, spending much time 
in the study of works of devotion, and committing his 
thoughts to paper when he could get leave to write. 
Between the years 1665 and 1672, says Topin, all com- 
munication with the outer world was forbidden him; he 
might not even send a message to his family. All at 
once the King begins to soften a little. At first, in 1672, 
a rare letter is permitted; then a more regular corre- 
spondence, and freedom of intercourse with other captives 
and inmates of the fortress; finally, there is the visit 
and prolonged stay at Pignerol of certain members of 
Fouquet’s family. The despatches are open. 

On the 2oth of January, 1679, the minister Louvois 
wrote to Saint-Mars:— 

“His Majesty is quite willing [trouve bon} that 
M. Fouquet and M. de Lauzun* should see each other 


* De Lauzun, a captain in the King’s guards, the hero of many 
extraordinary adventures, and one of the most impudent little cox- 
combs in France, was ten years in prison at Pignerol. He had already 
had a taste of the Bastille, for an insolent speech to Louis XIV. 


| 
———— 


ee A ree ee oN 


THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. 123 


as often as they please. They may, if they choose, 
pass the day together, and take their meals together. 
You are at liberty to join them. They may have leave 
to exercise at all times, not only within the limits of the 
dungeon, but in any part of the citadel. You can take 
them to dine with Madame de Saint-Mars as often as 
you like, even when strangers or officers of the town 
are present . . . His Majesty accords permission to the 
officers of the citadel to visit your prisoners and pass 
the morning or afternoon with them, should they wish 
it, one of your own officers being present... . With 
regard to the governor and residents of the town, you 
will act as you think proper in respect of visits to be 
paid by them.” 

Still more important and explicit is the minister’s 
letter of the roth of May:— 

“The King, having granted permission to Madame 
Fouquet, her children, and M. Fouquet of Méziéres,* 
to visit M. Fouquet at Pignerol, I have his Majesty’s 
command to advise you of the same, and further to in- 
form you that Madame Fouquet is to have the fullest 
liberty of intercourse with her husband, and even, 


* Fouquet’s brother. 


124 THE MAN IN THE JRON MASK. 


should she desire it, to take up her residence in M. 
Fouquet’s apartment. As regards the children and 
M. Fouquet’s brother, his Majesty desires that they may 
be with him as much as they please, without the pre- 
sence of any of your officers. The same liberty is to 
be accorded to Salvert, Madame Fouquet’s man of busi- 
ness. You may give leave also to the senior officers 
of the town garrison and of the citadel to visit your 
prisoners.” 


In the month of June, Louvois authorises the visit 
of certain “dames de qualité” of Turin. In November 
he permits another brother of Fouquet to take up his 
residence at Pignerol for twenty-four months, and to 
see the prisoner “as often as he pleases during that 
period.” 

Lastly, on the 18th December, Fouquet’s daughter 
has leave to lodge in the dungeon itself, in a chamber 


divided only by the distance of a single step from her 
father’s. 


And it is in these circumstances, in the immediate 
presence of a numerous family—under the very eyes, 
we may say, of a wife, a son, a daughter, and two 


AS. ee Vo cetera dis! 


a? a 


ae OF tee ee oe 


THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. 125 


brothers—with Madame’s man of affairs at hand, with 
officers and people of the town and garrison coming 
and going as they list, that Paul Lacroix has the temerity 
to speak of a simulated death of Fouquet, the 23rd of 
March, 1680! The time was not exactly in joint for a 
plot of that sort. Is it a schemer so astute as Louis XIV. 
(at this date forty-two years of age) who sends Fouquet’s 
whole family to join him at Pignerol, gives his wife leave 
to share his chamber, lodges his daughter within a brick 
of him, and throws the prisoner’s doors open to any 
visitors he may choose to receive, at the precise hour 
when his Majesty is planning to report him dead, and 
to thrust him thereupon into greater secrecy than ever? 
It is childish, And for what reason, this pretended 
death and this prolongation of Fouquet’s captivity by 
three-and-twenty years? The bibliophile whispers us of 
some secret of State of which Fouquet is the dreaded 
possessor. So! And this prisoner with the unspeakable 
secret is suddenly given the liberty of the citadel, he is 
set in the midst of his family, he is suffered, nay almost 
invited, to blab it in the ears of all the gossips of 
Pignerol who may come and call on him and stay to 
dinner just as often as he has a mind to company? 


126 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


M. Lacroix, this was rating rather cheaply the intellects 
of Louis XIV.! 


But the case against the bibliophile is not quite 
finished. Other documents of State, together with 
letters of the family, allow us to follow Fouquet for a 
space after his death from apoplexy on the 23rd of 
March, 1680. Saint-Mars sent immediately to Louvois. 
The family of Fouquet communicated the tidings to 
their friends, and wrote to the minister soliciting the 
King’s permission to lay him in their vault in Paris. 
Madame de Sévigné writes to her daughter on the 3rd 
of April: “Poor M. Fouquet is dead; I am very sorry.” 
And on the 5th, “If I were in the counsels of M. Fouquet’s 
family, I would see that they did not send his poor body 
on a journey, as I hear they propose to do.” On the 
6th of April, the Gazette de France makes the following 


announcement: “We learn from Pignerol that the sieur 


Fouquet has died there from apoplexy.” 


On the 8th of the month Louvois replied to Saint- 
Mars, to the effect that he had informed the King of 
Fouquet’s death, and that the King wished Fouquet’s 
chamber to be prepared for Lauzun. His Majesty sends 


THE..TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. 127 


no message of regret. On the same day the Minister 
wrote to Fouquet’s son, the Comte de Vaux:— 


“MONSIEUR, — 

“I am in receipt of your letter of the 29th of last 
month. I have spoken to the King concerning the 
request of your mother to remove the body of the late 
M. Fouquet from Pignerol. Rest assured there will be 
no difficulty about that; his Majesty has given the neces- 
Sary orders.” 


At the same time Saint-Mars received his instruc- 
tions: — } 

“The King commands me to inform you that his 
Majesty consents to your delivery of the body of the late 
M. Fouquet to his widow, to be transported whither it 
may please her.” 

The family possessed a vault.in the chapel of Saint- 
Frangois de Sales, in the church of the convent of the 
Dames de Sainte-Marie, grande rue Saint-Antoine, Paris; 
but it was not until the 23rd of March of the year 
following, 1681, that the body of Fouquet was carried 


128 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


and deposited there. In the “vegistres mortuatres” of 
the church the record may be read:— 

“Te 23 Mars 1681, fut inhumé dans notre église, 
en la chapelle de Saint-Frangots de Sales, messire Nicolas 
Foucquet, qui fut dlevé @ tous les degrés d’honneur de la 
magistrature, conseiller au parlement, mattre des requestres, 
procureur général, surtntendant des finances, et mintstre 
a’ Estat.” 

Thus humbly, by leave of the King, whose anger 
had undone and destroyed him, was Fouquet the magni- 
ficent inurned in the church of the Ladies of Saint 
Mary, alongside the dust of his father. 


The principal hypotheses—most of them, as the 
reader has perceived, mere “springes to catch wood- 
cocks”—have now been submitted to analysis. Frangois 
Ravaisson, keeper of the Arsenal Library, whose task of 
classifying the Archives of the Bastille has since his death 
been continued by M. Funck-Brentano, “believed for a 
moment” (says his successor) “that the celebrated pri- 
soner might have been the young Count de Kéroualze 
who had fought at Candia under the orders of Admiral 
de Beaufort. Ravaisson put forth his theory with much 


eS es | Se eye 


THE TRAGEDY OF NICOLAS FOUQUET. 129 


hesitation, and as, in the sequel, he was himself led to 
abandon it, we need not dwell any longer upon it.” 

M. Jules Loiseleur, in his charming series of Pro- 
blémes historigues (1867) argued with force and bril- 
liancy in behalf of a certain “prisonnier mysterieux”’ 
arrested by Catinat in 1681. Marius Topin put Loise- 
leur out of court and countenance “by discovering 
Catinat in the very prisoner he was said to have 
arrested!” 

General Iung wrote a big and very interesting book * 
in support of the claims of one Louis de Oldendorf 
(known also as Lefroid, de Kiffenbach, and the Che- 
valier des Armoises), a native of Lorraine, a spy and 
poisoner, arrested March 29, 1673, in connection with 
the celebrated “affatre des poisons.” ung’s work casts 
a broad light upon those “amazing poison-dramas” which 
remained for years among the obscurest problems of the 
reign of Louis XIV.; but in the endeavour fo identify 
Oldendorf with the Man in the Mask he failed com- 
pletely. As his opponent, M. Lair, at once observed 
(and the point is emphasised by M. Funck-Brentano), 

* La Vérité sur le Masque de Fer. (Les Empotsonneurs), 


Paris: H. Plon, 1873. 
The Man in the Iron Mask. 9 


130 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


“General Iung did not even succeed in proving that his 
nominee entered Pignerol, an essential condition to his 
being the Masque de Fer.” 

These records, then, may once again be wiped from 
memory: Oblivion has looked upon them all. We have 
still to pluck the heart out of the mystery. 


Tso 


lef 8 AS a, 


— . 


Beh Hk 


on. | 


PART IL. 


* THE MAN IN THE MASK. 


i —— eee 
' 


ms we ~~ lS 


CHAPTER I. 


THE INTRIGUE FOR CASALE. 


Hap Louis XIV. maintained in Italy the sagacious 
policy of Richelieu, there had never been a Man in the 
Iron Mask! 

’ Victorious in 1631, that great minister in his pru- 
dence sacrificed most of the fruits of his victory; restored 
Piedmont and Savoy, retaining only the stronghold of 
Pignerol, whereby he held always open a gate of 
northern Italy. To keep watch on Italy without alarm- 
ing her; to protect the rights of the small Italian princes, 
while not menacing their independence; to require of 
them in return the fullest measure of confidence; to 
thwart the Spanish plots, and suffer the Spaniards to 
draw upon themselves all manner of Italian hatreds: in 
a word, to preserve an attitude passive but vigilant, 
firm but not threatening—such was Richelieu’s judicious 
policy towards Italy. 


134 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


And to this policy Louis XIV. adhered, until, at 
about middle age, great in the reflected triumphs of his 
diplomats on the one hand, and of his invincible troops 
on the other, he looked upon himself, not without reason, 
as Europe’s arbiter. Before the Treaty of Nimeguen 
had been signed in 1678, his ambitious fancy had 
o’erleaped the Alps; and in Louvois, his Minister of War, 
he found a willing and impetuous supporter. In Pied- 
mont he possessed Pignerol, which, sufficient in the eyes 
of Richelieu, no longer contented Louis, who had 
imagined for himself a great ré/e in Italy. He would 
have done well to remember at this juncture that his 
authority beyond the Alps had been accepted in pro- 
portion as its aims had been disguised, and that there 
must come a change in the sentiments of the Italians 
when it was perceived that the moderate policy of 
Mazarin and Richelieu was to be superseded by the 
“military diplomacy” of Louvois. 

Among the kinglets sharing the pleasant territories 
of northern Italy at this era was the young Charles IV., 
Duke of Mantua, “the degenerate representative of that 
House of Gonzaga from which had sprung so many 
illustrious men, and which had allied itself with some of 


Se 


SS eee ey See eee eee 


THE INTRIGUE FOR CASALE. 135 


the foremost families of Europe.” History depicts 
Charles as a rare gambler, rake, and spendthrift; an ab- 
sentee who seldom visited his little territory except to 
wring money from it; a leader in the gaieties of Venice, 
where he was fast exhausting in extravagant adventures 
the remnants of health and fortune. His revenues were 
spent before they reached him, and he was always in 
the hands of the Jews. In fine, the young Duke was on 
the point of being up for sale—and Louis XIV. was not 
unwilling to become his purchaser. 

Separated from Mantua by the fair extent of the 
great plain of Lombardy was the Marquisate of Mont- 
ferrat, a fertile and coveted tract which had been an- 
nexed to the Duchy of Charles IV. Of this region the 
capital was Casale, a fortified place, swept by the Po, 
and lying some fifteen leagues to the east of Turin. The 
district is rugged, and at this day almost untravelled, 
but Charlemagne had planted here an outpost of his 
empire. The walls of Casale “are still formidable, 
though the children race up and down their approaches 
unterrified; and the castle and the citadel still re-echo to 
the clash of arms, as they have done for more than a 
thousand years..... _ Palaces, too, may be found, if 


136 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


one care to look for them, and—best of all—broad, 
shady walks by the ancient bastions.”* This Casale 
was a place of great strategical importance, above all for 
Piedmont: Turin had always eagerly desired it. That 
the Duke of Mantua, given over to his pleasures, should 
possess a footing in this neighbour-territory of Piedmont, 
mattered little to anybody: but that the King of France 
should establish himself there—this would be a serious 
concern for Turin. He was already master of Pignerol, 
and if the reader will glance at a map of northern Italy 
he will see at once that, master of Casale also, Louis 
would hold the Government of Turin between two re- 
doubtable fortresses. From Pignerol in the south-west, 
the passage of the Alps lay open to him; at Casale in 
the north-east, he would stand upon the highroad to 
Milan. And Casale was the: object of the intrigue 
“mysteriously begun in 1676.” 

The minister of Louis at the capital of the Venetian 
Republic was the Abbé d’Estrades; an able, restless, 
scheming man; eager to commend himself to his master 
by some successful stroke of diplomacy.** No sooner 


* Justin H. Smith, ‘The Troubadours at Home,” vol. 1. 
** “The Abbé d’Estrades, Ambassador for a considerable time 


—ad. 


poy Ene Se 


—t 


a 


THE INTRIGUE FOR CASALE, 137 


was d’Estrades aware that Louvois had put Casale into 
the mind of Louis, than he began forthwith to make the 
project his own. Casale must be ceded to Louis, and 
d’Estrades was the man to contrive it. He knew how 
Charles of Mantua stood, how overpowering was his need 
of money, and how beggared his resources; he knew the 
character of Charles. The situation seemed as fortunate 
as fortunate could de. 

Further, it was well known to the 4dé¢ that Charles 
was greatly in the hands of his favourites; that the 
affairs of Mantua were more or less administered by 
them; that Charles—so long as he were left to his 
gamesters, his women, and his wine-parties—was very 
prone to take their counsel in all things. Through one 
of these persons the young Duke might be approached. 

High among the favourites of Charles was Ercole 
Antonio Mattioli. Born at Bologna, the 1st of De- 
cember, 1640, Mattioli, a foremost figure in Mantuan 


from Lewis the Fourteenth to the Republic of Venice, was son of 
Godfrey, Count d’Estrades, so long employed in negotiations and 
embassies in Holland, and who was one of the eight Marshals of 
France made upon the death of Turenne. Madame Cornuel called 
them ‘La Monnoie de M. de Turenne.’”—Ellis. 


138 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


society, belonged to an ancient and distinguished family 
of lawyers. His grandfather, Costantino Mattioli, had 
risen to the rank of senator; and one of his uncles, 
Hercule or Ercole Mattioli, a Jesuit father, was a noted 
orator. At the age of nineteen Ercole Antonio himself 
was a prizeman in civil and canonical law, and a little 
later he held a chair in the University of Bologna. Topin 
describes him as having won some repute in authorship. 
Having allied himself by marriage with a senatorial 
family of his native town, Mattioli settled in Mantua, 
where his talents and his graces won him the patronage 
and support of Charles II., by whom he was ultimately 
appointed Secretary of State. The son and successor 
of Charles III. favoured him not less, and in this 
reign Mattioli was created Supernumerary Senator of 
Mantua, a dignity which carried with it the title of 
Count. “When he ceased to be Secretary of State,” 
says Ellis, “does not appear; but he was clearly not in 
that office when he first, unhappily for himself, was in- 
volved in diplomatic relations with the agents of the 
French Government.” What is certain is that, although 
not at this date Secretary of State, Mattioli was wholly 
in the Duke’s good graces, his companion in affairs of 


THE INTRIGUE FOR CASALE. 139 


pleasure, and a counsellor in politics when Charles was 
minded to be serious. 

Him the Abbé d’Estrades resolved to sound upon 
the affair of Casale. But before putting himself in direct 
communication with Mattioli, d’Estrades despatched to 
him one Giuliani, a roving Italian newsman, who tripped 
from town to town seeking things to publish in a sheet 
of which he was the editor. “A little editor of news- 
papers, in whose shop the letters of news are at 
is the description given of him in a despatch from Venice 
to the minister Pomponne. Faring hither and thither 
on his proper business—Turin, Milan, Verona, Mantua, 
Venice—Giuliani was the man who could be used as a 
go-between, and no suspicion raised as to his movements. 
D’‘Estrades sent him to parley with Mattioli at Verona; 
and this was the first real move in the game. 


140 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER I. 


THE RIPENING PLOT. 


IT is begun in the strictest secrecy. On the French 
side they were well aware that the occupation of Casale 
by troops of Louis XIV. could certainly make little for 
the permanent welfare of Italy, while the advisers of 
Charles IV. were quite alive to the necessity of keeping 
the affair from the eyes and ears of the Spanish party 
intriguing in the Court of Mantua. They were opponents 
to be reckoned with. Charles’s mother, Isabella Clara 
of Austria, who headed his council, and who was the 
real ruler in Mantua, was entirely pledged to the Spanish 
interests, as opposed to those of France. 

The situation is lucidly set out in the first long 
despatch of d’Estrades to Louis XIV., dated from Venice, 
December 18th, 1677.* D’Estrades had satisfied himself 

* We issue here upon that remarkable series of papers which 


Delort was the first to overhaul in the Foreign Office at Paris, and 
in which he found the beginnings of the true history of the Iron Mask, 


THE RIPENING PLOT. 14! 


that Charles possessed “more talent and ambition than 
he was thought to have;” that he would gladly get back 
the authority which had slipped into his mother’s hands; 
and that he had a rooted distrust of the Spaniards, who, 
as he believed, aimed at securing for themselves Casale 
and the whole Montferrat. These were the facts which 
gave d’Estrades to believe that the Duke would be not 
unwilling to place himself to some extent under the pro- 
tection of the French King. The despatch goes on to 
show why Mattiol had been selected as the agent to 
approach the Duke, and Giuliani as the agent to ap- 
proach Mattioli. 

“T have thought,” writes d’Estrades to Louis, “that 
I could not employ anyone in this affair more proper to 
conduct it than a cértain Count Mattioli, who is entirely 
devoted to that prince. I had known him for some 
time, and he had shown a great desire to render himself 
” agreeable to your Majesty by some service. I knew that 
he had been Secretary of State to the late Duke of 
Mantua; that the reigning duke had preserved much 
affection for him, and that he was well informed as to 
the different interests of the Princes of Italy. As, how- 
ever, he had been much in the Milanese, and had had 


142 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


access to the Spanish ministers, I resolved not to place 
any confidence in him till I had put him to the proof. 
I accordingly charged the Giuliani to whom your Majesty 
was good enough to send a reward six months ago, and 
whose zeal for your service forbids all doubt of his 
fidelity, to observe Mattioli attentively, and in secret. 
Having been sufficiently informed of his extreme dis- 
content with the Spaniards, who, after entertaining him 
with hopes, had always in the end abandoned him, I 
sent Giuliani, in the month of last October, to Verona, 
where he went under pretext of his private affairs.” 

We may return to that month, and overhear the first 
overtures of Giuliani in an affair which was to bring 
about results terrible enough for Mattioli, Giuliani had 
been well primed by the aéé¢, and shows for his own 
part an emphatic interest in his mission. As d’Estrades 
had instructed him, he represented to Mattioli that the 
friends of the Duke desired greatly to see him in a 
position of independence; that all his territories and all 
his revenues were under the absolute control of his 
mother and the monk Bulgarini, her confessor, and that 
Casale and the Montferrat were threatened by all manner 
of Spanish and other intrigues. 


THE RIPENING PLOT. 143 


To these hints Mattioli lent an open and a friendly 
ear. “He had long, with grief, seen the truth” of what 
Giuliani had laid before him, he said, but “there was 
still a remedy for so great an evil,” and he would, with 
Monsieur l’Abbé’s approval, get speech of the Duke and 
“discover his real sentiments.” All this was duly con- 
veyed by Giuliani to d’Estrades, and by d’Estrades to 
Louis XIV. 

Next we are apprised of the “secret interview” which 
Mattioli had with Mantua, and then of the meeting be- 
tween that prince and Giulianii The Duke, says 
d’Estrades, “approved very much of the proposition that 
was made him, to free him from the perpetual uneasi- 
ness he felt on the score of the Spaniards, and that, for 
this purpose, Casale should be placed in your Majesty’s 
hands, upon the understanding that I should try to 
obtain from you in his favour all that he could reason- 
ably ask for.” 

The Duke desired to communicate the matter to two 
of his counsellers, “in whom he had the most confidence,” 
and he gave the selection of them to Mattioli Mattioli 
named the Marquis Cavriani and Joseph Varano, “in 


whom he has confidence.” The affair, it is evident, was 


144 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


already in a good train; already there was talk of the 
preparation of “a draft of the plan.” D’Estrades was 
now anxious for a personal interview with the Duke, and 
this, it was agreed, should be managed at Venice in 
Carnival time, when all the world, “even the Doge and 
the oldest senators,” went masked. What the Duke de- 
sired above everything was that Louis should send into 
Italy a sufficiently strong army “to be able to undertake 
something considerable,”—-an army of which he wanted 
the generalship, says d’Estrades, “in order to be con- 
sidered in Italy like the late Duke of Modena, and the 
late Duke of Mantua, who at his age commanded in 
chief the Emperor’s army, with the title of Vicar-General 
of the Empire.” 

Enclosed with d’Estrades’s despatch was a letter 
from Mattioli to Louis,* in which he protests his devotion 
to him and to the interests of France. “For myself, I 
bless the destiny which procures me the honour of serv- 
ing so great a monarch, whom I regard and revere as a 
demi-god.” He undertakes to “transmit.to your Majesty 
all that I shalllearn respecting Casale, which has been 
fortified by one of the most skilful engineers of the 

* December 14th, 1677. 


SSS See eee ee 


THE RIPENING PLOT. 145 


Milanese.” He entices the King with a hint of the great 
strength of the place. “I am convinced it would be 
useless in me to enlarge upon the importance of the 
fortress of Casale. Your Majesty must remember that 
at different times it has arrested the progress of many 
armies, and that it is the only bulwark upon which 
depends the loss or the preservation to the Spaniards 
of the territories of Milan; territories which, for more 
reasons than one, ought te belong to your Majesty’s 


crown.” 


To this Louis replies with his own hand, on the 12th 
of January, 1678:— 


“I have seen from the letter you wrote me, as well 
as from what has been communicated to me by my 
Ambassador, the Abbé d’Estrades, the affection you ex- 
hibit for my interests. You cannot doubt that I am 
greatly obliged to you, and that I shall have much 
pleasure in giving you proofs of my satisfaction upon 
every occasion.” 

On the 24th of December, 1677, and on the 1st of 


January, 1678, we have despatches of d’Estrades to the 
The Man tn the Iron Mask. 10 


146 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


minister Pomponne.* The Abbé has learned from the 
Duke of Mantua that, should the French enter Italy, 
and should the Duke show a disposition to favour them, 
the Austrian party have determined to seize Casale and 
all the Montferrat. Mantua also is to be occupied. In 
these circumstances, the Duke, who is “watched by his 
mother, by the monk Bulgarini, who governs her, and 
by the greater part of his ministers,” can neither declare 
himself openly on Louis’s side, nor deliver up Casale to 
him, “unless he will send a sufficient army into Italy to 
secure that fortress.” Further, “the Emperor and the 
Spaniards are ardently. soliciting the Nuncios and the 
Ambassadors from Venice, residing at Madrid and 
Vienna, to persuade their masters to unite with them 
against France, and to represent to them that they have 
a common interest in the preservation of Italy, and in 
keeping out of it the armies with which it is menaced.” 


* «Simon Arnaud de Pomponne, Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs from 1671 to 1679, when he was dismissed from his office, 
but retained the title of Minister of State, with permission to attend 
the Council. A man, like so many of his race, who united con- 
siderable talents to great excellence of character. Madame de Sévigné 
says, in speaking of the eminent station he had filled, that ‘For- 
tune had wished to make use of his virtues for the happiness of 
others.’ ””— Ellis. 


THE RIPENING PLOT. 147 


On the 12th of January, Louis writes exhaustively 
to d’Estrades, commending his zeal in the business, and 
flattering Charles for the “noble resolutions he seems 
disposed to take.” As for the citadel and fortress of 
Casale, should they be given up to him, Louis says, “I 
shall willingly content myself with holding them in the 
same manner in which I held them formerly; that is to 
say, under the condition of preserving them for the 
Duke of Mantua, and of paying the garrisons I shall 
keep there. I would also, in order to favour the military 
inclinations of this Prince, take measures with him re- 
specting the command of the armies I shall send across 
the Alps.” 

Louis objects, however, to the Duke’s price of one 
hundred thousand pistoles.* “You must make him 
understand that this sum is too large.” As it was not 
convenient to Louis to send a considerable army into 
Italy that year, d’Estrades is instructed to protract the 
negotiations, and to “continue to entertain” the Duke 
with the notion that the French troops would shortly 
arrive in his territories. Mattioli, as the principal con- 
fidant in the affair, is to be kept “always in good 


* About £40,000; the pistole being equal to ten francs. 
10 * 


148 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


humour, by the assurance of the especial good-will I 
bear him for his conduct, and by the expectation of the 
proofs of it which I shall be inclined to give him.” 

The main difficulty—indeed, almost the only one— 
was to protract the negotiations, for everything was going 
so smoothly and so rapidly that, as d’Estrades writes to 
Pomponne on the 29th of January, there was no serious 
hindrance to be found or created. It was in the month 
of January that Mattioli began secretly to visit the Abbé 
at his house in Venice. The only point the Duke’s 
agent seemed inclined to contest was the price to be 
paid for the occupation of Casale. At length, he pro- 
posed to d’Estrades a sum of 500,000 livres, about 
£20,000. This was reducing the price by half, but 
d’Estrades was for a lower figure still; and, eventually 
Mattioli, knowing his master’s straits, was induced to 
accept an offer of 100,000 crowns. 

Taking the crown at a value of three francs (though 
it is all but impossible to determine the relative values 
of the moneys then in arculation), this would represent 
the trifling sum of £12,000. This, moreover, was to 
be paid only on conditions. “Finally, Sire, I brought 
him to content himself with one hundred thousand 


—— —_ vee —_—_——>_ ee 


—— sw 


THE RIPENING PLOT. 149 


crowns; and that on condition that your Majesty was 
not to pay them till after the treaty had been signed; 
and then, if you choose not to give the whole sum at 
once, that the Duke of Mantua should receive fifty 
thousand crowns first, and the remaining fifty thousand 
three months afterwards.” 

Everything else was agreed to “without difficulty.” 
Duke Charles, in fine, was in a hurry to conclude the 
affair; being, says the Abbé, “in continual terror of the 
design, which he understands the Spaniards to have, of 
seizing upon his fortresses on the least pretext, and on 
the first favourable occasion.” 

The next step was to arrange the meeting between 
Charles and d’Estrades, and nothing hindered this but 
the extreme secrecy with which the affair was being 
conducted. Charles had come to Venice in the last 
days of January, but the Spaniards were watching him, 
and it was not until the 13th of March, 1678, that he 
and the Abbé contrived their interview. We see them 
encountering at midnight, closely masked, “in a small 
open space,” says d’Estrades in his despatch to Louis, 
“which is at an equal distance from his house and mine. 


I was an entire hour with him.” The Duke was in a 


150 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. ° 


pressing haste to get the treaty ratified, from the fear 
that he was in of being “overwhelmed by the Spaniards.” 
Money, money was his call: his supplies from the 
Spaniards were threatening to stop, and, lacking this 
support, he could not maintain the garrison of Casale. 
His sole trust, he said, was in France: When would 
Louis’s troops appear in Italy? He was tired of the 
slowness of despatches, and begged that Mattioli, in 
whom, says d’Estrades, “he has a blind confidence,” 
might be sent to the French court, where his presence 
“may bring matters to a speedier issue.” 

D’Estrades was put to a shift. He knew that Louis 
could not send in 1678 the army upon which Mantua 
was counting. He knew that the Duke, who was all for 
clinching the treaty, began to be uneasy at the length of 
the negotiations. Balancing the issues, he decided to let 
Mattioli go to Paris. 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 151 


CHAPTER MII. 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 


Bur being still under the necessity of biding his time 
(for Louis, with the Dutch on his hands, could send no 
serviceable army into Italy), the Abbé had barely made 
this decision when he began to devise means to delay 
the departure of Mattioli. Here again fortune favoured 
him; and the Duke was at this time so beset, harassed, 
and importuned by the Spaniards to declare himself 
against France, that Mattioli, fearful of leaving him, 
resolved to postpone his journey to France. This was 
in the third week of May (1678). On the gth of July, 
d’Estrades advises Pomponne that Mattioli is to start 
almost immediately, and that he should reach Paris in 
September. “We have calculated the time together, 
and he cannot and ought not to leave his master 
sooner.” Mattioli himself begins to be apprehensive 


152 THE MAN IN. THE IRON MASK. 


“that these delays may give a bad opinion of him”: 
“they were, in truth, just what the French designs 
required. 

Towards the end of the month the Duke is in 
attendance on his Duchess-mother, ill of a fever. “If 
God should call her to Himself, the affair of Casale 
would without doubt be more easy to conclude.” How- 
ever, the lady lives; and the affair continues to move. 
Mattioli does not cease to assure the Abbé that the 
Duke is “always firm in his design of putting himself 
under the protection” of Louis—of which, indeed, there 
was very little question. 

Still, Mattioli cannot get off to France. The Abbé 
himself precedes him thither: partly, it would seem, on 
a holiday, and partly in connection with the negotiations. 
He is succeeded at Venice by Pinchesne, from whose 
first despatch to Pomponne—September 3rd, 1678—we 
learn that Mattioli has been ill, but hopes soon to be 
able to commence his journey to the Court. Nine days 
later, it is Mattioli who writes concerning his illness to 
Louis, deploring the further delay it has occasioned 
him. “The eagerness I have is extraordinary, to be 


a a ee a OE ee ee 


—— a. |e 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 1§3 


able with all possible celerity to throw myself at your 
Majesty’s feet.” 

It is the 29th of October before we know that he is 
actually off: Pinchesne has news of him “written from 
Berheta on the 26th of this month.” Meanwhile, as late 
as November 18th, Paris has not yet beheld him. 
“Neither the Count Mattioli nor the Sieur Giuliani,” 
writes Pomponne from Versailles, “is yet arrived 
here.” At the end: of the month Mattioli was really in 
Paris. 

No time was lost now in drawing to a close. 
D’Estrades was already in Paris; and with him and M. 
de Pomponne, Charles’s minister had several interviews. 
A treaty was quickly agreed upon, of which the following 
were the chief stipulations: — 

1. That the Duke of Mantua should receive the . 
French troops into Casale. 

2. That if Louis XIV. sent an army into Italy, the 
Duke of Mantua should be appointed generalissimo. 

3. That upon the execution of the treaty, the sum 
of one hundred thousand crowns should be paid to the 
Duke of Mantua. 


154 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Altogether a. wonderful bargain from the standpoint 
of the King of France. For a mere £12,000 or so, he 
acquired a splendid fortress which, with the one that 
was already his at Pignerol, would enable him to control 
the destinies of Northern Italy. The Court may well 
have been astonished at the terms, and at the ease and 
rapidity with which the whole affair had been concluded. 
Moreover, so skilfully had it been contrived, on the part 
of Pomponne, of d’Estrades, of Pinchesne, and of the 
small number of the Duke of Mantua’s abettors, that no 
whisper of the plot had reached the Duchess Dowager 
or any of her circle. 

Mattioli was admitted to secret audience by Louis, 
who presented him with a ring and a sum of money, 
and promised that his son should be a king’s page, and 
that his brother, who was in the Church, should re 
ceive preferment.* Mattioli then prepared to return to 
Italy. 

The secrecy which had been all along observed was 
still maintained. Pomponne, advising Pinchesne of the 


* Delort, Ellis, Topin. 


- 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 155 


Italian’s departure from France, bade him “keep the 
journey very secret.” Varano, one of the two persons 
to whom the Duke of Mantua had confided the design, 
was advised by Pinchesne that he had a letter for his 
Highness from France; and Varano proposed they should 
meet in mask at the opera. At about the same date 
(we are now in the closing days of 1678) Pomponne 
instructed Pinchesne that he was sending him a new 
cipher by courier; and the old precautions were 
kept up. ; 

“The courier whom I despatch to you has orders 
not to go to your house as a courier, but to enter Venice 
as a tradesman, or as a private French individual who 
goes there on his own business. He brings you a cipher, 
which you will employ only in what concerns the affairs 
of the Duke of Mantua. We have been afraid that, for 
so important a business, the cipher of the Abbé d’Estrades 
was too old, and had probably been discovered in’ 
the many times it passed through the territories of 
Milan.” 

The scheme having advanced thus far, Louis was 
now eager to see it to the end. The able Louvois, in 


156 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


whom Topin discerns the finest genius for organisation 
up to the era of Napoleon, rapidly prepared the whole 
plan of action. A strong body of troops, placed under 
the command of the Marquis de Boufflers, Colonel 
General of Dragoons, was assembled at Briangon, ready 
to pass the frontier. Baron d’Asfeld, Colonel of Dragoons, 
set out for Venice, with a commission to exchange the 
ratification of the treaty. Catinat, then Bngadier of 
Infantry,* went ‘‘dans le plus grand mystére,”’ to Pignerol, 
where he was to conceal himself in the fortress, and to 
take for the time being the name of de Richemont. The 
first despatch of Louvois to Saint-Mars concerning this 
affair has reference to the coming of Catinat. It is 
dated from St. Germain-en-Laye, Dec. 29th, 1678. 
“These few words are to inform you that it is necessary 
for the King’s service that the person from whom you 
will receive this should enter the citadel of Pignerol, un- 
known to anyone. With this in view, let the Safety 


Gate** remain open until nightfall, and send him one 


* Afterwards the celebrated Marshal. Voltaire says of him 
that he united philosophy to great military talents. 
** Porte de Secours. 


eee een ee NN ie 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 157 


of your servants; or better, if you are able, go yourself 
to meet him at the spot to which his valet will conduct 
you, in order that he may pass into the citadel and 
dungeon in your suite, without being observed by any- 
one.” 

Louis had already written to the Duke of 
Mantua :— 


“My Cousin,— 

“The Count Mattioli will instruct you so particularly, 
both as to the manner in which he performed the orders 
with which you charged him for me, and as to the ex- 
treme satisfaction with which I have received his assur- 
ances of your zeal for my interests, that I can have 
nothing further to add upon these subjects. I am only 
desirous of stating that I wish you to place entire con- 
fidence in my friendship. You may promise yourself 
that it will be both useful and glorious to you upon all 
occasions, and you may always rely securely upon my 
alliance. I hope to be able to give you in the end un- 
mistakable proofs of this. Having testified to you the 
satisfaction which the conduct of Count Mattioli has 
afforded me throughout the whole of this affair, I will 


158 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


add only that I pray God to have you, my Cousin, in 
His high and holy keeping. 
“Written at Versailles, this 8th Dec. 1678. 
“Louls. 
[and under the King’s 
signature], 
“ ARNAUD.” 


D’Asfeld arrived in Venice on the 21st of January, 
1679, and at once communicated his orders to Pinchesne; 
but nothing could be agreed upon until Mattioli came, 
who was still journeying slowly from Paris. They were, 
however, resolved to persuade Charles of Mantua to be 
at Casale by the 2oth of February, to make the ex- 
change of the treaty, and to prepare for the entry of 
the French troops. On the part of the French, in fine, 
all was now impatience where before it had been anxiety 
for delay. There was sufficiency of reason for this, 
since the massing of Louis’s troops on the frontier must 
soon alarm the House of Austria; and, in fact, the march 
towards Pignero] had begun in the last days of January. 
But just as, when the negotiations were at an early stage, 
they advanced too rapidly for the pleasure and con- 


—_ 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 159 


venience of Louis, so now, when everything was in readi- 
ness on the French side, and Louvois’s plans were 
actually in execution, delay arose upon delay beyond 
the frontier. 


On reaching Italy, Mattioli was again smitten with 
fever, but he managed to see Pinchesne and d’Asfeld in 
the first week of February. Then it appeared that the 
Duke could not possibly go to Casale earlier than the 
1oth of March. He alleged, through Mattioli, (1) a want 
of money; (2) the fear he had of leaving behind at 
Mantua Don Vincent Gonzaga, his heir presumptive,* at 
so critical a juncture; and (3) “the obligation he found 
himself under of holding a sort of carousal with several 
Venetian gentlemen.” Pinchesne, in excusing to Pom- 
ponne the apparent triviality of the third of these reasons, 
thinks that, after all, the spectacle of his Highness dally- 


3 


* “Vincent Gonzaga, Count of St. Paul, afterwards Duke of 
Gnastalla, was descended from a younger son of Ferrant II., first 
Duke of Guastalla. After contesting for many years his right to 
that Duchy with Ferdinand Charles IV., Duke of Mantua (during 
which they were both merely made use of, by turns, as the instru- 
ments of the French and Austrian domination), he was finally suc- 
cessful in establishing himself at Guastalla in 1706, where he died 
April 28th, 1714.”—Ellis. 


160 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


ing with his pleasures in a: season of political unquiet, 
may assist to draw off the suspicions which are be- 
ginning to gather about him. In any event, Charles 
was clearly bent upon keeping his engagement with 
Louis. 

But the need of swift, decisive action did not diminish. 
“Meanwhile, Sir,” runs a despatch of Pinchesne on the 
18th of February, “I think it night to inform you that 
the march of the troops to Pignerol, and the munitions 
and money that are carried there, cause genuine alarm 
in all Italy. It is even publicly stated here that the 
King has some great design, allbeit no one can say what 
it is; suspicion falling now upon Casale, now upon 
Geneva, and now upon Savoy, but more particularly upon 
the Republic of Genoa, by reason of what has lately 
passed there. I even know that M. Contarini* has 
written in these terms to Venice.” More than this, the 
Spanish Ambassador and the Abbé Frédéric, the resident 
of the Emperor, went to the Duke of Mantua and plainly 
told him “they had heard from Turin that he wished to 
give Casale and the Montferrat” to the King of France; 


* Ambassador from the Venetian Republic to the Court of 
Louis XIV. i 


a ee OS ee eae 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 161 


representing in strong terms “the disadvantages that 
would arise to all Italy from such an action, and parti- 
cularly to the House of Savoy, on account of the Duchy 
of Milan.” Charles denied it roundly, wondering how 
the gentlemen “could believe in reports of this nature”; 
nevertheiess, adds Pinchesne, “he is always in the in- 
tention of executing the treaty he has made with the 

But the circumstances were becoming ticklish, and 
Pomponne deemed it well to be more pressing with 
Mattioli. Addressing him on the 21st of February, he 
wrote: “I have not failed to inform the King of your 
sorrow for the long delay over an affair which was begun 
and is to be concluded through your agency.” And he 
added with some significance: “His Majesty is still will- 
ing to promise himself success in this enterprise, and 
will entertain no doubt that the promise so solemnly 
given him is to be fulfilled.” 


Pinchesne and d’Asfeld on their part continued to 
ply him; and towards the end of February it was ar- 
ranged that d’Asfeld and Mattioli should go on the gth 


of the following month to the village of Notre-Dame 
The Man in the Iron Mask. It 


162 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


d’Incréa, ten miles from Casale, there to make exchange 
of the ratifications; while the Duke of Mantua should be 
at Casale “without fail” on the evening of the 15th, to 
wait for the troops of Louis (due to arrive on the 18th), 
and to put them in possession of the place. 


By this time alarums were shaking all the north of 
Italy. From Turin, from Milan, from Mantua rumour, 
growing ever more definite, flowed in unceasingly. 
Suspicions, writes Pinchesne, were beginning to change 
into certainties that Charles of Mantua had made a 
treaty with Louis for the cession of Casale and the Mont- 
ferrat. The Governor of Milan sends couriers flying to 
Madrid and Vienna to give intelligence to the Emperor 
and the King of Spain. “The courier to Vienna re- 
turned here* on Wednesday evening, with express orders 
to the Marquis Canozza, the Imperial Vicar in Italy, to 
speak strongly to the Duke of Mantua, and to deter him, 
if possible, from doing a thing so contrary to the in- 
terests of the whole House of Austria; and to go after- 
wards to Turin and Milan, to concert there the means 


of preventing it, in case the news proved true.” The 


* To Venice. 


NN fe) 


oe et VP 


eS 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 163 


Duke, who showed no disposition to break his engage- 
ment with Louis, found excuses to keep the Imperial 
Vicar at arm’s length. Pinchesne began to be in dread 
that the Spaniards, more and more jealous and distrust- 
ful, might oppose Charles’s passage through the Duchy 
of Milan, and that of Mattioli, “whom they doubt as 
much.” 


But it was not on the Duke of Mantua or on Mattioli 
that hands were laid. Like a thunderbolt the news fell 
upon Versailles that d’Asfeld had been arrested on his 
way to Notre-Dame d’Incréa, and was held prisoner by 
the Governor of Milan* in the interests of the Spaniards. 
This was a check indeed; and now at once the suspi- 
cions of the French began to fasten upon Mattioli, who 
had been the first to send the news of d’Asfeld’s mis- 
fortune. Louis and his agents, it is true, were unwilling 
as yet to consider themselves betrayed: the seizure of 
d’Asfeld might have been no more than an unlucky ac- 
cident; the affair might still be carried through. But 
there was no time’ to lose. The 24th of March had 
come, and Mattioli had not gone to Notre-Dame d’Incréa 


* The Count de Melgar, Spanish Governor of the Milanese. 
+O a 


164 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


and the Duke had not gone to Casale. D’Estrades (now 
Ambassador at Turin), the soul of the enterprise from 
the first, was sending courier on the heels of courier; to 
Venice, for Pinchesne; to Mantua, for the Duke; and 
everywhere in Northern Italy for Mattioli. Acting upon 
the instructions of Pomponne, the French agents in Italy 
were careful not to communicate to Mattioli their doubts 
of his good faith; but d’Estrades wrote him a letter in 
which the mailed hand might be felt through the 
glove. 

“If” says the Abbé, “I had not been aware of your 
probity, and of your zeal for the interests of his Majesty, 
and for the welfare of the Prince to whom you are at- 
tached, I should have been seriously uneasy at the delay 
of our affair, which ought without fail, and at the latest, 
to have been concluded at the beginning of this month. 
But although we are already at the 24th, and all that 
you can desire on our part is in readiness, I cannot bring 
myself to think that his Highness’s intentions and your 
own are other than they always were. You have so well 
understood how useful this affair would be to him at the 
present time, and how glorious in the future, and you 
have so ably represented this to him, that I cannot permit 


—. A 


ines =e el, 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 165 


myself any suspicions on this head. Neither can I, when 
I reflect upon the very considerable interest you have in 
completing an undertaking of such importance, the con- 
clusion of which will be esteemed so great a merit on 
your part by the most generous and the most powerful 
King in the. world, who has himself testified to you the 
good-will he bears you for it. .... As his word has al- 
ways been inviolable, you no doubt rely implicitly upon 
it; you must be aware also how dangerous it would be 
to deceive him, and that, after all the steps he has taken, 
and the measures he has agreed upon, you would ex- 
pose his Highness and yourself to very great misfortunes 
if his Majesty had reason to think that faith had not been 
kept with him.” 

But March went out, and the treaty had not been 
ratified; nor had Mattioli and the Duke kept their ap- 
pointments. Versailles is all in profound uncertainty; as 
late as the 18th of April, we have Pomponne wniting to 
Pinchesne—“It is still very difficult to discover what is 
the real case with this affair, and whether the good faith 
that was to be desired in it has been kept. Try to dis- 
cover this adroitly, but without showing any suspicions; 
and be careful to inform me of everything that shall 


166 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


come to your knowledge on the subject.” Writing again 
on the following day, the minister makes it sufficiently 
plain that his own suspicions of Mattioli’s treachery are 
confirmed; and respecting the Duke, he says: “In truth, 
this Prince should not be allowed to think that it is per- 


mitted him to fail in a treaty he has made with his: 


Majesty. If the occasion should present itself, make it 
appear to him that you cannot doubt his keeping the 
promises which have been made to the King.” This 
suggests that, with or without Mattioli, it may still be 
possible, in the opinion of Versailles, to bring the scheme 
to an issue of success. 

In a moment that hope was extinguished and an- 
nihilated. Intelligence of everything that had taken place 
between Louis XIV. and Charles of Mantua was con- 
veyed simultaneously to the Courts of Turin, Madrid, 
Vienna, to the Spanish Governor of the Milanese, and 

the Inquisitors of State of the Venetian Republic. 

“To all, in a word, who were most interested in op- 
posing the execution of the project, it was known point 
by point: the price of the cession, the date at which it 
was to be made, the names of the negotiators. They 
knew everything, because they had received at sundry 


THE TREASON OF COUNT MATTIOLI. 167 


times the confidences of the principal and best-instructed 
among the actors in the intrigue—of Count Mattioli him- 
self.”"* 

It was true—Mattioli had played the traitor. He had 
sold his master; he had sold and made a jest of the 


Omnipotence of France. 


f 


* Topin. 


168 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE VENGEANCE OF “THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 


“NEVER was seen,” exclaims Pomponne, in a de 
spatch of the 3rd of May, “so signal a piece of perfidy!” 

Maria Baptista of Nemours,* Duchess and Regent of 
Savoy, and one of her ministers, President Turki, or 
Trucci, were the first who had received the confidences 
of Mattioli. To the Duchess he had shown the original 
documents of the negotiations, of which she had taken 
copies: facts which she herself communicated to Louis 
XIV. Mattioli had seen the President at Turin. He had 
given information to the Spaniards, and had accepted 
a cipher from the Spanish Governor of Milan. He had 
had secret interviews with one of the Inquisitors of State 
at Venice. All this, with sundry pleas and glosses, 
Mattioli afterwards confessed to Catinat.** 


* Mother of Victor Amadeus II., at this time a minor. 
** Catinat to Louvois; May roth, 1679. 


oe el 


“THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 169 


The real motive or motives of this wholesale treason 
will never be clearly known, for they were never divulged 
by Mattioli; and we have little choice but to acquiesce 
in the general conclusion, which is—in M. Funck-Bren- 
tano’s words—that he had cynically betrayed both his 
master and Louis XIV., in order to reap a double harvest 
of gold. Topin asks generously whether this “gross 
cupidity” is the sole explanation; and suggests that, 
“shaken to his soul, and illumined by the sudden ap- 
parition of his country in danger,” Mattioli in remorse 
may have fallen back upon the one and only means of 
checking the advance of Louis. But this palliative, well 
as it becomes its author, is not easy of acceptance; for 
the conduct of Mattioli, after his return from France, 
bears every appearance of trickery and duplicity. If he 
designed to save Italy from Louis, he hid his project 
from his master, the Duke of Mantua; and he certainly 
did not return, as he should have done, the French 
King’s presents. These are Topin’s own admissions, and 
he has manifestly little faith in the hypothesis which his 
good-nature propounds. 

Mattioli had presumably acted with his eyes open, 
but he seems to have taken no measures for his own 


170 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, 


safety in the event of detection; and the discovery of his 
treason had left him in a terrible situation. Charles of 
Mantua repudiated him, declaring that he had never 
authorised any negotiations for the sale or occupation of 
Casale. But Charles the insouciant was scarcely a danger- 
ous enemy; and it is probable that, while he might be 
willing to assist in his punishment, Mattioli had not much 
to fear from him. His real danger lay elsewhere. D’Es- 
trades had beheld with feelings of mortification and in- 
tense bitterness the failure of a project in which he had 
had from the sist, the closest personal interest. The 
details were his, the negotiations had been begun by 
him, he it was who had selected Mattioli, and it was by 
him that Mattioli had been introduced at the Court of 
France. Louvois, for his part, had been baffled in the 
execution of the plans he had so adroitly laid; and a 
French minister beaten at his own game of intrigue by 
an Italian adventurer was little likely to find himself in 
the humour of forgiveness. D’Estrades and Louvois, 
moreover, had acted not for themselves but for their master 
the King; and when the projects of Kings are confounded 
their ministers are very apt to be held blameworthy. 
But there was a vengeance infinitely more to be 


“THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 171 


dreaded than that of either Louvois or D’Estrades. 
Mattioli had drawn upon himself the resentment, the 
implacable resentment, of Louis XIV. True, Louis had 
not at this time lost all hope of securing Casale; but, 
for the immediate present, it was not Casale that filled 
his thoughts: it was the unspeakable, the incredible 
effrontery of the man who had outwitted, cheated, and 
flouted him in the face of Europe. Europe was ringing 
with the discomfiture of Louis; Europe was silently 
laughing at the Grand Monargue. It is necessary to 
recall his position among the Powers of that day, the 
splendid successes that had attended his arms, and his 
almost dictatorial attitude towards the Sovereigns his 
contemporaries, in order to appreciate the extent of the 
humiliation which Mattioli’s treachery had brought upon 
the King of France. “The most generous King” was 
d’Estrades’s description of him. It was the unlucky fate 
of Nicolas Fouquet to submit to the test the generosity 
of Louis XIV. towards one whom he feared even in 
defeat. “Let us be content with banishing this man,” 
Fouquet’s judges had said. “No,” said the King, “he 
shall end his days in prison.” And that was in the 
green tree, and it was now the dry: Louis was in his 


b72 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


forty-first year. Again, what was Fouquet’s offence in 
* comparison with that of Mattioli? .Fouquet had en- 
riched himself at the State’s expense, and he had courted 
and had won a popularity which fretted the King’s 
complacency. But he had not broken faith with Louis, 
he had not contemptuously bartered his interests, he 
had not openly made light of that jealous and sensitive 
dignity—he had not given Europe the opportunity to 
smirk over the humbling defeat of a Rot Sole:/. Fouquet, 
for his popularity in Paris, died an old, sick man, in 
the dungeon of Pignerol. What fate should Mattioli 
look for? 

Abbé d’Estrades was to have the pleasure of sug- 
gesting it. He proposed to Versailles that Mattioli should 
be seized, abducted, and imprisoned “at the King’s 
pleasure.” Illegal arrests and imprisonments were not 
extraordinary in France at any date before the Revolu- 
tion; but the case of Mattioli was unusual. He was, as 
Ellis says: “actually the plenipotentiary of the Duke of 
Mantua, for concluding a treaty with the King of France.” 
Although his treachery was known, it had not been 
proved against him; and, from the standpoint of inter- 
national law, it is not an argument that the Duke of 


— 


“THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 173 


Mantua was a prince of no political consequence. The 
proposal to seize and carry off his minister was, in the 
circumstances, a proposal of brigandage. But it came 
pat to Louis’s purpose and intention of revenge. He saw 
the illegality of it; but, if it could be effected without 
scandal, he asked nothing better. Absolute secrecy in 
the business of the arrest was all that he demanded— 
and his private authorisation to d’Estrades was modified 
only by this condition—“that you get him carried off 
without the least suspicion of scandal.” 

Satisfied by d’Estrades upon this point, Louis 
sanctioned the kidnapping of Mattioli. He was to be 
conveyed to Pignerol, and kept there “in the strictest \ 
secrecy.” “Look to it,” ran the closing words of the 
King’s order, “that no one knows what becomes of this I 
_ man.” 

This was followed by the despatch of Louvois to 
Saint-Mars at Pignerol, dictated by Louis, the tone of 
which is eloquent of the mood that inspired it:— 


“Saint-Germain, April 27th, 1679. 
“The King has sent orders to the Abbé d’Estrades 
to procure the arrest of a man with whose conduct his 


174 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Majesty has reason to be displeased. I am commanded 
to acquaint you with this, in order that you may not 
hesitate to receive him when he is sent to you. Vou 
will guard him in such a manner that, not only may he 
have no communication with anyone, but that he may 
have cause to repent his conduct, and that no one may 
know you have a new prisoner. 
“De Lovuvois.” 


Instructions in these terms imposed the necessity of 
a ruse; but the Abbé d’Estrades, keen upon requitals, 
was ready there. Mattioli, whose subalpine shrewdness 
seems to have missed him at this highest crisis of his 
life, was quite unaware that Louis and his agents had 
unriddled him. He did not know that the Duchess of 
Savoy had sent to Versailles the copies of the papers he 
had shown her. His utter ignorance of the danger 
he stood in made it easy to set the trap that must 
catch him. 

Although vengeance. was certainly the first motive of 
Mattioli’s arrest, there was another which, if the negotia- 
tions for Casale were to be proceeded with, was not un- 


on SA 


“THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 175 


important. The Varano who had all along been privy 
to the affair, had instructed d’Estrades, through the as- 
siduous Giuliani, that the Duke of Mantua would go no 
further with it while Mattioli was at large. The Duke 
himself appears to have been averse from, or at all events 
not inclined to, a personal reckoning with the agent in 
whom he had implicitly confided; but he was willing 
enough that Mattioli should be brought to book by 
anybody else. D’Estrades also learned from Varano 
that Mattioli had privately obtained Charles’s signature 
to the treaty (for what reason, unless with an eye to 
blackmail, it is impossible to conjecture), and had kept 
the original document, with all other papers bearing on 
the negotiations. By what means, asked d’Estrades of 
Pomponne, were these likely to be secured, unless by the 
arrest of Mattioli? That act, therefore, while gratifying 
the vengeance of Louis and his ministers, would render 
possible a renewal of the negotiations, and would be far 
from displeasing to the Duke of Mantua, whom it was 
desirable to retain in friendship. 

Mattioli was now again in Turn, where, as we have 
seen, d’Estrades was installed as French Ambassador; 
he was still visiting the Abbé, and talking and acting as 


176 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


though he were as busy as ever in the matter of Casale. 
D’Estrades, with Nemesis in his heart, entertained him 
smoothly; and affected always to believe that everything 
was secure. Through Giuliani, who was solid throughout 
in the interests of the French, d’Estrades learned that 
Mattioli was seeking money. His expenses in France, 
his journeys to and fro in Italy, and his bribes to win 
oyer the Duke’s mistresses, had drained his purse. 
D’Estrades suggested a ready means of replenishing it. 
Catinat (he said), who commanded the French troops 
that were to take possession of Casale, was furnished, 
by the King’s order, with ample means; and was pre- 
pared, by the King’s order, to meet every expense that 
might arise. Mattioli took the bait. “Being one of the 
most consummate rogues that ever lived” (“Comme il 
est un des plus grands fripons qui att jamais est¢”’), wrote 
D’Estrades, “this hint of mine made him desperately 
eager to meet Catinat.” 

Catinat was warned, and the meeting was arranged. 
It was to be at a spot “on the frontier towards Pignerol” 
—Catinat, said d’Estrades, not being able “to leave 
the neighbourhood where his troops were stationed.” 
D’Estrades, not anxious to risk his skin, stipulated for 


a 


“THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 177 


“a few well-armed men” in Catinat’s company: “as I 
know that Mattioli always carries two pistols in his 
pocket, and two others, with a poniard, in his belt.” 

Dstrades gave him rendez-vous at six o’clock on 
the morning of the 2nd of May, 1679, at a church on 
the outskirts of Turin: they were to drive thence to the 
frontier. Unfriendly fortune led Mattioli to the meeting- 
place. For months he had failed in the appointments 
which it would have profited him to keep; but he was 
punctual at the one fatal tryst of his life. D’Estrades 
had with him in his carriage a cousin, the Abbé de 
Montesquieu; and in this company Count Mattioli set 
out for the frontier. 

There had been heavy rains for three days, and the 
streams of that wild region were pouring over their banks. 
One of these, the Guisiola, not far from the spot where 
Catinat waited with his men-at-arms, the Abbé’s party 
must cross; but the bridge had been damaged by the 
flood, and the horses could only ford the stream by 
swimming. This, apparently, the Abbé, precious of his 
charge, declined to risk; but it was possible to make the 
bridge safe for foot-passage, and to work they went— 

The Man in the Iron Mask. 12 


178 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Mattioli himself, says d’Estrades, “helping so bravely, 
that in an hour we were able to get across.” 

The carriage was left behind, the Abbé congratulat- 
ing himself on getting rid of his servants, “as this en- 
sured us a greater measure of secrecy.” The journey 
was continued on foot, “‘dans des chemins fort mauvats”’ ; 
and Catinat, bearing in his hands the vengeance of 
Louis, awaited them at the chosen spot. “M. Catinat,” 
writes the Abbé, “had made his arrangements so well 
that not a creature appeared with him. He led us into 
a room”; and then, before the real object of the meeting 
was declared, d’Estrades adroitly and insensibly ad- 
monished Mattioli “respecting all the original papers 
belonging to our affair.” Mattioli, who must now at 
last have begun to realise his danger, said that all the 
papers were in a box at Bologna, in the hands of his 
wife, who had retired to the convent of the Nuns of 
St. Louis. Upon this, deeming his presence not neces- 
sary in the scene that was to follow, d’Estrades with- 
drew, accompanied by his cousin; and Mattioli was 
left with Catinat. At two in the afternoon, Saint-Mars 
had him under lock in the dungeon of Pignerol. 

Catinat’s despatch to Louvois (Pignerol, May 3rd, 


“THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 179 


1679) is of soldier-like directness: —*I arrested Mattioli 
yesterday, three’ miles from here, upon the King’s 
territories, during the interview which the Abbé 
d’Estrades had ingeniously contrived between him, 
Mattioli, and myself, to facilitate the scheme. For the 
arrest, I employed only the Chevaliers de Saint-Martin 
and de Villebois, two officers of M. de Saint-Mars, 
and four men of his company. It was effected without 
the least violence, and no one knows the rogue’s name, 
not even the officers who assisted. He is in the cham- 
ber which Dubreuil occupied, where he will be civilly 
treated, according to the request of the Abbé d’Estrades, 
until the wishes of the King with regard to him are 
known.” * 

Among the papers taken on Mattioli’s person were 


* “Finally,” says M. Funck-Brentano, “we have a very curious 
pamphlet entitled Ze Prudenza trionfante di Casale, written in 
1682, that is, little more than two years after the event, and—this 
slight detail is of capital importance—thirty years before there was 
any talk of the Man in the Mask. In this we read: ‘The Secretary 
(Mattioli) was surrounded by ten or twelve horsemen, who seized 
him, disguised him, masked him, and conducted him to Pignerol’— 
a fact, moreover, confirmed by a tradition which in the eighteenth 
century was still rife in the district, where scholars succeeded in 


c lin g “it? ‘ : 


12° 


180 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


none of the series emanating from Versailles. These it 
was essential to secure; they were the tangible proofs of 
Louis’s failure. Mattioli had said they would be found 
at Bologna. They were not there. Under threats of 
torture and of death, the prisoner at length confessed 
that the original papers were at Padua, “concealed in a 
hole in the wall of a room, in his father’s house.” 
Thereupon a letter was dictated, in which, without a 
word that could betray his situation, Mattioli was made 
to request his father to deliver the documents to 

Giuliani. The father, suspecting nothing, handed them 
"over: Pinchesne presently received them all; and they 
_were forwarded, with rigorous care, to Versailles. 

Louis XIV. was avenged. If he had received at thé 
hands of the petty minister of a petty prince his first 
serious check in Europe, his retaliation had been swift 
and terrible. Nor did Europe enjoy for long the 
spectacle of the potent King’s defeat. The guilty 
principal in the affair had already vanished from the 
sight and knowledge of men, into the entrails of 
Pignerol, and would be beheld of them no more. The 
official proofs of the aborted enterprise were not less 
secure under Louis’s hands than was Mattioli in the 


ao 


Bee, Se A pe 


“THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 181 


wardenship of Saint-Mars. The French troops had been 
withdrawn as secretly as they had been assembled at 
Briangon. The whole scheme was renounced so 
promptly that, in Topin’s phrase, it seemed, in a 
manner, as though it had never been begun.* The 
Court of Savoy undoubtedly had a full knowledge of 
the intrigue; “but Leuis XIV. spoke with a master’s 
authority at Turin.” Mattioli had undoubtedly made 
disclosures at Venice as at Milan; but those beguiling 
lips were sealed eternally behind the bastions and demi- 
lunes of Pignerol. And the affronted King bore him- 
self as high as ever. He demanded and obtained from 
Spain the immediate release of Baron d’Asfeld, im- 
prisoned at Milan; and the censure of Melgar, the 
governor. At all points, and in a space of time the 
briefest, Louis recovered the prestige which for a mo- 
ment he had sacrificed; and his personal pride, at once 
delicate and vengeful, was best solaced by the certainty 


* Not, however, that Louis had really abandoned his project. 
He wanted it forgotten only until such time as he could accomplish 
it without possibility of failure. The negotiations were resumed 
two years later; and on the 30th of September, 1681, the French 
troops were received into Casale. 


182 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


that he had swept, as he thought, into eternal oblivion 
the agent and chief witness of his short discredit. 
Mattioli was given out as dead: a story was circulated 
that he had met with a fatal accident on a journey. 
The Duke of Mantua might have doubted this, and 
probably did doubt it; but he had sufficient reason 
for wishing out of his path the agent who, for ob- 
jects of his own, had striven his best to ruin him with 
Louis XIV. 

And the family of Mattioli—why were ‘hey silent? 
Upon this point, history has bequeathed us the curious 
legacy of an unfinished tragedy—curious to us, who can 
follow the tragedy to its end. Did his family also be- 
lieve him dead, or were they cowed and voiceless under 
the stroke of Louis’s wrath? It is not known. What 
alone is certain is, that he was never found by them 
again. The letter dictated to Mattioli, and signed under 
compulsion, was the last that his father received from 
him. His wife died in the convent of the Filles de 
Saint-Louis at Bologna, while he was still a hopeless 


prisoner: there is no record to show that his fate was ~ 


known to her. The space within the genealogical tree 
of the family, which the date of Mattioli’s death should 


a  P. 


“THE MOST GENEROUS” KING. 183 


fill, is blank.* Louis’s vengeance smote deep: in an- 
nihilating the man, it had crushed the family; and per- 
haps nothing is sadder in the memories of this mystery 
of two hundred years, apart from the fate of the Mask 
himself, than the wretched ignorance in which his ab- 
duction and living burial left his nearest kin. 


* Topin: citing the Arbor prisca nobilisque masculine fa- 
mika ac Mattiolis. 


184 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER V. 
THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. 
Good night, good night! 
Romeo and Juliet. 

May be seen to-day, on the flanks of Alpine heights, 
near the source of the streams which go to form the 
rich basin of the Po, the ruins of the dungeon wherein 
Mattioli began the long night of his captivity. Close 
by stands the Cathedral church of Saint-Maurice, 
“‘d’ou la vue embrasse,”’ says Topin, ‘‘le plus riant 
horizon.” 

As different as might be was the face disclosed by 
Pignerol on the day that Catinat carried in his prisoner 
through the Safety Gate—the small, secure postern 
which led straight into the recesses of the dungeon. A 
citadel, a dungeon: around the citadel a town, itself 
enclosed within vast fortifications, at the entrance of the 
valley of the Perouse, on the river Chisone, seven 
leagues south-west of Turin, twenty-eight from Nice, and 


a Lean, eee 


THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. 185 


thirty east of Grenoble—such was Pignerol, the Pied- 
montese town of the 17th century. * 

The little town, which, as early as the 12th century, 
the princes of Savoy had fortified for the surety of their 
possessions, climbed upwards in the form of an amphi- 
theatre; with russet roofs and slender campaniles and 
clusters of turret-fashioned chimneys. A moat isolated 
the citadel from the town; and from the citadel the eye 
followed a double line of solid walls, forming a huge 
parallelogram, with four high towers for supports: in the 
midst of all, the great square keep or dungeon, black of 
aspect, “aux fenétres bardées de fer.” The fortifications 
were composed of a series of bastions, half-moons, 2nd 
counter-guards. The two main gates of the town were 
named of France and of Turin; the secret or Safety 
Gate was opened at rare times to admit by stealth some 
prisoner whose guards had been ordered not to take 
him through the town. 

This little mountain bourg of Pignerol, ** peopled by 
French troops and Italian subjects, was not inconsider- 
able in the 17th century. The officers in chief were 


* Tung. 
** Ttal., Pinerolo. 


186 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


the governor-general, the commandant of the town, the 
King’s lieutenant governing the citadel, the commandant 
of the dungeon, the members of the council of war, and 
of the ‘‘conseil souverain,;’’ a fair posse for a world so 
tiny. There was the perpetual va-et-vient of a frontier 
place: officers from Paris or Turin, rejoining their regi- 
ments in the army of Italy, passed through; there was 
much traffic and some commerce. 

At the time of the coming of Mattioli to Pignerol, 
the dungeon of that place had been for fourteen years 
the charge of Bénigne d’Auvergne de Saint-Mars, seigneur 
of Dimon and of Palteau, bailli and governor of Sens. 
Born in 1626, in the environs of Montfort Amaury, 
Saint-Mars died in the Bastille, its governor, September 
26th, 1708, in his eighty-second year. At the age of 
twelve he had entered, as ‘‘enfant de troupe,” the First 
Company of the King’s Musketeers. In 1650 he was a 
full musketeer of that Company; in 1660, brigadier; 
and ‘“‘maréchal des logis,’’ or quarter-master, in 1664. 
The year following, 1665, saw him in command of the 
dungeon of Pignerol, in which command he continued 
until he went to the fortress of Exiles in 1681. 
Louis XIV. granted him a-patent of nobility in 1673. 


ee eee Se, eS ee Fa ET one SO Le ee 


THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. 187 


At the date we are arrived at (1679), Saint-Mars was 
in his fifty-fourth year; of sinister renown in Pignerol: 
the gaoler quintessentialised. 


lung calls him “‘un vrai bouledogue,’’ but that term 
is applicable chiefly in the moral sense. Observe him 
outwardly, as he creeps, almost a-tiptoe, through the 
mazes of his prison: a small shrivelled person, shadowy 
of figure, wizen and dark of face, little head bobbing 
nervously betwixt the narrow shoulders, arms and hands 
twitching. “A moral ugly little man, looking eighty at 
the least; all bent and tottering; incessantly in a passion; 
swearing and blaspheming horribly; inexorably cruel.” 
This is the unsympathetic portrait left of him by Con- 
stantin de Renneville, a prisoner of the Bastille when 
Saint-Mars was about seventy-four. “Inexorably cruel” 
seems not altogether just; indeed, I find few traces of 
active cruelty in Saint-Mars’s career as gaoler; but a 
man so inflexible and so callous in doing the bidding 
of King or minister could be nothing but the ogre of 
his prison. 

It is proper to spare him the charge of unnecessary 
cruelty, for his memory is void of sympathy: on the one 


188 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


side, an unimaginative pedant who has no rule for his 
prison but the strictest letter of his orders from Ver- 
sailles; on the other, a mean and greedy type of the 
soldier of fortune, always whining for money and always 
bemoaning his lot. He had peculiar relations with the 
minister Louvois. His wife’s sister was Louvois’s mis- 
tress, and he can ask nothing of Louvois which Louvois 
does not grant. The ideal gaoler, harassed incessantly 
by fears for the safety of his prisoners, he packs his 
coffers with the moneys sent him for their keep. Hold- 
ing them as wards of the King, whom he served like a 
slave, watching them so closely that he was himself a 
prisoner in his own prisons for over forty years, these 
charges of his were still, in his private view, his “sitting 
hens”* (“aux eufs d’or’’); and they were a fortune to 
him. He left silver plate, furniture, jewels, six hundred 
thousands francs of ready money, and _ seigneurial 
property worth ten million francs. Among the governors 
of the prison-fortresses of France, most of whom en- 
riched themselves at the cost of their prisoners and of 
the State, the position and the possessions of Saint-Mars 
were unique. As commandant of the dungeon of Pignerol 


* Tung. 


a emer ee ee ee ees 


THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. 189 


he held his authority directly from the minister, owing 
no responsibility either to the governor-general or to 
the King’s lieutenant; as Louvois’s relative (upon the 
left) he held the minister in fee; and what he asked of 
him was granted in advance. 

But, as the prince of gaolers, Saint-Mars was worth 
humouring. His discretion was proof against all tempta- 
tron; and such was his habit of distrust, in what con- 
cerned his prisoners, that the distrustful Louvois him- 
self found it possible at times to chide his over-caution. 
Uneasy, timorous, and taciturn, the duties of his office 
gave him never a moment’s rest. The King’s orders 
were fulfilled with a servile exactitude: to discuss them, 
says Topin, would have seemed a crime, to seek to 
interpret them was superfluous. No prison wall was 
high enough or stout enough, no moat was deep enough 
or wide enough, no bars or bolts were strong enough, 
no sentinel was watchful enough, no spy alert enough 
to keep that anxious soul at rest. He carries every 
detail of his cares to Louvois; matters the most puerile 
are constantly rehearsed in his despatches. Does a 
stranger come to the town on business or a visit of 


pleasure; if his sojourn is prolonged, Saint-Mars is cer- 


190 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


tain that a plot is hatching to carry off some prisoner 
from the dungeon. Nay, if the stranger shows some 
little curiosity concerning the citadel, Saint-Mars arrests 
him out of hand, and holds him captive during a pro- 
longed examination. “Lists of the travellers coming to 
Pignerol were drawn up for him every month, that he 
might see what names occurred too frequently. The 
prisoners’ linen before being sent out of the dungeon, 
was soaked in water, then dried before a fire in the 
presence of officers who had to make sure that nothing 
had been written upon it. The smallest change in the 
habits of his prisoners drove Saint-Mars into a fever of 
anxiety. In everything they did, and in everything they 
abstained from doing, he saw the signal of some criminal 
attempt; and one day, after his usual visit to Fouquet 
and Lauzun, and his rigorous examination of their 
rooms, discovering nothing out of the common, he was 
first surprised, and then exceedingly alarmed. The ab- 
sence of any apparent signal was in itself a signal for 
him. ... After reading his naive and sincere cor- 
respondence, one is tempted to pity him almost as much 
as the prisoners in his keeping; since, enjoying a scarcely 
greater liberty than they did, the perpetual fears that 


7 a tl 


———— 


THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. Ig! 


he suffered on their account rendered him in some sort 
their victim.”* 

Such was the man into whose hands Catinat gave 
Count Mattioli on the 2nd of May, 1679. “He is in 
the chamber which Dubreuil occupied, where he will be 
treated civilly, according to the request of the Abbé 
d’Estrades, until the King’s wishes with regard to him 
are known.” Already, however, the prisoner had lost 
his identity, for he was passed into Pignerol, and re- 
ceived there, under the name of Lestang: as Lestang, 
and by no other name, was he known in the fortress,— 
save only to Saint-Mars. “The King’s wishes with re- 
gard to him” were very soon made known. In less 
than a fortnight from the day of Mattioli’s arrest—the 
15th of May—Louvois wrote Saint-Mars concerning him 
**,... that it ts not the intention of the King that the 
Steur de Lestang should be well treated, or that, except 
the absolute necessaries of life, you should give him any- 
thing to soften his captivity.’ Thus “the most generous 
King”—whose commands are renewed on the 2oth of 
the month. “Your letter of the 10th of this month”— 
it is Louvois again to Saint-Mars—‘“has been delivered 

* Topin. 


\ 


192 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


to me. I have nothing to add to what I have already 
commanded you respecting the severity with which the 
person named Lestang must be treated.” Two days 
later, May 22nd: “You must keep Lestang in the 
rigorous confinement I enjoined in my former letters, 
without allowing him to see a doctor, unless you know 
he is in absolute want of one.” Later, July 25, Saint- 
Mars receives instructions that his prisoner may have 
writing materials; scarcely, however, for his own solace. 
“You may give paper and ink to the Sieur de Lestang, 
with permission to put in writing whatever he wishes to 
say. You will then send it to me, and I will let you 
know whether it deserves any consideration.” 

From the picture that history has left us of Saint- 
Mars, it is easily inferred that he would read aright the 
instruction to treat a prisoner “with severity”: but the 
proof itself is not wanting. We have seen that Mattioli 
was arrested in the beginning of May, 1679. In eight 
months from that time the rigours of his imprisonment 
had resulted in the temporary loss of his reason. He 
was neither ‘the first nor the last of the State prisoners 
of pre-Revolutionary France whom the dungeon reduced 
to madness. Consider that these places were virtually 


THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. — 193 


impenetrable; that there were no inspectors of prisons, 
no visiting justices; and that the governor in his dungeon 
wielded a power scarcely less tremendous than the King 
at Versailles. There was no system of administration 
under which the prisoner could stand upon his rights, 
with privilege of appeal beyond the prison walls; he 
had no rights—save what were granted him as peculiar 
favours. He depended in all things upon the governor: 
a miserly governor might starve and keep him cold and 
meanly clad; a cruel one had darker means at his dis- 
posal, and used them—the torture, the whip, the sub- 
terranean cachot were always there. In eight months 
Mattioli had grown mad. 

On the 6th of January, 1680, Saint-Mars wrote to 
Louvois:—“I am obliged, sir, to inform you, that the 
Sieur de Lestang is become like the monk I have the 
care of; that is to say, subject to fits of raving mad- 
ness; from which the Sieur Dubreui! also is not exempt.” 
The methods of Saint-Mars were rather fatal to sanity; 
here were three lunatics together at one time in Pignerol. 
In the third week of February: “The Sieur de Lestang, 
who has been nearly a year in my custody, complains 


that he is not treated as a man of his quality, and the 
The Man tn the Iron Mask. 13 


194 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


minister of a great prince, ought to be..... I think 
he is deranged, by the way he talks to me; telling me 
he converses every day with God and the angels; that 
they have told him of the death of the Duke of Mantua 
and of the Duke of Lorraine; and, as an additional 
proof of his madness, he says he has the honour of 
being nearly related to the King, to whom he wishes to 
write in complaint of the way I treat him. I have not 
thought proper to give him paper and ink for that pur- 
pose, perceiving him not to be in his nght senses.” 

Versailles was quite unmoved by these recitals. 
Louvois, with the King behind him, was still hardening 
his heart. Even the consolations of religion were to be 
administered within the very narrowest limits imposed 
by the Church. “It will be sufficient to let the prisoners 
of the lower tower”—in which Mattioli was confined— 
“confess once a year.” In the same despatch, the roth 
of July:—“With regard to the Sieur de Lestang, I 
wonder at your patience, and that you should wait for 
an order to treat such a rascal as he deserves, when he 
is wanting in respect to you.” 

Then the mad Mattioli was put with the mad 


Jacobin; an economy on the part of Saint-Mars, “to 


PER a A eS nnn mer ee ee en 


THE DUNGEON OF PIGNEROL. 195 


avoid the necessity of having two priests.” Mattioli, 
imagining the monk a spy upon him, “walked about 
with long strides, his cloak over his nose, crying out 
that he was not a dupe.” The Jacobin, “who was 
always seated on his truckle-bed, with his elbows on 
his knees, looked at him gravely, without listening to 
him”; but one day, “getting down from his bed, stark 
naked,” he set on preaching, “without rhyme or reason”; 
and preached till he could preach no longer. With a 
naivety of confession most characteristic, Saint-Mars 
adds: “I and my lieutenants saw all their manceuvres 
through a hole above the door.” 

This is a sore history, not to be too long pursued. 
Nearly all that is known of Mattioli’s life in Pignerol is 
concentrated into this glimpse of the poor frenzied pair, 
mewed together in their narrow Bedlam, with “I and 
my lieutenants” watching them behind the door. Yet 
it was better to be mad than sane—in Pignerol—with 
Saint-Mars. 

Fifteen years Mattioli lay here; lived fifteen years 
on the vapours of Pignerol. A solitary instance is re- 
corded, pathetic enough in the circumstances, of his 


attempt to win over one of the lieutenants of Saint-Mars, 
13° 


196 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Blainvilliers by name, by the offer of a ring. In some 
raving hour the prisoner had written “abusive sentences 
with charcoal on the wall,” and Blainvilliers had threatened 
him with beating. A day or two later, as the officer 
was serving him with dinner, Mattioli said: “Str, here 
1s a little ring, ier wish to give you, and I beg you 
to accept of it?’ Saint-Mars, in his inevitable report 
to Louvois, conjectures it “well worth fifty or sixty 
pistoles”: it was probably the ring which Mattioli had 
received from Louis XIV. ‘ 

Concerning Pignerol, the rest is silence. 

Mountain and wood and stream hem round that 
altitude of grey-black stone, where Louis’s prisoner sits 
through fifteen spectral years. 


AC —ti*™ 


THE INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 197 


CHAPTER VL 


THE INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 


Ir has been rightly said that the interest of Count 
Mattioli’s captivity owes everything to the supposition 
that we have in him the actual Man in the Mask. So 
closely did the jealous anger of the King conceal him, 
that his life in prison, mysterious even to the creatures 
of Saint-Mars, has left scarcely a trace in the real history 
of Pignerol, of the Isles, or of the Bastille. Legend, 
indeed, abounds; but facts are of the scantiest. Was 
this in truth the Man in the Iron Mask? 

Who first sought to identify him? Let us summarise 
briefly on this head the exhaustive perquisitions of Topin. 
To begin with, there is the political pamphlet already 
cited, La Prudenza trionfante di Casale, published in 
Cologne in 1682. Here is set forth in detail the whole 
negotiation, with the parts played by the Abbé d’Estrades 
and Mattioli, Giuliani and Pinchesne, Catinat and d’As- 


198 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


feld, and the Duke of Mantua. Five years later, in 
1687, a compilation issued at Leyde under the title 
Histoire abrégée de Europe gave the translation in 
French of an Italian letter denouncing the abduction of 
Mattioli. There is then a long interval. In 1749, 
Muratori, in his Annalz d'Italia, related the history 
of the intrigue for Casale, and the capture of the Duke 
of Mantua’s plenipotentiary. In 1770 appeared the 
letter of Baron d’Heiss in the Journal Encyclopédique, 
in which he says: “It appears that this Secretary to 
the Duke of Mantua might very well be the Man in the 
Iron Mask, transferred from Pignerol to the Isles of 
Sainte-Marguerite, and thence to the Bastille in 1690,* 
when M. de Saint-Mars became governor of that place.” 
In 1786, the Italian Fantuzzi, in his Notszte degli scret- 
tort Bolognest, summed up what had hitherto been 
written on the subject. The same opinion, that Mattioli 
was the Man in the Mask, was sustained in the year of 
the Revolution by the “Chevalier de B.”, in a volume 
entitled Londres.-—Correspondance interceptée. In No- 
vember, 1795, M. de Chambrier, who had been Prus- 
sian minister at the Court of Turin, essayed to prove in 


* It was in 1698 that Mattioli came to the Bastille. 


ne eee eee 


THE INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 199 


a lecture delivered to the Belles-Lettres class at the 
Academy of Berlin, that Count Mattioli and the Man 
in the Iron Mask were one and the same individual.* 
Just one hundred years ago appeared the pamphlet of 
Roux-Fazillac, who was the first to publish documents 
in support of his case. Much more complete, however, 
were the documents of Delort, whose small, well-reasoned 
treatise, Histotre de Homme au Masque de Fer, was 
published in Paris in 1825. By permission of Comte 
d’Hauterive, Keeper of the Archives of the Office of 
Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, Delort 
examined and made excellent use of all the despatches 
known at that day. The history that he drew from 
them seemed conclusive. It is, in effect, the true history; 
but, as will be seen, it is the true history with a very 
important error. Ellis’s work, which appeared a year 
or two later (the second edition, which is before me, is 
dated 1827) was little more than an adaptation of Delort’s. 
Camille Rousset, in his Histoire de Louvots, rehearses 


once more the story of the negotiations, and says: “We 


* Mentioning the subject one day to a very intelligent German 
lady of my acquaintance, she replied: “Mattioli? Yes, of course. 
We were taught that at school.” 


200 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


share the opinion of those who hold that the Masque de Fer 
was none other than Mattioli.” Depping, in his Correspond- 
ance administrative sous Louis XIV., is of the same mind. 

Except, however by Roux-Fazillac and Delort, 
there was little attempt to prove that the person arrested 
and carried to Pignerol on the 2nd of May, 1679, was 
identical with the prisoner who died in the Bastille on 
the 19th of November, 1703. And that, of course, 
constitutes the knot of the problem. “That Mattioli 
was seized in 1679 by a French agent, and forcibly 
carried to Pignerol—this, as we have seen, was a fact 
which had long been known. But that intrigue is no 
longer our sole concern: a mere preliminary of the 
question which engages us. What is essential is, to 
follow the minister of the Duke of Mantua from prison 
to prison, and to see not only whether he might have 
been, but whether it is impossible that he should not have 
been, that mysterious prisoner brought by Saint-Mars in 
1898 from the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille, 
where he died in 1703. Delort believed that he had 
proved it. His conviction was profound, and to many 
his demonstration seemed irrefutable.”* But the docu- 


* Topin. 


:___———— Ss ee eee | 


THE INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 201 


ments discovered by Delort did not contain the whole 
history; the omissions, in fact, were serious, and we are 
now to see how a keen examiner, detecting them, with 
one stroke of his pen shattered the system—and left 
the riddle of the Mask apparently insoluble to the end 
of time. ' 

Mattioli was incarcerated in Pignerol on the 2nd of 
May, 1679. At this date the dungeon held, besides 
Fouquet and Lauzun, four other prisoners concerning 
whom it is necessary to note that they were quite ob- 
scure and unimportant persons. One of them, Eustache 
Dauger, brought to Pignerol in July, 1669, had served 
Fouquet in the capacity of valet. Another, the Jacobin 
monk whom we have seen sharing his cell with Mattioli, 
and who had been imprisoned in April, 1674, is branded 
by Louvois as “a finished rogue, whom you cannot treat 
badly enough.” He was to have “no fire in his chamber, 
unless he is ill or the severity of the cold compels it, 
and no other nourishment than bread with wine-and- 
wa 7 The two remaining prisoners were a certain La 
Riviére and the Dubreuil whose name has been men- 
tioned. So insignificant were these, that when Saint- 
Mars was called from the government of Pignerol to that 


202 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


of Exiles, Louvois asked of him a memoir furnishing 
their names and the reasons why they had been im- 
prisoned. It is clearly not among prisoners of such 
small consideration, prisoners of whom the Minister) 
knows neither the names nor the causes of their deten- 
tion, that we shall find the Man in the Mask. Fouquet 
died at Pignerol in March, 1680. Lauzun was released 
the 22nd of April, 1681. 


On the 12th of May, 1681, Louvois announced to 
Saint-Mars that the King had appointed him to the 
command of the fortress of Exiles. On the gth of June 
the Minister wrote again, instructing Saint-Mars as to 
the precautions to be observed respecting the journey 
from Pignerol of those of his prisoners who were to be 


removed. 


“His Majesty’s desire is, that as soon as the room 
at Exiles, which you shall judge the most proper for the 
safe keeping of the two prisoners in the lower tower, 
shall be ready to receive them, you send these prisoners 
out of the citadel of Pignerol in a litter, and conduct 
them there under the escort of your troop. .. . Im- 
mediately after the prisoners’ departure, it is his Majesty’s 


\ 
SE | eee 


THE INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 203 


wish that you proceed to Exiles, to take possession of 
the government, and to settle yourself there.” 

Here were two prisoners to be removed. A word 
follows concerning “the rest of the prisoners now in 
your charge,” which it will be important to remember 
at the final stage of the enquiry. “The Sieur de 
Chamoy,” says Louvois, “has instructions to pay two 
crowns a day for the maintenance of these three 
prisoners.” There were thus five prisoners in Pignerol 
on the eve of the departure of Saint-Mars for Exiles. 

The prisoners to be removed were the two prisoners 
of the lower tower. ‘The lower tower was, as we have 
seen, the prison of Mattioli and the Jacobin monk: what 
more natural, then, than to conclude that these were the 
two whom Saint-Mars carried with him to Exiles? This 
was the obvious view adopted by Roux-Fazillac, Delort, 
and all investigators up to the time of Topin. Was it 
the true one? 

In the course of years the climate of Exiles affected 
the health of Saint-Mars; and the ever-obliging Louvois 
procured him a change of government. Early in 1687 
he was called to the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite-Saint- 
Honorat, in the Sea of Provence. To the fortress of 


204 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Sainte-Marguerite he took one prisoner only. The date 
was the 30th of April, 1687. Delort and the rest, de- 
termined not to lose sight of their candidate for a mo- 
ment, declared that this “seu/ prisonnzer”” must be Mat- 
tioli. No name was mentioned, and definite proof was 
lacking; but probability favoured the conjecture. 

Let us see how it is established that one alone of 
the two prisoners brought from Pignerol to Exiles was 
carried from Exiles to the Isles. A few days before the 
close of 1685 (December the 23rd), Saint-Mars wrote to 
Louvois: “My prisoners are still ill, and under medical 
treatment. They are, however, perfectly tranquil.” In 
the autumn of the following year, one of the prisoners 
was dropsical. “You ought to have told me,” writes 
Louvois, October gth, 1686, “which of your prisoners 
has become dropsical.” He writes again on the 3rd of 
November: “It will be proper to let your dropsical 
prisoner be confessed, when you are certain that his end 
is near.” In the first days of January, 1687, the 
prisoner died. “I have received your letter of the 5th 
inst.,” writes Louvois (January 13th, 1687), “which in- 
forms me of the death of one of your prisoners. I will 


Say nO more concerning your desire for a change of 


DE lel eel 


THE INQUISITION OF JULES LOISELEUR. 205 


government, since you have already learned that the 
King has been pleased to confer on you a better post 
than the one you are in possession of.” The death of 
one of the prisoners brought by Saint-Mars from Pignerol 
to Exiles is thus demonstrated. Was it Mattioli or the 
other? Delort and his contemporaries concluded, posi- 
tively for the most part, that it was the other. 

They overlooked, however, one fact of the extremest 
significance. It was, that from the date of this death 
at Exiles Mattioli’s name disappears entirely from the 
correspondence of Louvots and Saint-Mars. -Now there 
may be nothing absolutely conclusive in this; but, taken 
with the testimony of the death, it seems to plunge into 
hopeless uncertainty every system which has sought to 
solve through Mattioli the mystery of the Man in the 
Mask. Such was the terribly destructive criticism of 
Jules Loiseleur, in the Revue Contemporaine,* a criticism 
which demolishes those systems in a fashion the most 
decisive. If Mattioli and the monk were the two 
prisoners whom Saint-Mars carried to Exiles (and we 
have seen that their removal was ordered by Louvois); 
if one of the pair died of dropsy at Exiles in January, 

* July 21st, 1867. 


206 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


1687 (and the document in proof has been cited); and 
if from this date Mattioli’s name vanishes from the 
letters of Louvois and Saint-Mars—with what con- 
fidence may it be pretended that Mattioli was the 
masked man borne in secret by Saint-Mars to the 
Bastille in September, 1698? “His domonstration,” 
wrote a contemporary critic of Loiseleur, “at once 
luminous and peremptory, has exhausted the ques- 
tion; and, in default of fresh documents, no serious 
mind will ever return to it.” Topin confesses that 
after reading and rereading this demonstration,* he 
could resolve no otherwise than that the secret of the 


Mask was and would remain impenetrable. 


* Refuted, nevertheless, by him in so far as concemed 
Loiseleur’s hypothesis of the arrest of the spy by Catinat. 


a 


THE MISSING LINK REVEALED BY TOPIN. 207 


CHAPTER VU. 


THE MISSING LINK REVEALED BY TOPIN. 


Comes the question then: has the Man in the Mask 
once more and finally eluded us? Let us go a step 
further. Baudry had said of the inquisition of 
Loiseleur, that it had exhausted the problem; that, if 
other documents were not forthcoming, no serious 
mind would return to its consideration. But it has 
been stated before, and the statement must be re- 
peated, that the whole truth of this strange drama 
was not contained in any single set of documents. 
Louis XIV. was little likely to leave us the epitome of 
it; and no minister who had part in the affair ever 
forgot the King’s command to d’Estrades: // faudra 
gue personne ne sgache ce que cet homme sera devenu,— 
No one must know what becomes of this man. His 
very name had already disappeared, save only for 
those few who had known it from the first, At 


208 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Pignerol, he was Lestang; in the Bastille, he was the 
prisoner from Provence. Apart from the brief but 
pregnant documents of the Bastille, to be presented 
when their time comes, his identity was only to be 
made good by the comparison of innumerable de- 
spatches, “not one among which furnishes by itself an 
irrefutable proof, but which in their entirety, with the 
logical deductions that may be drawn from them, con- 
duct to an absolute certainty.” * 

But there could be no doubt that, after Loiseleur, 
fresh documents were necessary, if this certainty were 
ever to be attained. These documents were found by 
Topin. The passage in which he explains how he 
first imagined their existence, and then went on to 
prove it, is peculiarly interesting, as showing both his 
extreme mental ingenuity and the inexhaustible patience 
with which he pursued a task now regarded as well- 
nigh impossible of completion. There comes first a 
letter, of which, at sight, the significance is less than 
nothing: a letter from Louvois to Saint-Mars, dated 
January 5th, 1682. At this time Saint-Mars has been 
but a few months at Exiles; but he is already clamour- 


* Topin. 


THE MISSING LINK REVEALED BY TOPIN. 209 


ing for a change of government, and has evidently 
been sounding Louvois on the subject. Louvois replies: 

“I received your letter of the 28th ult. You do not 
know where your interest lies, when you propose to ex- 
change the government of Exiles against that of Casale, 
the value of which is only two thousand livres a year.* 
I strongly advise you not to think further of it” 

There is no more in the despatch than that. It 
suggests nothing but the interest of Louvois in the per- 
sonal fortunes of Saint-Mars, whose sister-in-law was the 
minister’s mistress. Saint-Mars, incessantly grasping 
(and suffering in health at Exiles), seeks another change 
of place: Louvois responds that the change he proposes 
will put nothing into his purse. It is the letter, not of 
the minister to the gaoler, but of the minister to his 
friend: it is a strictly personal communication. What, 
then, is its value as a counterpoise to the criticism of 
Loiseleur, which showed—upon the documents put in 
—that Mattioli, if he did not die of dropsy at Exiles, 
did at all events disappear incontinently from the des- 
patches which, up to this point, had been almost solely 
occupied with him? 

* The amount which Saint-Mars was receiving at Exiles. 

The Man in the Iron Mash. 14 


210 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


The supposition is still, of course, that Mattioli was 
one of the two prisoners whom Saint-Mars carried with 
him from Pignerol to Exiles. Just here, however, the 
doubt comes in that suggested itself to Topin. If Mattioli 
were with Saint-Mars at Exiles, what more imprudent 
than that he should propose to take him—an Italian 
subject forcibly stolen from Italy—into an Italian town, 
and a town Mantuan in its hereditary interests! If it 
were in any way possible that Mattioli should discover 
himself to friends, he would at least have a better chance 
of doing so in Casale than at Exiles. How did this 
not occur to Saint-Mars? And, if it missed the sleepless 
intelligence of Saint-Mars, how came it also to be passed 
by Louvois? But Louvois evidently has not a thought 
of danger. His sole motive in dissuading Saint-Mars 
from Casale is that his pocket would profit nothing by 
the exchange. Mattioli, whom it would have been unwise 
to carry back into Italy, is not so much as mentioned. 
Then Mattioli, perhaps, was not at Extles at all, and 
had never been sent there? This was the inspiration that 
Topin drew from the colourless despatch of Louvois. 

The chance of success in this direction was a very 


feeble one; for the despatch of Louvois. was extant, 


THE MISSING LINK REVEALED BY TOPIN, 21! 


ordering the removal of the two prisoners of the four 
den bas, the lower tower, to which Mattioli and the 
monk had been relegated; and the despatch had closed 
with the injunction that “the effects belonging to the 
Sieur de Mattioli which are in your possession are to be 
taken to Exiles, so that they may be given back to him, 
should his Majesty ever decide to set the prisoner at 
liberty.” This was categorical. 

Still, Topin’s doubts persisted. If Mattioli were 
indeed at Exiles, how could Saint-Mars propose to 
transfer him to Casale? And how did Louvois let that 
proposal pass unrebuked? With these questions pricking 
him, Topin returned to the Bibliotheque Imperiale to 
begin the search anew—and the missing link revealed itself. 

It was found in a letter from Saint-Mars to d’Estrades, 
bearing date June 25th, 1681. Saint-Mars, the least 
gregarious of men, had sworn an ardent friendship with 
the Abbé, and he hastens to share with him the news 
of his appointment to Exiles. “Count on me as your 
most devoted. I received yesterday the warrant appoint- 
ing me to the governorship of Exiles, at a salary of two 
thousand livres. . . . I am to take with me two jail-birds* 


* Deux merles,’’ 
14* 


212 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


whom I have here. .... Mattioli remains where he is, 
with two other prisoners. One of my lieutenants, named 
Villebois will have charge of them.” 

Mattioli, therefore, was not the prisoner who died at 
Exiles in January, 1687. He never went to Exiles at 
all. The purpose indicated in Louvois’s despatch, of the 
gth of June, 1681, had been abandoned; and Mattioli 
remained at Pignerol, where he will be found in the 
keeping of Villebois. The long silence of Louvois and 
Saint-Mars concerning him thus receives its natural ex- 
planation. 

The perplexity, the scepticism which Loiseleur’s 
examination had produced, vanished upon this discovery. 
Mattioli was at Pignerol and at the Isles and in the 
Bastille; Delort’s error, which for a time cast into un- 
certainty the whole history of the Mask, lay in removing 
him from Pignerol to Exiles. There are two traits or 
characters in the history of the Mask which attach them- 
selves to Mattioli alone, of all the prisoners whom Saint- 
Mars had in his keeping: the unvarying tradition of his 
detention at Sainte-Marguerite, and the documental cer- 


tainty of his detention at Pignerol. In Du Junca’s journal, 


the prisoner whom Saint-Mars brings to the Bastille in 


AW 


THE MISSING LINK REVEALED BY TOPIN. 213 


September, 1698, is an ancient prisoner whom he had 
at Pignerol. Exiles finds no place in the entry. We know 
that Saint-Mars had Mattioli in his charge during two 
years at Pignerol, and Topin has shown that the prisoner 
was not transferred to Exiles. But for that unfortunate 
error, which is principally identified with Delort, the pro- 
blem might long since have been resolved. 


214 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 


Most visitors to the Riviera have made the little tnp 
to the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Honorat, 
enticed by the piquant legend of the Man in the Iron 
Mask. A good woman discovers you his cell, charms 
you and thnills you with stories of his fine apparel, his 
plate, and the deference shown him by Saint-Mars: poor 
Mask, who had no fine clothes and no plate, and whom 
the deferential gaoler had threatened with a cudgel! 
The Isles owe most of their celebrity to what is purely 
fabulous in this history, but they have other annals 
also. 

Lying some fifteen hundred yards from the shore, 
the two islands, of which Sainte-Marguerite is the larger, 
are as sentinels over the pleasure-haunts of Nice, Cannes, 
and San Remo. Rock and reef lend.some amount of 
danger to the approach. Within, the Isles are dark with 


ef ee ete Re ee  —e 


THE PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 215 


pine-trees, cumbered and strengthened with shaggy hills, 
gigantic boulders. Climbing Sainte-Marguerite’s top, the 
traveller’s eyes are filled with a marvellous golden light; 
before him undulates on either hand all that sun-bathed 
shore of the Riviera; he counts the glistening villas of 
Cannes; grey-green hills of olive rise beyond; to the left 
streams out the long chain of the Esterel, “with contours 
brusque and varied;” and on the right the Maritime 
Alps cast up their “thousand years of snow.” 


The Romans were here once; hermits have dwelt in 
these island solitudes; the Saracens have invaded and 
the Spaniards have sacked them.* In the dawn of the 
fifth century Saint-Honorat founded here a monastery, 
greatly celebrated of the Gauls, where “thousands of 
apostles” practised virtue and the monkish arts. On 
the smaller island is still shown the well which the saint 
created, yielding miraculous sweet water. Here came 
Francis L, prisoner of the Spaniards after the disastrous 
field of Pavia, to endure a harsh captivity. Here, to 
Sainte-Marguerite, was sent, in December, 1873, Marshal 
Bazaine, who broke prison and escaped the night of the 


* Topin. 


216 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


gth of August, 1874. The two islands bear the common 
name of the Iles de Lérins. The memory of the Iron 
Mask, whose prison was the fortress of Sainte-Marguerite, 
has conferred on the Lérins a celebrity which seems 
likely to endure. 

Hither, then, came, in 1687, the most incorruptible 
gaoler Saint-Mars. He had received word of his new 
appointment on the 2oth of January; he was in ill-health, 
and eager for the healing South. He wrote to Louvois: 
—“I am most grateful for the new favour which his 
Majesty has just bestowed on me (the Government of 
the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite). If you order me to 
proceed there without delay, I would request to be 
allowed to take the road through Piedmont, on account 
of the great quantity of snow that lies between this place 
and Embrun.” He went to Sainte-Marguerite in February, 
and was twenty-six days in bed, “with a continual 
fever.” 

Mattioli, this while, supposed at Exiles, lay close in 
Pignerol. We have glimpses of the guard that was kept 
upon him. Villebois, chained to his prisoner, seems 
never to have been allowed to leave the dungeon. In 


such a nervous fit as Saint-Mars was almost incessantly 


ps ET TT 


THE PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 217 


a prey to, he wrote to Louvois, asking to whom he should 
entrust the prisoner, supposing he were incapacitated by 
sickness; and Louvois replied: “To the person you can 
most rely on.” Even the priest of the prison was 
distrusted—‘“Your prisoners are to be confessed only 
once a year.” Books of devotion might be given to 
them; but “you are to take care they do not use them 
for passing notes to one another.” One night someone 
is suspected of haunting a bastion gate of Pignerol, and 
Villebois is instructed to “do your utmost to discover 
who the person was.” There is a rare effort of Mattioli 
—the only one that records prove—to disclose his 
situation: he writes something on a lining torn from his 
pocket. It is discovered, and communicated to Versailles, 
and the answer is returned—“You must burn any scraps 
on which Mattioli has written.” The walls of Pignerol, 
and the road beneath, were strictly watched; the sentinels 
had orders to let no one linger about the gates. 
Saint-Mars, on his part, while at Exiles, had enjoyed 
a measure of liberty that he had never known when 
guarding Mattioli at Pignerol. He went on little visits 
to d’Estrades, to Catinat; he paid his court to the Duke 
of Savoy; he was allowed from time to time to sleep 


218 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


out of the gaol. “Madame de Saint-Mars having told 
me,” writes Louvois, in March, 1685, “that you wish to 
go to the baths of Aix-en-Savoie, I spoke about it to the 
King, and his Majesty commands me to say that you 
may absent yourself from Exiles for that purpose for a 
period of from fifteen days to three weeks.” Even at 
the Isles, at first, Saint-Mars was comparatively at his 
ease. “The King consents to your taking a holiday 
two days in the month, and permits you to return the 
visit of the governor of Nice.” These were the relaxa- 
tions of the period when Saint-Mars had charge only 
of “two jail-birds.” 

On a sudden, the 26th of February, 1694, there is 
a mandate from Versailles, informing the commandant 
that three prisoners of State are to be sent from Pignerol 
to the Isles. The minister* enquires “if there are safe 
places to hold them,” and bids the governor make all 
needful dispositions to receive them. A second letter, 
March the 2oth, contains a passage of capital significance: 
“You know in effect that they are of greater consequence, 
at least one, than the prisoners now at the Isles; and, 


* This was Barbezieux, the successor of Louvois, who died 
in 1691. 


ey ee 


THE PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 219 


preferably to those others, you should see that they are 
lodged in the most secure quarter of the prison. The 
courier who bears this despatch takes with him also 
fifteen hundred livres for preliminary expenses.” 

Thus was announced the coming of Mattioli, ma) 
the two remaining prisoners of Pignerol. 

The great Louis, who took his vengeances cruelly, 
was falling on his evil days. The disruption was be- 
ginning which should end in the cataract of the Revolu- 
tion. In Italy the situation had been sadly modified 
since the epoch at which Louis had first sought to treat 
as autocrat for the purchase of Casale. He no longer 
spoke there with a master’s voice; “his arms had ceased 
to be ever-victorious, and he was already expiating his 
impolitic and inopportune intervention in the affairs of 
the Peninsula”; Casale must be abandoned; Pignerol, ~ 
too—that “precious acquisition of Richelieu,” which had 
been practically a French town for sixty years. 

Mattioli in the heart of his dungeon felt the effects 
of the King’s reverses. The restoration of Pignerol by 
Louis explains his removal to the Isles. Once more, 
however, a deep secrecy falls upon him; he is never at 


this time alluded to by name in the despatches. “Now 


220 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


more than ever, in a word, was it imperative to hide 
from the sight and knowledge of all, this victim of an 
audacious and inexcusable violation of the rights of men. 
Europe’s discontent with Louis XIV. was extreme; his 
interest lay in appeasing this discontent; and in these 
circumstances it was of the last importance to cover 
with an impenetrable mystery an existence which 
recalled at once the dangerous ambition, the audacity, 
and—not less than these—the humbling of a great 
king.” 

Never, accordingly, were such extraordinary precau- 
tions taken for a journey of this nature. The Marquis 
d’Herleville, governing the citadel of Pignerol, and the 
Comte de Tessé, commanding the French troops in that 
place, had orders “to furnish the escort, and the monies 
‘ necessary for the expenses of the road”; and it was 
strictly enjoined upon de Tessé “that he should not 
seek to know the names of the prisoners.” A strong 
escort was provided; two sure guides were sent in 
advance; and the governor of the dungeon of Pignerol 
went with the litter of the prisoners, with instructions to 
let no one but himself attend on them. Thus they came 
mysteriously to the Isles. 


THE PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 221 


In that litter so closely escorted, three prisoners 
fared, one of whom was of greater consequence than the 
others. Now, after the death of Fouquet and the release. 
of Lauzun, there was not at Pignerol any considerable 
prisoner save Mattioli. Note, too, that when Saint-Mars 
went to Exiles, it was to Villebois that the charge of 
Mattioli was assigned—Villebois, who had shared with 
Catinat the mission of arresting him: further, that on 
the death of Villebois, it was another of Saint-Mars’s 
lieutenants, Laprade, who was sent from the Isles as 
governor of the dungeon of Pignerol. Saint-Mars had 
therefore not lost sight of his ancient prisoner; he had 
been in touch with him throughout. At Exiles, and 
during the first period of his command at the Isles, 
Saint-Mars, with the King’s permission, had quitted his 
charge when it pleased him: there comes from Pignerol 
this prisoner of consequence, and Saint-Mars leaves the 
Isles no more. “From this moment,” says Topin, 
“Saint-Mars never stirs from his prison.” At this time, 
too, Barbezieux, who has not until now displayed the 
least anxiety, is solicitous of knowing what would befall 
at the Isles should sickness overtake Saint-Mars. New 
measures of precaution are proposed by Saint-Mars, and 


222 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


approved by the minister. The bolts from the dungeon 
of Pignerol are sent to Sainte-Marguerite. Time does 
not weaken this scrupulous watch, as appears by the 
following significant despatch from Versailles, November 
17th, 1697:-— 

“T have received with your letter of the roth of this 
month the copy of the one written you by Mons. de 
Ponchartrain concerning the prisoners who are at the 
Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, in accordance with the King’s 
orders, signed by him or by the late Mons. de Seignelay. 
You have simply to address yourself to the safe keep- 
ing of all the persons entrusted to you, and to see 
that no one ever learns what your ancient prisoner has 
done.” 

Can the words “your ancient prisoner” bear any 
meaning save one: a prisoner who was formerly in your 
keeping and who has again been confided to you? The 
phrase could not possibly apply to the prisoner whom 
Saint-Mars had brought to the Isles, for he arrived 
there in 1687, and it was scarcely to be supposed that 
at the end of ten years the inhabitants of Sainte- 
Marguerite had grown suddenly curious as to the cause 


of his detention. But their curiosity was natural 


i Sl Jee SEE J) 


THE PRISONER OF CONSEQUENCE. 223 


enough in respect of the three who had arrived in the 
midst of that formidable escort, for whose reception 
extensive preparations had been made, and one at least 
of whom had been lodged in the strongest part of the 
prison. 

The passage from Topin which follows seems 
definitely to clinch the argument:— 

“Pignerol was given up to the Duke of Savoy shortly 
after the arrival of the new prisoners at the Isles. I 
have searched during the ten years (1698-1708) which 
followed the departure of Saint-Mars for the Bastille, all 
the despatches exchanged between Lamothe-Guérin, his 
successor at the Isles, and the Court of Versailles. The 
name of Mattioli is nowhere to be found in them, nor 
is there mention of any prisoner of importance left be- 
hind by Saint-Mars.” 

We know that Mattioli was at Pignerol at the end 
of 1693 (only a few months before the removal of the 
three prisoners), for it was in December of that year— 
the 27th—that the minister was in communication with 
Laprade about the prisoner’s attempt to write something 
on the lining of his clothes. The three who were trans- 
ferred in 1694 were all old prisoners of Saint-Mars, and 


224 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Mattioli alone among them possessed any consideration. 
When, therefore, Saint-Mars is strictly bidden to keep 
from everyone the knowledge of “what your ancient 
prisoner has done,” there is but one conclusion to draw 
.—that the reference is to the affair which Versailles 
continued to call “the treason of Count Mattioli.” 


Ry pe ee ee Ol 


THE SILVER DISH. 225 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE SILVER DISH. 


Botu at the Isles and in the Bastille, the life of 
Mattioli—if life it may be called—seems to have been 
as wretched, as inexpressibly blank, as in the dungeon 
of Pignerol. The despatches say nothing more of mad- 
ness; but, by the time he came to the Isles, Mattioli 
had suffered during fifteen years a form of captivity 
which might have shattered, and which must certainly 
have enfeebled, the very strongest intellect. One of the 
most grievous pains of imprisonment under the old 
régime must have been the total lack of profitable or 
engaging employment. The’ tasks of prison, during a 
long sentence of penal servitude, are seldom cheerful, 
and cannot but be monotonous; but they do at least 
fill the greater portion of the convict’s life, they stay his 
mind from too much brooding, and they offer to in- 


dustry a means of climbing from an inferior to a higher 
The Mas in the Iron Mask. 15 


226 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


class. But the prisoners of State under the French 
monarchy had no tasks, and could only with difficulty 
create their occupations or their recreations. And the 
history of Mattioli is desolate above the average. If his 
mind were not dead within him, his existence during all 
those years is terrible to contemplate. Guiding our- 
selves solely by the light of proved despatches, rejecting 
absolutely aJl such evidence as will not stand that test, 
we find scarcely a trace of solace or relief in that pro- 
tracted martyrdom. A few “books of devotion,” grudg- 
ingly doled out; the yearly visit of a priest: that is all, 
In this respect, as in others, the history of Mattioli is 
nearly without a parallel. Of how many prisoners of 
State is it recorded that, during a captivity of years, 
they neither found nor were granted any means of 
softening the unutterable solitude of prison? Fouquet 
read and wrote; procured herbs and plants from the 
hills, and dabbled in pharmacy; and was at last united 
to his family. Mirabeau in Vincennes composed that 
devastating essay on Lettres de Cachet which fore- 
shadowed the Revolution. Condé cultivated pinks. 
Cardinal de Retz played chess, and received his friends. 
Trenck carved scrolls and mottoes on his cups. Voltaire 


ra i ES | ie ee 


THE SILVER DISH. 227 


polished verses. Pellisson’s spider is famed. Latude 
and others tamed pigeons, rats, and mice. Bunyan and 
Cervantes found an immortality in the dungeon. The 
annals of the Bastille embrace one dainty love-affair, 
that of Mdlle. de Launay (the Madame de Staal that 
should be) and the young Chevalier de Ménil. . Diderot 
in Vincennes received the visits of Rousseau and 
D’Alembert, and talked Plato and Socrates with them 
in the garden. In days near our own, Louis Napoleon 
called the fortress of Ham his University. Even in the 
prisons of Russia, within the stretch of recent memory, 
prisoners of both sexes have contrived to communicate 
freely by means of a pre-arranged code of raps. 

But between Mattioli and all the living, the gulf is 
absolute. Four-and-twenty years revolve for him in a 
silence almost unbroken. Intellect and the “life of life 
in the heart” must staunch and be swallowed up in 
that appalling and incredible sterility of existence. Time 
scarcely modifies in any degree the pitiless character of 
his captivity. During four-and-twenty years he seems 
not to have seen one friendly face; and it is almost 
certain that not a message ever reached him from the 


world which he had lost. 
15* 


228 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


One day in those loathed seats was the pattern of 
all. Saint-Mars has left us in a letter to Barbezieux a 
precise account of the manner in which, when he was 
ill or otherwise engaged, his lieutenants waited on the 
prisoners :-— 

“ . . . . The first of my lieutenants, who 
. takes the keys of the prison of my anctent prisoner, 
with whom: we commence, opens the three doors and 
goes in. The prisoner politely hands him the plates 
and dishes, laid one on another, and the lieutenant has 
only to pass through two doors to give them to one of 
my sergeants, who places them on a table two steps 
away, where is the second heutenant, who examines 
everything that comes into and goes out of the prison, 
and sees that nothing has been written on any of the 
vessels, After they have given him the utensil, they 
make a thorough examination of the bed, then of the 
gratings and windows of the room; and very often the 
prisoner himself is searched. After inquiring civilly 
whether he wants anything, they lock the doors, and 
visit the other prisoners in like manner.” 

The “ancient prisoner,” Mattioli, is here in the 
strictest solitary confinement, and it is evident that 


ee 


THE SILVER DISH. 229 


these perfunctory visits of Saint-Mars or his lieutenant 
—with the humiliating accompaniment of the daily 
search—represent his sole intercourse with his fellow- 
men. An existence so-barren, so deadly drear, as that 
of a Mattioli or a Prisoner of Chillon, may be a fit 
theme for tragic poetry, but is of little service to the 
makers of romance. Fable accordingly has always been 
extremely busy with this prisoner of Saint-Mars, who 
was for generations the most mysterious creature in 
history. Things true or partly true of other prisoners 
have grouped themselves around his memory; other 
things speak only for the imagination of their inventors. 
The legend of the silver dish (which includes Papon’s 
variation) belongs to the period of Sainte-Marguerite. 
Already referred to, it has a foundation in fact, but 
does not touch the history of the Mask. The revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, had filled the 
prisons of Louis XIV. with those French Protestants and 
their clergy who had not fled the country; and many 
ministers of the proscribed faith were sent from time to 
time to Sainte-Marguerite. It was through one of these 
prisoners for his faith that the tale of the “silver dish” 
arose. A certain Salves, unknown to history in any 


230 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


other relation, is the source it traces from.: Along with 
a companion unnamed, Salves fell in trouble with Saint- 
Mars, who, in accordance with his invariable rule, 
posted the matter to Versailles. Nothing escaped 
Saint-Mars; for what he did not see his lieutenants did 
not dare to withhold from him; and all went in detail to 
the King. 

“The first of the Protestant ministers who have been 
sent here,” he wrote (June 4th, 1692), “sings psalms 
night and day at the top of his voice, to let it be 
known who and what he is. I forbade him several 
times, on pain of punishment; and I have had to punish 
him at last. I have taken a similar course with his 
comrade Salves, who has a mania for scribbling, and 
who has written things on his pewter vessels and on his 
linen, to publish it that he is imprisoned unjustly for his 
religion.” 

Out of this petty memorandum from the gaoler to 
the minister two writers have furnished the most 
sensational incident in the legend of the Iron Mask. 
Voltaire’s fisherman came off with his life, it is true: 
Pére Papon’s monk did not; and there are so few points 
at which the memory of Saint-Mars makes appeal to us 


—Ne 


THE SILVER DISH. 231 


that it is grateful to spare him the charge of that 
imaginary murder. 

With the story of the silver dish is linked, in the 
popular fancy, the story of the laces and fine linen. 
There is not a hint of this in the despatches, and no- 
thing that Saint-Mars omits to mention is to be re- 
ceived; for he is little less than childish in his incessant 
appeals to Versailles on every point that concerns even 
the obscurest of his prisoners. It is a corollary of 
Voltaire’s libel on Anne of Austria, but it has not the 
basis even of that remote history of the silver dish. A 
solitary figment of Voltaire, it goes with the rest of his 
invention. The first order of Louis XIV. will be re- 
membered, that Mattioli should have nothing “except 
the absolute necessaries of life’—among which it is 
improbable that either Louis or Louvois would include 
the frills and laces of the age. 

Point by point, what is legendary in the record of 
the Mask gives place to history. Tradition has found 
him with a guitar, and old prints depict it; but every 
picture of the Man in the Mask is a fantasy, and no 
guitar passed unsanctioned into any prison of Saint- 
Mars. 


232 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


To the fifteen disintegrating years in Pignerol were 
joined four at the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite; day yielding 
ever to night in the prisoner’s life through all that tragic 
cycle. And fate had not yet done with him. 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 233 


CHAPTER X. 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE, 


On the first of March, 1698, Saint-Mars received 
from Versailles the offer of the government of the Bastille. 
The salary was rich, the office one of trust and dignity, 
and Paris was Paris: Saint-Mars accepted the offer at 
once. Nothing further passed until the 17th of June, 
when Barbezieux wrote again from Versailles :— 

“T have been long in answering your letter of the 
8th of last month, as the King had not explained his 
intentions to me. | I am now to inform you that his 
Majesty is pleased at your acceptance of the government 
of the Bastille. You can have everything in train to be 
ready to start when you receive the final word; and 
bring with you in all security your ancient prisoner. \ 

“I have arranged with Mons. Saumery to give 
you two thousand crowns for the transport of your 
effects.” 


234 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


On the roth of July there came a third despatch 
from Barbezieux, confirming what had gone before, and 
emphasising the importance of guarding the prisoner on 
the journey “in such a manner that he shall be seen by 
no one.” Two months later, in the middle of September, 
when the days were shortening, Saint-Mars set out with 
him to traverse the whole of France. At this point the 
reflection arises that had the affair of the Mask been a 
scandal of the Court, and the prisoner a person whose 
features revealed a royal origin, it would have been 
strangely and curiously imprudent to bring him to a 
dungeon in the heart of Paris—where chance might so 
much more easily discover him than in that distant 
fastness lapped by the Sea of Provence. There could 
be no grave reason why the Italian Mattioli should not 
be carried to the Bastille; there was every prudent 
reason of State why a brother of the King should not 
be carried there. But, as we shall see, it was un- 
questionably the Man in the Mask who made the 
journey with Saint-Mars. 

A glance at the map of France will show what a 
journey this was at the jog-trot pace of the litter. No 
detailed itinerary exists, but we know where the prin- 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE, 235 


cipal halt was made. In the central department of 
Yonne is the town of Villeneuve-le-Roi, once called 
the Anteroom of the Popes, now desolate and lifeless. 
Near Villeneuve is the chdteau of Palteau, a property 
belonging to Saint-Mars, and here he halted with his 
prisoner.* Reference has been made in the Introduc- 


* Saint-Mars was not the man to loiter on the road, with a 
prisoner of State in his keeping, and it is unlikely that the stay at 
Palteau exceeded a night or two. But wherever the Masked Man 
came legend laid hold upon his memory, and Villeneuve-le-Roi has 
appropriated him. There is in Villeneuve a vast old ruined fort, 
with castellated drum-towers, and cells and chambers in abun- 
dance. Now Saint-Mars and the Mask would probably take Villeneuve 
on their way to Palteau; at all events, that close-guarded litter, 
watched with an awful wonder from Provence to Paris, must have 
passed very near. What more apt than to imagine for the Mask a 
period of captivity in the fort of Villeneuve-le-Roi! It has been done. 
In a pleasant volume of wanderings, “In the Rhone Valley,” Mr. 
Charles W. Wood tells how he was shown the cell by a nun, as 
her piece de résistance. ‘‘Most interesting of all was a small remote 
doorway, and the nun looked wonderfully picturesque as she bent 
down and applied the key to the lock, her black graceful dress stand- 
ing out in strange contrast with the ancient and splendid masonry. 
Then she threw open the door and we entered a dark circular 
chamber that was half cell. In tones that thrilled her hearers and 
echoed in the roof, she said: ‘This is the room in which the Man 
with the Iron Mask was confined, before he was taken to another 
and more open part of the fort.’” Mr. Wood, accepting the state- 
ment in good faith, adds: “We almost felt on sacred ground.” 


236 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


tion to the letter of M. de Formanoir de Palteau, 
grand-nephew of Saint-Mars, in which this episode 
is described. The letter, bearing date June 19, 1768, 
was addressed to Fréron, of the Annee Littéraire, and 
published in the issue of June 30. 

“In 1698,” writes M. de Palteau, “M. de Saint- 
Mars passed from the charge of the Isles of Sainte- 
Marguerite to that of the Bastille. On his way, he stayed 
with his prisoner on his estate at Palteau. The Man in 
the Mask came in a litter which preceded that of M. 
de Saint-Mars; they were accompanied by several men 
on horseback. The peasants went to greet their lord; 
M. de Saint-Mars took his meals with his prisoner, who 
was placed with his back to the windows of the dining- 
room which overlooked the courtyard. The peasants 
whom I questioned could not see whether he wore his 
mask while eating, but they took note of the fact that 
M. de Saint-Mars, who sat opposite to him, kept a pair 
of pistols beside his plate. They were waited on by 
one manservant, who fetched the dishes from the ante- 
room where they were brought to him, taking care to 
close behind him the door of the dining-room. When 
the prisoner crossed the courtyard, he aways wore the 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 237 


black mask; the peasants noticed that his teeth and 
lips showed through it;* also that he was tall and had 
white hair. M. de Saint-Mars slept in a bed close to 
that of the masked man.” 


There could be nothing simpler than this state- 
ment. The writer has no hypothesis of his own, and 
no leaning towards any other hypothesis. He is content 
to report what he had learned by word of mouth from 
the old people on the estate who had actually seen the 
prisoner in the mask at Palteau.** The detail of chief 
importance in the account is the mask; and this is 
verified by the entry in Du Junca’s journal, when the 
veiled prisoner arrives at the Bastille. We have kept 
touch of this prisoner so far, and have found under 
his velvet mask no features but those of Mattioli. A 
prisoner of particular consequence is transferred from 
Pignerol to the Isles, and at the date of his removal 
there is only Mattioli of consequence in that prison. 


* Clearly, the little velvet half-mask which may be seen to-day 
at any bal masgqué in Carnival. 
** The chdteau of Palteau still stands where it did. The din- 
ing-hall in which Saint-Mars faced his prisoner, with pistols by his 
side, is now, says M. Funck-Brentano, a kitchen. 


238 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


His name ceases, but he is identified with the “ancient 
prisoner” of subsequent despatches. This “ancient 
prisoner” is the one whom Saint-Mars is instructed to 
carry from the Isles to the Bastille. The prisoner 
alights at Palteau, and it is observed by the peasants 
on the estate that he wears a mask. The journey ends 
at the Bastille;|and Du Junca, the King’s Lieutenant 
of the prison, notes in his journal that the prisoner 
whom Saint-Mars brings from the Isles is an ancient 
prisoner whom he had at Pignerol, and that he is 
masked. Even in the Paris of that day the use of the 
mask was not unknown; but there is absolutely no other 
instance in French history of its employment to conceal 
the identity of a prisoner: hence the naive wonder 
which may be read between the lines of Du Junca’s 
entry. 

This note in the register or journal kept by the 
King’s Lieutenant of the Bastille is, as M. Funck- 
Brentano observes, “the origin and foundation of all 
that has been. printed on the question of the Iron 
Mask.” ‘The journal itself (the original is in the Arsenal 
Library) is the work of an unlettered official who spells 
atrociously, and knows nothing of punctuation. When 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 239 


a new prisoner was received Du Junca wrote down the 
particulars of his coming, and the first of the entries 
with which this history is concerned is as follows, in a 
translation as literal as possible. 


“On Thursday, 18th September (1698), at three in 
the afternoon, M. de Saint-Mars, governor of the chdéteau 
of the Bastille, presented himself for the first time, 
coming from his government of the Isles of Sainte- 
Marguerite-Honorat, having with him in his litter a 
prisoner who was formerly in his keeping at Pignerol, 
whom he caused to be always masked, whose name is 
not mentioned: on descending from the litter, he had 
him placed in the first chamber of the Baziniére tower, 
waiting until night for me to take him, at nine o’clock, 
and put him with M. de Rosarges, one of the sergeants 
brought by the governor, alone in the third chamber of 
the Bertaudiére tower, which I had had duly furnished 
some days before his arrival, by order of M. de Saint- 
Mars: the aforesaid prisoner will be served and seen 
to by M. de Rosarges, and maintained by the go- 


vernor.” 


Such is the famous entry which records the coming 


240 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


of the Mask to the Bastille. He passed in there as 
mysteriously as he had entered Pignerol nineteen years 
earlier, and the Isles in 1694. That the staff of the 
Bastille had not the least idea who he was is rendered 
certain by the names he received from them. He was 
“the Prisoner from Provence,” most often; sometimes 
“the ancient prisoner”—the term so closely identified 
with Mattioli. It is clear that at first his isolation was 
as rigorous as it had ever been. Rosarges alone waited 
on him. No fellow-prisoner shared his captivity in the 
third chamber of the Bertaudiére tower. What tales 
would filter through the Bastille, what fables would 
begin to grow around him, even while he sat there—the 
unknown who wore the mask! 

But time was passing even for the Man in the Mask. 
Casale was no longer French; the negotiations which 
had issued so fatefully for Mattioli were old history; 
the whole affair was out of mind: its importance had 
utterly ceased. Note how this affected the Mask in 
1701, twenty-two years after he had been thrown into 
Pignerol. No pardon came for him, nor was he granted 
the ease in his dungeon which was allowed at last to 
Fouquet. His fate was infinitely more pitiful; he fell 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 241 


from his estate in the prison, he was degraded among 
the commonest of the Bastille’s inmates. 

He had been confined in the third chamber of the 
Bertaudiére tower. From this he was removed, the 6th 
of March, 1701, to make room for one Anne Randon, 
“‘devineresse et diseuse de bonne fortune,’ witch and 
fortune-teller: the Man in the Mask displaced by a com- 
mon sorceress! He was then put by Du Junca, whose 
Journal is the authority, into “the second Bertaudiére,” 
which he shared with a certain Thirmont or Tirmont. 
This man, embastilled in July, 1700, had been a 
domestic servant; he was only nineteen years of age, 
and had been accused of atheism and black magic, 
and of corrupting young girls: quite an ordinary type of 
the rogue and charlatan of the age. Some six weeks 
later these two were joined by a third prisoner. The 
entry is in Du Junca’s Journal. “Saturday, April 30, 
at about nine in the evening, M. Aumont the younger 
came, bringing with him and handing over to us a 
prisoner named M. Maranville, but calling himself Ricar- 
ville, formerly an officer in the army, a malcontent, a 
tattler, and a rake; whom I received by the King’s 


orders, sent through the Comte de Pontchartrain, and 
The Man tn the Iron Mask. 16 


242 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


placed with the man Tirmont, in the second chamber of 
the Bertaudiére tower, along with the ancient prisoner, 
both being under lock and key.” 

The Bastille of this date held accommodation for 
no more than forty-two prisoners, separately confined. 
In 1701 it was excessively full, and three prisoners were 
locked into one chamber: the servant Tirmont; Maran- 
ville a/as Ricarville, whom the police report described 
as “of a beggarly appearance”; and the Man in the 
Mask. In October, 1708, Maranville was sent from the 
Bastille to Charenton prison, where he died. Tirmont 
was transferred in December, 1701, to the horrible 
Bicétre, half-prison, half-madhouse. He became insane 
two years later, and died in 1709. 

Now, for a moment, let this situation of the Mask, 
cheek by jowl with this sorry pair, be considered in the 
light of the Legend. It is an awkward situation for the 
Legend! The prisoner has been immured twenty-two 
years, in a seclusion the strictest and most cruel, his 
name and his identity withheld from everyone, for the 
reason that he is the depository of some tremendous 
secret of the State. He has been hidden under a 
mask all this time, because, forsooth, if he were not so 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 243 


disguised, he would be recognised as the brother of 
Louis XIV. And lo! this holder of the dread secret, 
this royal twin or bastard who so fatally resembles the 
King, is suddenly sent to keep company with two gaol- 
birds of the Bastille. The prison becomes crowded, a 
lady in trouble for telling fortunes is among the new 
arrivals; and of so much greater consequence is she 
than this redoubtable prisoner who has been under seal 
for two-and-twenty years, that his room in the Bertau- 
diére is immediately assigned to her. The fortune-teller 
has the dignity of a separate chamber; the Mask is 
thrust in with the lackey Tirmont, and Maranville 
presently makes a third. The two common fellows are 
by-and-by moved from the Bastille—having had the 
fullest opportunity of learning and disseminating that 
stupendous secret. This is not a little .curious—con- 
sidered in the light of the Legend. What, indeed, be- 
comes of the Legend? 

But if the reader is with us in this inquiry, with 
Delort and Topin and M. Funck-Brentano, this decline 
in importance of the prisoner who had hitherto been 
all-important has already received its explanation. With 


the lapse of time, the man and the political intrigue he 
16* 


244 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


had been concerned in had quite ceased to be of con- 
sequence to anybody. Mattioli had no secret to reveal. 
Should he divulge the affair of Casale? No one at that 
date would have been a penny the worse. Should he 
speak of his long and torturing captivity? Alas! cap- 
tivities as harsh as his were none so rare at that era: 
pity indeed the tale might excite; it could excite no 
extreme degree of wonder. In fine, at-the epoch of 
1701 the prisoner of the Mask had nothing to com- 
municate which could disturb for an instant the repose 
of Versailles;—-and they suffered him to sink to the 
level of those vulgar delinquents who passed in and out 
of the Bastille. 

This fact, which we owe to M. Funck-Brentano’s 
scrutiny of the Journal of Du Junca, disposes of the 
interesting tale that, after the prisoner’s death, every- 
thing in his room was burned, “linen, clothes, cushions 
and counterpanes;” the flooring taken up and the walls 
scraped and whitewashed again. We have just seen his 
room in the occupation of the adventuress Randon, 
which would be upon the order of Saint-Mars; and that 
heedful man is not at all concerned to know whether 
his prisoner—who may henceforth be shifted anywhere 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 245 


—has left behind him any trace of his identity. Were 
this anything but fiction, it would be found in Du Junca. 
He is a Pepys in minuteness whenever he finds matter 
for his pen; his details of the prisoner’s death in 1703 
are precise, but he has nothing else to tell. If, after 
the prisoner’s death, his cell had been even white 
washed, we should have learned it from Du Junca, who 
wrote everything that came to his knowledge, but with 
no more notion than Pepys that he was wniting for 
posterity. The story, in fact, traces, through Pére Griffet, 
to a Major of the Bastille, Chevalier by name, who did 
not come upon the scene until 1749. For many years 
it was accepted, but it vanishes in the search-light of 
M. Funck-Brentano, and is now but an item of the 
Legend. It is self-evident that there was no motive for 
destroying the traces of a prisoner who, two years 
before his death, had been given ample opportunity 
to reveal himself, and who was thenceforth insigni- 
ficant. 

This tragedy was now very near its closing scene. 
So far as records are concerned, the two remaining 
years are blank; and the imagination does not willingly 
attempt to re-create them. For the spectacle of the 


/ 


! 


i 


on 


246 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Mask degraded from his eminence of mystery, cast un- 
regarded among the coarser tenants of his dungeon, 
affects the mind, perhaps, even more painfully than the 
vision of him, solitary in his Alpine cell, or vainly inter- 
rogating the waters of the Isles; narrowly surveyed, the 
veritable prisoner of State. Hope must have fled him 
for years; we do not‘ find him petitioning Louis, or 
appealing to Charles of Mantua: he sat “with close 
lipped patience,” &, if patience had not found him, it 
were better to know nothing of what passed within that 


lonely brain. 


vi Under date of the 19th of November, 1703, Du 


/ Junca wrote, in the Register which he reserved for 


entries of the death or liberation of prisoners of the 
Bastille*: — 

“The same day, November 19th, 1703, the prisoner 
unknown, masked always with a mask of black velvet, 
whom M. de Saint-Mars, the governor, brought with him 
from the Isles of Sainte-Marguerite, and whom he had 
had for a long time, happening to be rather unwell 
yesterday on coming from mass, died this day at about 


* The translation is as literal as is possible. 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 247 


ten o’clock in the evening, without having had any 
serious illness; indeed it could not have been slighter. 
M. Giraut, our chaplain, confessed him yesterday, and 
is surprised at his death. He did not receive the sacra- 
ment, and our chaplain exhorted him a moment before 
he died. And this unknown prisoner, confined so long 
a time, was buried on Tuesday at four in the after- 
noon, in the cemetery of St. Paul, our parish; on the 
register of burial he was given a name also unknown. 
M. de Rosarges, major, and Arreil, surgeon, signed the 
register.” 

A marginal note to the left of the entry ran as 
follows: — 


“I have since learnt that he was named on the 
register M. de Marchiel, and that the burial cost 4o 
livres.” 

The entry in the register of Saint Paul’s, discovered 
later, reads :-— 


“On the 19th (1703) Marchioly, aged forty-five or 
thereabouts, died in the Bastille, whose body was buried 
in the churchyard of St. Paul, his parish, the 2oth of 


248 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


this month, in the presence of M. Rosage (ssc), major of | 


the Bastille, and M. Reglhe (ssc) surgeon major of the 
Bastille, who signed.— ; 
“« Signed: ROSARGES, REILHE.” / 


The written names in the entry are examples of 
the slovenly, inaccurate spelling of the age. The person 
who sets them down is ignorant even of the names of 
the two officers of the Bastille by whom his register is 
signed: Rosarges is “Rosage,” Reilhe is “Reglhe.” 
“Marchioly” is remarkably close to Mattioli when it is 
remembered that Saint-Mars would. probably have given 
the name by word of mouth; it is still closer if he spoke 
it, as he often wrote it in his despatches—“Martioly” 
instead of Mattioli. In the despatches of Louvois it is 
sometimes “Marthioly,” which, with the difference of a 
letter, is the name on the register. In others, it is 
“Matioli,” “Matheoli,” &c. All proper names were 
stumbling-blocks to the writers of despatches in that era; 
whether educated like Louvois, half-educated like Saint- 
Mars, or as totally unlettered as Du Junca. 

The age assigned to the prisoner, “forty-five or there- 
abouts,” instances again the utter indifference and lack 


oe 


a a ee 


THE MASK COMES TO THE BASTILLE. 249 


_ of care with which these entries were made. Probably, 
however, no one in the Bastille, not even Saint-Mars, 
knew Mattioli’s age. Born in 1640, he was sixty-three 
at the date of his death. According to Delort, he told 
the apothecary of the Bastille that he was sixty; a close 
guess for one who had lost count of time for near a 
quarter of a century. 
So fades and vanishes that tragic figure. 


250 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


CHAPTER XL 


Q. E. D. 


Ir there had been no mask in the case? The fas- 
cination of the history has centred there. Had Saint- 
Mars not carried his prisoner from the Isles to the Bas- 
- tille in that provoking domino, his story, like enough, 
had never engaged the curiosity of the world. Stories 
as sinister and sad have oozed from the shades of the 
Bastille, of the Conciergerie, of Bicétre, of the Chatelet 
—-stories which never had audience, or which have lain 
for generations among forgotten things. But the mask 
has perpetuated itself; and, so simple as it proves, it 
has kept alive, through an infinity of changes, the me- 
mory of the prisoner whom it hid. 

And the mask was really nothing. 

From the instrument of torture invented by Voltaire, 
it shrinks to the little fashionable shield of black velvet 
which every Italian gentleman had in his wardrobe; 


~~: 


Q. E. D. 251 


which was de rigueur in Carnival time; and which both 
Mattioli and the Duke of Mantua used as a matter of 
course in their private interviews with d’Estrades. In 
the Legend, the mask is everything: in the true, do- 
cumentary history of the Masked Man it figures scarcely 
at all. We know from Du Junca’s Journal that the 
prisoner was masked when he entered the Bastille; but 
this is the first official notice on the subject. No do- 
cument attests that he wore the mask at Pignerol or at 
the Isles. Saint-Mars does not anywhere allude to it; 
nor is there any injunction about a mask in any de 
spatch from Versailles. Louis XIV. never gave the order 
which has been attributed to him; Louvois never gave 
it; Barbezieux never gave it. Up to the date of the 
entry into the Bastille, the mask seems to have been not 
much more than an accident of the history; there is 
only the statement in the Prudenza trionfante di Casale 
that the prisoner was masked by the persons who ar- 
rested him. 

We have it from Du Junca that in the Bastille the 
prisoner was “masked always.” Without the least strain- 
ing at the facts this may be interpreted to mean that 


he wore his mask whenever there was occasion for him 


252 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


to be seen. And this the prisoner may have done of 
choice; there are times and seasons in prison when it 
would be a convenience and a relief to possess this 
ready means of disguising oneself. 

Pére Griffet, chaplain of the Bastille in 1745, ob- 
serves in his Méthode de histoire: “There is nothing to 
show that he was obliged to wear his mask when alone 
in his chamber, or in the presence of de Rosarges or 
the governor, by whom he was perfectly well known.” 
If compelled to wear it at all, “it would only be when 
he crossed the courtyard to attend mass, in order 
that he might not be recognised by the sentinels, or 
when some person on the staff, not privy to the secret, 
was sent into his chamber.” On the whole, it might 
be conjectured that the mask was an inspiration of 
Saint-Mars when he fetched his prisoner from the Isles 
to the Bastille, and that it was afterwards adopted 
by the prisoner himself, who secured thereby the slight 
liberty or relief of the incognito. 

But, let the origin of its employment have been 
what it may, this velvet vizor was to bear a part not 
less than astonishing in the fable of the Masked Man. 
This was not only natural, but, in a sense, inevitable. 


oe eee 2 eee OE, eee ce) A. ee ee 


Q. E. D. 253 


I believe that the Legend itself had no other genesis 
than the mystery of the mask. The sense of surprise 
which it produced in Du Junca was immediately com- 
municated to the whole staff of the Bastille. Time 
flowed, but the mask was still the great memory and 
tradition of the fortress. The prisoner himself—“Mar- 
chiel,” “Marchioly,” Mattioli—remained unknown: Du 
Junca’s Journal was not yet laid bare, the St. Paul’s 
register was a sealed book, the State documents had 
not become the nation’s property. But the steady, 
continuous, and provocative tradition of the mask lived 
on within the walls of the Bastille. There it was found 
by the many students, philosophers, and men of letters 
who lay behind those bolts for longer or shorter terms 
in the eighteenth century. Vokaire was imprisoned 
in the Bastille in 1717, and again, for a few days 
(most unjustly), in 1726. Here, in the very theatre 
of the mystery, these inquisitive, keen minds got the 
earliest inkling of it; and one poor shred of fact was 
even then gathering to itself both surmise and inven- 
tion. It is an officer of the Bastille who sees in imagi- 
nation the stripping and rehabilitating of the prisoner’s 
cell: where, then, would the flight of a Voltaire end?: 


254 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


—whose was the face beneath the mask? The men 
of letters, released from the Bastille, fastened on this 
rare enigma; and those among them who saw here 
a means of involving in new discredit the imperious 
sovereignty of Louis XIV., rose gladly to the oppor- 
tunity. The mask, and the reason of the mask: these 
were the things to account for. So, unquestionably, did 
the Legend begin to be. 

But now, at last, was Mattioli indeed the man? 
It was objected to Topin, that the complete silence on 
this subject of the copious Saint-Simon (who has peeped 
into almost every cupboard in the Court of Louis XIV.) 
made an important count against him. Topin shrewdly 
saw that Saint-Simon’s silence made, not against, but 
for him. “That immortal gossip has in truth lighted 
up for us the very holes and corners of Louis XIV.’s 
Court. From its pettiest shifts to its innermost in- 
trigues, nothing has escaped him; nothing that had to 
do with inner France. But of foreign affairs he knew 
only those that concerned the end of the reign, when 
they were in the hands of his friend the Marquis de 
Torcy. Earlier than this, he was as ignorant of what 
passed beyond the borders of France as he was in- 


eee 


Q. E. D. 255 


timate with everything that passed within them. His 
silence, then, which would be. more than strange if it 
were possible to trace the Mask to a family of France, 
is its own interpretation if the prisoner were a foreigner, 
’ arrested beyond the French frontier, and as early as 
1679.”* , 

This is distinctly suggestive; though, as testimony, 
it has of course, only a negative value. We come 
closer. At whatever point in the enquiry the mys- 
terious prisoner is named, there has Mattioli been 
found; and to no other among the prisoners of Saint- 
Mars has the term proved applicable. The political 
réle of Mattioli has been defined, the circumstances 
set forth in which he fell under the vengeance of 
Louis XIV., and incurred that terrible punishment— 
inflicted, as Maurice Boutry says, “‘dans si grand secret.” 
We have the King’s order for his arrest with the par- 
ticular injunction that no one is ever to know what 
becomes of him; we have Catinat’s report of the seizure 
of Mattioli, so well contrived that even the officers 
who assisted him were ignorant of the prisoner’s name; 
we have the witness of the Prudenza trionfante di 


* Topin. 


256 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 
~ 
Casale, in which the transaction is described from the 


beginning. This was the man whom Louis XIV. 
destined to end his life in prison, and from the hour 
that he entered Pignerol he has beeu observed, fol- 


lowed, step by step, to the night of his death in the - 


Bastille. ; 

But this is not all. The proof does not end here. 
It is shown in the Journal of Du Junca that the 
prisoner whom Saint-Mars brought masked from the 
Isles was an ancient prisoner who had been in his 
keeping at Pignerol, the first of Mattioli’s three 
dungeons, and the one in which he remained when 
other prisoners were transferred with Saint-Mars to 
Exiles. Du Junca has made Pignerol essential in the 
history of the Mask. We come now to the axiomatic 
proof of M. Funck-Brentano. The reader was asked 
to bear in mind the despatch of Louvois to Saint-Mars 
(June 9, 1681) enclosing instructions for the journey 
of the two prisoners who were to be taken from 
Pignerol to Exiles. The despatch speaks then of the 
prisoners who were left, and their number is precisely 
shown, the Sieur du Chamoy having orders to pay 


“two crowns a day for the maintenance of these three 


a 


Que dD: 257 


prisoners.” It is certain then that there were just 
five prisoners in Pignerol on the eve of Saint-Mars’s 
departure fo. Exiles, and since we know from Du 
Junca that the” Mask was an old prisoner. of Saint- 
Mars at Pignerol, it is among these five that we must 
inevitably find him. All the five are known to us; their 
names have happened in these pages:— 


THE FIVE PRISONERS. THEIR FATE. 


EUSTACHE DAUGER. A prisoner of so little conse- 
quence that he was assigned as 
a servant to Fouquet in Pignerol, 
while Mattioli, in the same prison, 
was still in the strictest seclusion. 


La Riviere. Died in December, 1686. 
Tue Jacosn. ~ Died at the close of 1693. 
DvUBREUIL. Died at the Isles, 1697. 
MATTIOLI. 


A Euclid could give the result no plainer. As M. 
Funck-Brentano observes, with a just complacency, it 
is mathematical. There are five: the first’is dismissed 


on his merits; the three that follow are dead before 
The Man in the Iron Mask. 17 


258 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


Saint-Mars sets out for the Bastille—and Mattioli alone 
remains. De facto, it was Mattioli whom Saint-Mars 
conveyed in the mask from the Isles of Sainte-Mar- 
guerite to the Bastille in 1698. Mattioli was the 
hidden prisoner whom we have kept touch of through- 
out. 


There are two very curious corroborations of the 
documentary evidence, deriving their value from the 
fact that they antedate by many years the earliest 
mention of the name of Mattioli The last King of 
France who appears to have known the history was 
Louis XV. Importuned by the Duc de Choiseul to 
reveal the prisoner’s name, the King would only say 
that “all the conjectures which had been hitherto upon 
this subject were false.” Madame de Pompadour was 
then engaged to press for a definite reply; and the 
King at last informed her that the prisoner of the 
mask was the “‘ Minister of an Italian Prince.’’* 


Still more explicit is Madame Campan, in the 


* Dutens: La Correspondance Interceptée. On the other hand, 
in the “Memoirs” of Baron de Gleichen, Louis XV. is represented 
as refusing to give up the secret. If he knew it, there was no reason 
why, at this date, he should of give it up. 


pe eS eR Oe ee mee ee ah 


Q. E. D. 259 


Memoirs of Marie Antotnette. During the first few 
months of his reign Louis XVI. was much occupied, 
says Madame Campan, with the revision of his grand- 
father’s papers. He had promised to share with the 
Queen “whatever he might find upon the history of 
the Man with the Iron Mask, who, he thought, had 
become so inexhaustible a source of conjecture merely 
because of the interest which a celebrated writer had 
excited in the detention of a prisoner of State.” 

“I was with the Queen,” continues Madame 
Campan, “when the King, having finished his re- 
searches, told her that he had found nothing in the 
secret papers which bore in any way on the existence 
of this prisoner; that he had referred to M. de Maure- 
pas, whose age brought him nearer the time when the 
affair must have been known to the ministers, and that 
M. de Maurepas had assured him that the prisoner 
was merely a person of a very dangerous character by 
reason of his intriguing spirit, and a subject of the 
Duke of Mantua. He was enticed to the frontier, ar- 
rested, and kept a prisoner, first at Pignerol, and then 
tn the Bastsille.’’* 


* Madame Campan adds: ‘Such was in fact the real truth 
Lippe 


260 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


There, in five lines, Madame Campan has given 
us the entire history, and in terms literally and ab- 
solutely correct. She does not know the name of 
Mattioli, she is writing at a time when no one in 
France knows it, and when there has not been as yet 
a single word about him in connection with the mystery 
of the Mask; yet the whole truth is there. It is Duke 
Charles’s envoy: d’Estrades lures him to the frontier: 
Catinat arrests him; Saint-Mars has him at Pignerol, 
at the Isles, and in the Bastille. It is Mattioli’s story 
in a nutshell. Madame Campan’s sympathy with her 
subject nowhere betrays her into loose or inaccurate 


about the man on whom people have been pleased to fix an iron 
mask. And thus was it related in writing, and published by M——, 
twenty years ago. He had searched the depét of foreign affairs, and 
there he had found the truth: he had laid it before the public; but 
the public, prepossessed in favour of a version which attracted them 
by the marvellous, would not acknowledge the authenticity of the 
true account. Everyone relied upon the authority of Voltaire: and 
it is still believed that a natural or a twin brother of Louis XIV. 
lived a number of years in prison with a mask over his face. The 
whimsical story of this mask, perhaps, had its origin in the old 
custom, among both men and women in Italy, of wearing a velvet 
mask when they exposed themselves to the sun. It is possible the 
Italian captive may have shown himself sometimes upon the terrace 
of his prison with his face thus covered.” 


Q. B.D 261 


statements; and had she been inventing in this instance 
it would have been the most extraordinary example of 
invention in all literature.* 

With the official documents which bear them out, 
these pregnant passages make good the case. 

So the task is ended, the burden of the mystery 
rolls off: Mattioli the Italian takes the place of that 
impossible, romantic creature who has so long usurped 
it. The historic truth of the affair is best, though we 
lose a Prince who never lived. For a tragi-coloured 
myth we exchange a living tragedy; a tragedy pro- 
longed above the ordinary miseries of men. The 
punishment of Mattioli, through four-and-twenty years, 
for a single act of treachery, the effect of which was 

* In the essay in the Révue des Etudes Historiques, June- 
July, 1899, in which he substantiates the proofs of M. Funck- 
Brentano, Vicomte Maurice Boutry has produced a confirmatory 
passage from the Souvenirs of the Marquise de Créquy. Summing 
up a discussion on the Iron Mask between Marshal de Noailles, the 
Duchess de Luynes, the Duc de Broncas and others, the Marquise 
adds: ‘The leading and best-informed persons of my time always 
considered that that famous history had no other foundation than 
the capture and imprisonment of the Piedmontese Mattioli. Vol- 


taire’s details are the most ridiculous fable.” Interesting, but of 
most questionable authenticity. Was there ever a Marquise de 


Créquy? 


262 THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK. 


transient, takes something from the splemdours of the 
reign in which it was inflicted. 

With his unfailing sense of dramatic contrast, Topin 
has noted that at the very hour of Mattioli’s unheeded 
death on a pallet in the Bastille, Charles of Mantua 
arrived on a visit to Louis XIV. Did Louis, who 
lavished on his guest the riches of the Luxem- 
bourg, tell him the fate of his ancient favourite? It 
would have been heard by Charles as carelessly as 
Louis would have told it. Scarce a bowshot from the 
palace, two turmkeys of the Bastille were trailing 
Mattioli in the dusk to a grave in the churchyard of 
St. Paul. 


THE END. 


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is particularly well drawn. 

Tales of Space and Time. 
By H.G. WELLS. I vol. - 3413. 


Five highly imaginative tales. They 
deal with the far distant past as well as 
the remote future. 


The Rogue’s March. By E. 


W. Hornunc. 1 vol. - 3412. 


Mr. Hornung’s story takes us to New 
South Wales among the convicts. Scenes 
and dramatic incidents in their terrible 
life are graphically described, and are 
founded for the most part on actual facts, 


Complete List 
of the 
Collection of British and American Authors. 
Published with Continental Copyright by special agreement 


with the authors. 


Vide p.1. 


— Price 1 M. 60 Pf. or 2 Fr. per Volume. — 


Rev. W. Adams, { 1848. 
Sacred Allegocies x v. 


Grace Aguilar, ¢ 1847. 
Home Influence 2 v. — The Mother's 
Recompense 2 v. 


Hamilton AYdé. 

Rita x v. — Carr of Carrlyon 2 v.— The 
Marstons 2 v. — In that State of Lifer v. — 
Morals and Mysteries 1 v. — Penruddocke 
zv.— “A nine Days’ Wonder” x v. — 
Poet and Peer 2 v. — Introduced to Society 
Xv. 


W. Harrison Ainsworth, ¢ 1882. 

Windsor Castle x v. — Saint James’s1 v. 
—Jack Sheppard (with Portrait) 1 v. — 
The Lancashire Witches av. — The Star- 
Chamber 2 v. — The Flitch of Bacon 1 v. — 


Mrs. Alexander (Hector). 

A Second Life 3 v. — By Woman’s Wit 

1 v.— Mona’s Choice 2 v.—A Life In- 
terest 2 v.— A Crooked Path 2 v.— Blind 
Fate 2 v. — A Woman’s Heart 2 v. — For 
His Sake 2 v.— The Snare of the Fowler 
2v.— Found Wanting 2v. — A Ward in 
Chancery x v.— A Choice of Evils 2 v. — 
A Fight with Fate 2 v.— A Winning 
rv.—A Golden Autamn x v.— 

Mrs, Crichton’s Creditor x v. — Barbara, 
Lady’s Maid and Peeress x v. — The Cost 
of Her Pride 2 v.— Brown, V.C. x v.— 
Through Fire to Fortune x v.— A i 


Hero x v. 
Alice, Grand-Duchess of Hesse, 
+ 1878. 
Letters to Her Maj the Queen 
(with Portrait). With « Memote by H. 
Pai dpe 


The Speteet rv. — Mervyn otek: R. H. Christian 2 v. 
av.— ean Grange 1 v.— The Con- : a 
stable of the Tower 1 v. — The Lord Lizzie Alldridge. 


Mayor of London 2 v. — Cardinal Pole 
2 v-—John Law 2 v.—The Spanish 

2 v.— The Constable de Bourbon 
2v.— Old Court 2 v.—Myddleton Pom- 
fret 2 v. — The Sonth-Sea Bubble 2 v. — 
Hilary St. Ives 2 v. — Talbot Harland 
x v.— Tower Hill x v.— Boscobel 2 v. — 
The Good Old Times 2 v. — Merry Eng- 
land 2 v.— The Goldsmith’s Wife 2 v. — 
Preston Fight 2 v. — Chetwynd Calvesiey 
2 v.— The Leaguer of Lathom 3 v. — 
The Fall of Somerset 2 v. — Beatrice 
Tyldesley sv. — Bean Nash 2 v. — Stanley 
Brereton 2v. 


Louisa M. Alcott (Am.), + 1888. 
Little Women 2 v. — Little Mon x v. — 
An Old-Fashioned Girl 1 v.—Jo’s Boys 


qv. 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (Am.). 


Marjorie Daw and other Tales rv. — 
The Stillwater Tragedy rv. 


By Love and Law 2 v. — The World she 
awoke in 2 v. 

Grant Allen, + 1899. 

The Woman who did x v. 

Author of “All for Greed” 
(Baroness de Bury). 

All for Greed x v.— Love the Avenger 
av. FB. Anstey (Guthrie). 

The Giant’s Robe 2 v.— AFallen Idol 
xv.— Tho Pariah 3 v.— The Talking 
Horse and other Tales 1 v. — Voces 
Populi (First and Second Series) 1 ¥. — 
The Brass Bottle x v. 


Mrs.Argies, vide Mrs. Hungerford. 
Sir Edwin Arnold. 
Tho Light of Asia (with Portrait) rv. 


Matthew Arnold, ¢ 1888. 
Essays in Criticiam 2 v. — Essays in 
Criticism (Second Series) xv. 


- 


Zauchntts Edition. Complete List. 7 


Mrs. Gertrude Atherton (Am.). 

American Wives and English Husbands 

1v.— The Californians x v. — Patience 

ates and her Times 2 v. — Senator 
2¥. 


Jane Austen, ¢ 1817. 
Sense and Sensi! rv. —— Mansfield 
Park x v. — Pride judice x v. — 


Author of “Autobiography of 
Lutfullah ,” ode E. B. Eastwick. 
Richard Bagot 

A Roman Mystery 2 v. 
S. Baring -Gould. 
Mehalah x v. — John Herring 2 v. — 
Court Royal 2 v. 
Lady Barker (Lady Broome). 
Station Life in Now Zealand 


- — A Year’s Housekeeping in South 
Afiica a s-= Loker te Gey tat hk Dis- 
tant Shore— Rodrigues rv. . 

Frank Barrett 
The Smuggler’s Secret 1 v. — Out of the 
' Jaws of Death 2 v. 
J. M. Barrie. 

Sentimental Tommy 2 v. — Margaret 
Ogilvy 1 v. — Tommy and Grizel 2 v. 

Author of “Miss Bayle’s 
Romance,” vide W. Fraser Rae. 
Rev. Robert H. Baynes. 

Lyra Anglicana, Hymns and Sacred 
Songe x v. 
Lord Beaconsfield, vide Disraeli. 
Averil Beaumont (Mrs. Hunt). 
Thornicroft’s Model 2 v. 
Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronté— 
Mrs. Nicholl) + 1855. 
E: 7» ~~ Shir’ . — Villette 
2 Peso ay tHe z “eg! nt 
Ellis & Acton Bell (Emily, ¢ 1848, 
and Anne, + 1849, Bronté). 
Wuthering Heights, andAgnesGrey av. 
Edward Bellamy (Am.), + 1898. 
Looking Backward x v. 
Frank Lee Benedict (Am.). 
St. Simon’s Niece 2 v. 
E. F. Benson. 
Dodo x v. — The Rubicon x v. 


Sir Walter Besant. 

The Revolt of Man x v. — Dorothy 
Forster 2 v. — Children of Gibeon 2 v. — 
The World went very well then 2 v. — 
Katharine Regina x v. — Herr Paulus 2 v. 
— The Inner House x v. — The Bell of 
St. Paul’s 2 v. — For Faith and Freedom 
2 v. — Armorel of ox Speers 2 v. — Vet- 
bena Camellia Stephanotis, etc. x v.— 
Beyond the Dreams of Avarice 2 vy. — 
The Master Craftaman zv.— A Fountain 
Sealed x v. — The Orange Girl 2 v. — 
The Fourth Generation x v. 


Sir Walter Besant & James Rice, 
ft 1882. 


The Golden Butterfly 2 v. — Ready- 
Money Mortiboy 2v. — By Celia’s Arbour 


***  M. Betham-Ed 

The Sylvestres x v. — Felicia 2 v.— 
Brother Gabriel 2 v. — Forestalled x v. — 
Exchange no Robbery, and other No- 
velettes : v. — Disarmed x v. — Doctor 
‘beer 1 v. — Pearla x v. — Next of Kin 

‘anted 1 v.— The Parting of the Ways 
xr v.—For One and the World x v. — 
The Romance of a French Parsonage 
xrv.— France of To-day x v.— Two Aunts 
and a Nephew 1 v. — A Dream of Mil- 
lions x v. — The Curb of Honour x v. — 
France of To-day (Second Serses) rv. —A 
Romance of Dijon i v.—The Dream- 
Charlotte rv. — A Storm-Rent Sky 1 v. — 
Reminiscences 1 v. — The Lord of the 
Harvest x v. — Anglo-French Reminis- 
cences, 1875—x899 1 v.— A Suffolk Court- 
ship x v. 

Ambrose Bierce (Am.). 
In the Midst of Life x v. 


Mabel C. Birchenough. 
Potsherds x v. 


E. Bisland, v. Rhoda Broughton. 
Prince Bismarck, vide Butler. 
Vide also Wilhelm Girlach (Col- 
lection of German Authors, p. 29). 


William Black, ¢ 1898. 

A Daughter of Heth 2 v.—In Silk At- 
tire 2 v. — The Strange Adventures of a 
Phaeton 2 v, — A Princess of Thule 2 v. — 
Kilmeny x v. — The Maid of Killeena, and 
other Stories rv. — Three Feathers 2 v. — 
Lady Silverdale’s Sweetheart, and other 
Stories 1 v. ~— Madcap Violet 2 v. — 
Green Pastures and Piccadilly 2 v.— 
Macleod of Dare 2 v.— White Wingy 
2¥v.— Sunrise 2 v. — The BeautifulWretch 


8 Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


1 v.— Mr. Pisistratus Brown, M.P., in 
the Highlands ; The Four Macnicols; The 
Pupil of Aurelius x v.—Shandon Bells 
(with Portrait) 2 v. — Judith Shakespeare 
av.—The Wise Women of Inverness, 
etc. 1 v.— White Heather 2 v. — Sabina 


Zembra 2 v. — The Strange Adventures | 3 


of a House-Boat 2 v. —In Far Lochaber 
Suuad Fast, Cralg-Roystonlsv.-- Donald 
‘ast, -Ro nizv.— 
Ross of Heimra 2 Beet The Magic Ink, 
and other Tales x v.—Wolfenberg 2 v. — 
The Handsome Humes 2 v. — Highland 
Cousins 2 v.— Briseis 2 v. — Wild Eelin 
av. 
Author of “The Black-Box 
Murder.” 
The Black-Box Murder r v. 
Richard Doddridge Blackmore, 
T 1900. 
Alice Lorraine 2 v, — Mary Anerley 


3 v. — Christowell 2 v.— Tommy Upmore 
2 v. — Perlycross 2 v. 


“ Blackwood.” 
Tales from ‘‘Blackwood”’ (First Series) 
1v.—Tales from ‘*‘ Blackwood” (Second 
Serses) tv. 


Isa Blagden, + 1873. 
The Woman I loved, and the Woman 
who loved me; A Tuscan Wedding x v. 


Countess of Blessington (Mar- 
guerite Gardiner), + 1849. 
Meredith x v. — Strathern 2 v. — Me- 
moirs of a Femme de Chambre 1 v. — 
Marmaduke Herbert 2 v. — Country 

Quarters (with Portrait) 2 v. 


Baroness Bloomfield. 
Reminiscences of Court and D) 
matic Life (with the Portrait of Her 

Majesty the Queen) 2 v. 


Rolf Boldrewood. 
Robbery under Arms 2 v. — Nevermore 
av. 


Miss Braddon (Mrs. Maxwell), 

Lady Anudley’s Secret 2 v. — Aurora 
Floyd av. — Eleanor’s Victory 2 v. — Joho 
Marchmont’s Legacy 2 v. — Henry 
bar 2 v.—The Doctor’s Wife 2 v. — 
Only a Clod av. — Sir Jasper’s Tenant 
2 v.— The Lady’s Mile 2v. — Rupert God- 
win 2 v. — Dead-Sea Fruit 2 v.— Run to 
Earth 2 v. — Fenton’s Quest 2 v. — The 
Lovels of Arden a v. — Strangers and 
Pilgrims 2 v. — Lucius Davoren 3 v. — 


Taken at the Flood 3 v. — Lost for Love 
2 v. — AStrange World 2 v. — Hostages 
to Fortune 2 v. — Dead Men’s Shoes 
2 v.—Joshua Haggard’s Daughter 2 v. — 
Weaversand Weft x v. — In Great Waters, 


am 2v.— hodel 
av. — The Go 
Weed 1 v.— Phantom Fortune 3 v. — 


Under the Red x v. — Ishmael 3 v. 
— Wyllard’s Weird 3 v. — One Thing 
N 2v.— Cut by the County rv. — 


Like and Unlike 2 v.— The Fatal Three 
2 v.— The Day will come 2 v. — One 
Life, One Love 2 v. — Gerard 2 v. — 
The Venetians 2 v. — All along the River 
2v.— Thou art the Man 2 v. — The Christ- 
mas Hirelings, etc. x v. — Sons of Fire 
2v.— London Pride 2 v. — Rough Justice 
2v.—In High Places 2 v. — His Darling 
Sin x v.— The Infidel 2 v. 


Lady Brassey, ¢ 1887. 

A Voyage in the “Sunbeam’”’ 2 v. — 
Sunshine and Storm in the East 2 v.—In 
the Trades, the Tropics and the Roaring 
Forties 2 v. 


Author of “The Bread -Winners” 
(Am.). 
The Bread -Winners 1 v. 


Bret Harte, vide Harte. 


Rev. William Brock, + 1875. 
Sir Henry Havelock, K. C. B. x v. 


Charlotte Bront®, v:deCurrer Bell. 


Emily & Anne Bront®, vide 
Ellis & Acton Bell. 


Shirley Brooks, ¢ 1874. 
The Silver Cord 3 v. — Sooner or Later 
3. 


Lady Broome, vide Lady Barker. 


Rhoda Broughton. 

Cometh up as a Flower x v. — Not 
wisely, but too well 2 v.— Red as a Roze 
is She 2 v. — Tales for Christmas Eve 
x v. — Nancy 2 v. — Joan 2 v. — Second 
Thoughts 2 v. — Belinda 2 v. — Doctor 
Cupid 2 v.— Alas! a v. — Mrs. Bligh 
x v.-A Beginner x v. — Scylla or 

bdis? x v. — Dear Faustina x v. — 
The Game and the Candle x v. — Foes in 
Law 1 v. 


Tauchnits Edition, 


Complete List. 9 


Rhoda Broughton & Elizabeth 
Bisland. 
A Widower Indeed 1 v. 


John Brown, + 1882. 
Rab and his Friends, and otherPapers rv. 


Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
1861. 
A Selection from her Poetry (with 
Portrait) 1 v. — Aurora Leigh x v. 


Robert Browning, + 1889. 
Poetical Works (with Portrait) 4 v. 


Frank T. Bullen. 
The Cruise of the ‘* Cachalot”’ 2 v. 


Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, 
1873. 

Pelham (with Portrait) 1 v. — Eugene 
Aram 1 v. — Paul Cli av. — Zanoni 
x1v.—The Last Days of Pompeii rv. — 

Disowned 1 v. — Emest travers 
xv. — Alice x v. — Eva, and The Pilgrims 
of the Rhine r v. — Devereux z v. — 
Godolphin and Falkland 1 v. — Rienzi 
rv. — Night and Morning 1 v. — The Last 
of the Barons 2 v.— Athens 2 v.—The 
Poems and Ballads of Schiller x v. — 
Lacretia 2 v. — Harold 2 v.— King Arthaor 
2¥v.— The New Timon, and St. Stephen’s 
1v.— The Caxtons 2 v. — My Novel 4v. — 
What will he do with it? 4v. — Dramatic 
Works 2 v. — A Strange Story 2 v. — 
Caxtoniana 2 v. — The Lost Tales of Mile- 
tusrv. — Miscellaneous Prose Works 4v.— 
Odes and Epodes of Horace 2v. — Kenelm 
Chillingly 4 v.— The Coming Race 1 v. — 
The Parisians 4 v. — Pausanias, the Spar- 
taniv. 


Henry Lyttop Bulwer (Lord 
Dalling), + 1872. 
Historical Characters a v. — The Life of 
Viscount Palmerston 3 v. 
John Bunyan, f 1688. 
The Pilgrim’s Progress 1 v. 
Author of “Buried Alone” 
(Charles Wood). 
Baried Alone r v. 


Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett 


Through one 
Little Lord Fauntleroy 1 v. — Sara Crews, 
and Editha’s Burglar x v. — The Pretty 
Sister of José 1 v.— A Lady of Quality 
2 v. — His Grace of Osmonde « v. 


Miss Burney (Madame D’Arblay), 
¢ 1840. 
Evelina x v. 


Robert Burns, + 1796. 
Poetical Works (with Portrait) x v. 


Richard F. Burton, ¢ 1890. 
A Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina 3 v. 


Baroness de Bury, vide “ All for 
3 Greed.” 
A. J. Butler. 

Bismarck. His Reflections and Re- 
miniscences. Translated from the great 
German edition, under the supervision of 
A. J. Butler. With two Portraits. 3 v. 

Mrs. B. H. Buxton, + 1881. 
—pone of ‘*The Prince’s,” 2 v.— 
on! 2 v. — Great Grenfell Gardens 
2 v.—Nell—on and off the Stage 2 v. — 
From the Wings 2 v. 
Lord Byron, + 1824. 

Poetical Works (with Portrait) 5 v. 
Mrs. Mannington Caffyn, (Iota). 

A Yellow Aster x v. — Children of 
Circumstance 2 v. — Anne Mauleverer 
2v. 

Hall Caine. 

The Bondman 2 v. — The Manxman 
2 v. — The Christian 2 v. 

Verney Lovett Cameron. 

Across Africa 2 v. 


Mrs. Campbell Praed, vide Praed. 


Rosa Nouchette Carey. 
Not Like other Girls 2 v. — ‘‘ But Men 


must Work” 1 v. — Sir witout Grand- 
daughters 2 v.—The Old, Story av, 
Thomas Carlyle, ¢ 188r. 

The French Revolution 3 v. — Fre- 
derick the Great 13 v. — Oliver Crom- 
well’s Letters and Speeches 4 v. — Tho 
Life of Schiller x v. 

Alaric Carr. 

Treherne’s Temptation 2 v. 

Egerton Castle. 

Consequences 2 v. — ‘‘La Bella,” and 
Others x v. 
Mrs. Elizabeth Rundle Charles, 
¢ 1896, vde Author of “Chronicles 
of the Schénberg-Cotta Family.” 


10 


Tauchnits Edition. 


Complete Last. 


Maria Louisa Charlesworth, 
1880. 
Oliver of the Mill x v. 
Mary Cholmondeley. 
Diana Tempest 2 v. — Red Pottages v. 
Princess Christian, vide Alice, 
Grand Duchess of Hesse. 
Author of “Chronicles of the 
SchSnberg-Cotta Family”. (Mrs. 
E. Rundle Charles), ¢ 1896. 
Chronicles of the Sch&nberg - Cotta 
Family 2 v. — The Dra and the 


Davenants 2 v. — On th Sides of 
the Sea 2 v. — Winifred Bertram 1 v. — 


D 
The 


Lost x v. 
*Y alfred Clark. 
The Finding of Lot’s Wife 1 v. 


Samuel L. Clemens, vide Twain. 


Mrs. W. K. Clifford. 
Love-Letters of a Worldly Woman rv. 
—Aunt Anne 2 v.—The Last Touches, and 
other Stories x v. — Mrs. Keith’s Crime 
rv.—A Wild Proxy rv.—A Flash of 
Summer x v. 

Mrs. Caroline Clive, + 1873, vide 
Author of “Paul Ferroll.” 
Frances Power Cobbe. 

Re-Echoes 1 v. 
CR. Coleridge. 
An English Squire 2 v. 
M. E. Coleridge. 
The King with two Faces 2 v. 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, + 1834. 
Poems x v. 
Charles Alliston Collins, + 1873. 
A Cruise upon Wheels 2 v. 


Mortimer Collins, + 1876. 
Sweet and Twenty 2 v.—A Fight with 
Fortune 2 v. 


Wilkie Collins, ¢ 1889. 

After Dark x v. — Hide and Seek 2 v.— 
A Plot in Private Life, etc. x v.— The 
Woman in White 2 v. — Basil rv. — No 
Name 3 v. — The Dead Secret, and other 


Tales 2 v. — Antonina s v. — Armadale 
v. — The Moonstone 2 v. — Man and 
ife 3 v.— Poor Miss Finch 2 v. — Miss 
or Mrs.? 1 v. — The New en2v.— 
The Frozen Deep 1 v. — The Law and the 
abe, eine pe maameryrh ke aE! 
"s Money, an andthe Prop 
I wo The ‘Haunted Hotel 1 v. — The 
Fallen Leaves 2 v. — Jezebel’s Daughter 
2 v. — The Black Robe 2 v. — Heart and 
Science 2 v. — “‘ I say No,”’ 2 v. — The Evil 
Genius 2 v. — The Guilty River, and The 
Ghost’s Touch 1 v. — The Legacy of Cain 
2 v.—Blind Love 2 v. 


Author of “Cometh up as a 
Flower,” vide Rhoda Broughton. 


oseph Conrad. 
An Outcast of the Islands 3 v. — Tales 
of Unrest x v. 
Hugh Conway (F.J. Fargus),+ 1885. 
Called Back : v. — Bound Together 
2 v. — Dark Days 1 v. — A Family Affair 
2 v. — Living or Dead 2 v. 


James Fenimore Cooper (Am.), 
1851. 


The Spy (with Portrait) 1 v.— The Two 
Admirals 1 v. — The Jack O’Lantern 1 v. 


Mrs, Cooper, vide Katharine 
Saunders. 


Marie Corelli. 

Vendetta! 2 v.— Thelma 2 v.—A 
Romance of Two Worlds 2 v. —“‘Ardath ” 
3 v. — Wormwood. A Drama of Paris 
2v. — The Hired Baby, with other Stories 
and Social Sketches x v. — Barabbas; A 
Dream of the World’s Tragedy 2 v. — 
The Sorrows of Satan 2v. — The Mighty 


Atom 1 v. — The Murder of Delicia x v. — 
Ziska 1 v. — Boy. A tch. 2 v.— The 
-Christian 2 v. 


Author of “The County.” 
The County : v. 
George Lillie Craik, + 1866. 
A Manual of English Literature and of 
the History of the English 2. 


Mrs. Craik (Miss Dinah M. Mulock), 
1887. 
ohn ni Gen 2 v. — The 
ead of the Family sv. — A Life for a 
Life 2 v.-—— A Woman's Thoughts about 
Women x v. — Agatha’s H Ive— 
Romantic Tales r v. — Domestic Stories 
x v. — Mistress and Maid x v. — The 
Ogilvies x v. — Lord Erlistoun x v, — 


ee ee a) —— ae oe |e 


Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


Ir 


Christian’s Mistake 1 v. — Bread upon 
the Waters r v.— A Noble Life r v. — 
cee A Shah Pace bad hme dag 
from Life x v. — Poems x v. — 
Woman’s Kingdom 2 v. — The Unkind 
Word, and other Stories 2 v.— A Brave 
Lady av. — Hannah 2v. — Fair France 
Iv. — My Mother and I 1v.—The Little 
Lame Pnace 1 v. — Sermons out of Church 
tv.—The Laurel-Bush; Two little Tinkers 
1v.—A 2v.— Young Mrs. Mrs. Jardine 
2v. — His Little Mother, and other Tales 
and Sketches xv. — Plain S: 1v.— 
Miss Tommy x v. — King Iv. 


Solas eign ethan 
Lost and Won 1 v. — Faith Un 
Ordeal x v. — Lealie Tyrrell x v. —Wini- 
fred’s Wooing, otc. r v. — Mi 1v.— 
Esther Hill's Secret 2 v. — Hero Tre- 
Only a Daliahy <r Syivis's Choics| 
ya tv. — Sylvia’s Choice; 
Theresa 2 v.— Anne Warwick : v. — 
Dorcas 2 v.— Two Women 2 v. 


Two Tales of Married Life (Hard to 


Bear, by Miss Craik; A True Man, by M. 

Ga av. 

Mrs. Augustus Craven, vide Lady 
Fullerton. 


F. Marion Crawford (Am.). 
Mr. Isaacs x v. — Doctor Claudius rv. — 


Zoroaster 1 v. —A Tale of a Lonely Parish 
2 v.— Saracinesca 3 v. — Marzio’s Crucifix 
1 v.—Paul Patof 2 v.— With theimmortals 
z v. — Greifenstein 2 v. — Sant’ Dario 
av.—A Ci - Maker’s ae 
1v.— Khaled rv. — The Witch of 

2 v. — The Three Fates 3 ¥.—Doa Oraino 
2 v. — The Children of the gry. — 
Pietro Ghisleri eS ie enon Dente sy. 


Ye poresi oreo eB en Sorter aa 

A Rose of Yesterday x v. — Corleone 
2v.— Pe Wia Cracs Gvses Ia the Palace of 
the King 2 v. 


S. R. Crockett. 
The Raiders 2 v. — Cleg Kelly  v. 
The Grey Man 3¥. sare 


J. W. Cross, vide George Eliot's 
Life. 


Mre. Pender Cudlip, wide 
A. Thomas. 

Miss Cummins (Am.), ¢ 1866. 

The Lamplighter x v. — Mabel Vaughan 
1v.—E) Fureidis rv.— Haunted Hearts rv. 

Paul Cushing. 

The Blacksmith of Voe 2 v. 

“Daily News.” 

War Correspondence, 1877, Archi- 

bald Forbes and others vale Le 
Author of “Dark.” 

Dark x v. 

Richard Harding Davis (Am.). 

Gallegher, etc. x v. — Van Bibber and 
Others x v. 

Daniel De Foe, + 1731. 

Robinson Crusoe x v. 

Margaret Deland (Am.). 
John Ward, Preacher x v. 
Author of “Democracy” (Am.). 
Iv. 
Author of “Demos,” vide George 
Gissing. 

Author of “Diary and Notes,” vide 
Author of “Horace Templeton.” 
Charles Dickens, + 1870. 

The Pickwick Club (with Portrait) 2 v. — 
American Notes 1 v. — Oliver Twist 1 v. — 
Nicholas Nickleby 2 v. — Sketches x v. — 
Martin Chuzslewit 2 v. — A Christmas 
Carol; The Chimes; The Cricket on the 
Hearth x v. — Master Humphrey’s Clock 


(Old CariosityShop; Barnaby Rudge, etc.) 
3 v. — Pictures from Italy z v. — ombey 
and Son 3 v.— David Copperfield 3 v. — 


Bleak House 4 v. — A Child’s History of 
England (2 v. 8° M. 3,70.) — Hard Times 
tv. — Little Dorrit (with tions) 4v. 
— Tho Battle of Life; The Haunted 
rv. —A Tale of two Cities 2 v.— Hunted 
Downs The Uncommercial Traveller x v. 
tions 2 v. — Christmas 
Pace ete. x v. — Our Mutual Friend 
Tilustrations) 4 v. — Somebody’s 
york Mrs. Lirriper’s Leseings) Ba ara. 
Lirriper’s Legacy x v. — Doctor 
gold’s Prescriptions; Mugby eed Iv. 
Mystery of Edwin (with 
Dlustrations 2 v. — The Mudfog Papers, 
1v.— The of Charles Dickens, ed. 
by his Sister-in-law and his eldest Daughter 
4v.— Vide also Household Words, Novels 
and Tales, and John Forster. 


12 


Charles Dickens & Wilkie Collins. 

No Thoroughfare; The Late Miss Hol- 
lingford r v. 

Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beacons- 
field, ¢ 1881. 

Coningsby x v. — Sybil x v. — Contarini 
Fleming (with Portrait) x v. — Alroy rv. — 
Tan 2 v. — Venetia 2 v. — Vivian 

2 v. — Henrietta Temple x v. — 
air 2 v. — Endymion 2 v. 
Ella Hepworth Dixon. 

The Story of a Modern Woman 1 v. 

W. Hepworth Dixon, + 1879. 

Personal History of Lord Bacon x ¥. — 
The Holy Land 2 v. — New America 2 v.— 
Spiritual Wives 2 v.— Her Majesty's 
Tower 4v.— Free Russia 2 v.— History 
of two Queens 6 v. — White Conquest 
2v. — Diana, Lady Lyle av. 

L. Dougall (Am.). 

Boggars All 2 v. 

Ménie Muriel Dowie. 

A Girl in the Karpathians 1 v. 

A. Conan Doyle. 

The Sign of Four 1 v.— Micah Clarke 
2 v.— The Captain of the Pole-Star, and 
other Tales x v.— The White Company 
2v.— A Stady in Scarlet x v. — The 
Great Shadow, and Beyond the City zr v. — 
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 2 v. 
— The Refugees 2 v.— The Firm of 
Girdlestone 2 v. — The Memoirs of Sher- 
lock Holmes 2 v. — Round the Red Lamp 
1 v. — The Stark Munro Letters x v. — 
The Expleits of Brigadier Gerard x v. — 
Rodney Stone 2 v. — Uncle Bernac x v. — 
The Tragedy of the Korosko r v. — A 
Duet x v. — The Green Flag 1 v. — The 
Great Boer War 2 v. 


Professor Henry Drummond, 
1897. 


The Greatest g in the World; Paz 
Vobiscum ; The Changed Life x v. 


Dunton, vide Th. Watts-Dunton. 
The Earl and the Doctor. 
South Sea Bubbles x v. 

The Earl of Dufferin. 
Letters from High Latitudes x v. 
Edward B. Eastwick, + 1883. 
Autobiography of Lutfullah rv. 

Maria Edgeworth, vide Series for 
the Young, p. 29. 


Tauchnits Edttion. 


Complete List. 


Mrs. Annie Edwardes. 
Archie Lovell 2v. — Steven Lawrence, 
Yooman 2 v. — Ought we to visit her? zv. 
— A Vagabond Heroine 1 v.— Leah: A 
Woman of Fashion 2 v. — A Blue-Stock- 
ing rv. —Jet: Her Face or Her Fortune? 
x v. — Vivian the Beauty x v. — A Ball- 


room Repentance 2 v. — A Girton Girl 
av. — A Playwright’s Daughter, and 


Bertie Griffiths 1 v. — Pearl-Powder 1 v. 
The Adventuress x v. 


Amelia B. Edwards, ¢ 1892. 

Barbara’s History 2 v. — Miss Carew 
2v. — Hand and Glove 1 v. — Half a Mi- 
lion of Money 2 v. — Debenham’s Vow 
2 v. —In the Days of my Youth 2 v. — 
Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Val- 
1 1 v. — Monsieur Manrice 1 v.—A 
Night on the Borders of the Black Forest 
1 v.—A Poetry-Book of Elder Poets 
1v.—A Thousand Miles up the Nile z v. 
— A Poetry-Book of Modern Poets 1 ¥.— 
Lord B: bury 2 v. 


M. Betham-Edwards, v. Betham. 


Edward Eggleston (Am.). 
The Faith Doctor 2 v. 


Barbara Elbon (Am.), 
Bethesda 2 v. 


George Eliot (Miss Evans — Mrs. 


Cross), ¢ 1880. 

Scenes of Clerical Life 2 v. — Adam 
Bede 2 v. — The Mill on the Floss 2 v. — 
Silas Marner x v. — Romola 2 v. — Felix 
Holt 2 v. — Daniel Deronda 4 v. — The 
Lifted Veil, and Brother Jacob r v. — 
Impressions of rv.— 
Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book 
1Iv.— e Eliot’s Life, edited by her 
Husband, J. W. Cross 4 v. 


Author of “Elizabeth and her 


German Garden.” 
Elizabeth and her German Garden 1 v. 
— The Solitary Summer 1 v. 


Mrs. Frances Elliot, + 1898. 

Diary of an Idle Woman in Italy 2 v. — 
Old Court Life in France 2 vw. — The 
Italians 2 v. — The Diary of an Idle 
Woman in Sicily rx v. — Pictures of Old 
Rometrv.—The ay anrem cesae 
Spain 2 v. — The Cardinal x v. — 
The Story of Sophia 1 v. — Di of an 
Idle Woman in Constantinople r vw — 
Old Court Life in Spain z v. — Roman 
Gossip 1 v. 


Tauchnits Edition. 


An Ugly Duckling rv. 

E. Rentoul Esier. 
The Way they leved at Grimpat x v. 
The Authors of “Essays and 


Reviews.” 
Essays and Reviews. By various Authors 


iv. 
Author of “Estelle Russell” 
Estelle Russell 2 v. 
Elsa D’Esterre- Keeling. 
Three Sisters x v.— A Laughing Philo- 
sopher 1 v. — The Professor’s Wooing 1 v. 
— In Thoughtland and in Dreamland 
1 v. — Orchardscroft 1 v. — Appassionata 
rv. — Old Maids and Young 32 v. — The 
Quoeen’s Serf 1 v. 
Author of “Euthanasia.” 
Euthanasia 1 v. 
Juliana Horatia Ewing, { 1885. 
Jackanapes; The Story of a Short Life; 
Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot 1 v.— A Flut 
ery for a Farthing 1 v. — The Brownies, 
and other Tales x v. 
Author of “ Expiated.” 
Expiated 2 v. 


F. J. Fargus, vide Hugh Conway. 
F. W. (Dean) Farrar. 
Darkness and Dawn 3 v. 


Authors of “The Fate of Fenella.” 
The Fate of Fenella, by 24 Authors rv. 


Percy Fendall, vide F. C. Philips. 


George Manville Fenn. 
The Parson o’ Dumford 2 v. — The 
Clerk of signal 24. 
Henry Fielding, ¢ 1754- 
Tom Jones 2 v. 
Five Centuries 


of the English Language and Literature: 
ohn Wycliffe. — Geoffrey Chaucer. — 
wes. — Sir Thocies More, — 
— Ben Jonson. — oF 


| Gray (vol. $00, pab 


George Fleming (Am.). 
Kismet 1 v. — Andromeda 2 v. 


Combis List. 


“ Daily News,”” War Correspo: 


RE. Forrest. 

Eight Days 2 v. 

Mrs. Forrester. 

Viva v. — Rhonazv. — Roy and Viola 
2v.— My Lord aod My Lesy 2v.—I 
have Lived and Loved 2 v. — June 2v. — 
Omnia Vanitas x v. — Although he was a 
Lord, aud other Tales x v. — Corisande, 
and other Tales x v.— Once Again 2 v. — 
Of the World, Worldly x v. — Dearest 
2 v. — The Light of other Days x v. — 
Too Late Repented x v. 

John Forster, ¢ 1876. 

The Life of Charles Dickens (with 
Mlustrations and Portraits) 6v. — Life and 
Times of Oliver Goldsmith 2 v. 

Jessie Fothergill. 

The First Violin 2 v. — Probation 2v. — 
Made or Marred, and “‘ One of Three”’ 
xv.—Kith and Kin 2 v.— Peril 2 v.— 

2. 
Author of “Found Dead,” vide 
James Payn. 


Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler. 
A Double Thread 2 v. — The Farring- 
av. 
Caroline Fox, ¢ 1871. 
Memories of Old Beats from her 
ournals and Letters, edited by Horace 


. Pym 2 v. 
Author of “Frank Fairlegh” (F. E. 
Smedley), ¢ 1864. 
Frank Fairlegh 2 v. 
- M. E. Francis. 
The Duenna of a Genius r v. 
Harold Frederic (Am.), ¢ 1898. 
Dlumination 2 v. ~ March Hares 1 v. 
Edward A. Freeman, t+ 1892. 
The Growth of the English Constitution 


x v. — Select Histo Essays 1 v.— 
Sketches from French Travel x v. 


James Anthony Froude, Tot 


rv. — The 
ys I v. 


the Armada, and other 


14 


Lady Georgiana Fullerton, f 1885. 

Een Middleton 1 v. — Grantley Manor 
2 v. — Lady Bird av. — Too Strange not 
to be True 2 v. — Constance Sherwood 
2v.—A Stormy Life 2 v. — Mrs. Geralds’ 
Niece s v. — The Notary’s Daughterx v.— 
The Lilies of the Valley, and The House of 
Penarvan x v. — TheCountess de Bonneval 
1 v.— Rose Leblanc 1 v. — Seven Stories 
1 v.— The Life of Luisa de Carvajal x v. 
—A Will and a Way, and The Hand- 
kerchief at the Window 2 v. — Eliane 
2v. (by Mrs. Augnstus Craven, translated 
by Lady Fallerton). — Laurentia x v. 
Marguerite Gardiner, vide Lady 

Blessington. 
Mrs. Gaskell, + 1865. 

Mary Barton xv. — Ruth 2 v. — North 
and South 1 v. — Lizzie Leigh, and other 
Tales x v. — The Life of Charlotte Bronté 
2 v. — Lois the Witch, etc. 1 v.— Sylvia’s 
Lovers 2 v. — A Dark Night’s Work 
1 v. — Wives and Daughters 3 v. — Cran- 
ford x v. — Cousin Phillis, other Tales 
Iv. 

Author of “Geraldine Hawthorne,” 
vide Author of “ Miss Molly.” 


Dorothea Gerard (Madame de 
Longard). 

Lady Baby 2 v. — Recha x v. — Ortho- 
dox 1 v.— TheWrong Man r v. — A Spot- 
less tation x ¥.— A Forgotten Sin 
xv. — One Year x v. 

E. Gerard (Madame de Laszowska). 

A Secret Mission 1 v.— A Foreigner 2 v. 

Agnes Giberne. 

The Curate’s Home x v. 

George Gissing. 

Demos. <A Story of English Socialism 

2 v. — New Grub Street 2 v. 


Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 
1898. 

Rome and the Newest Fashions in 
Religion x v. — Bulgarian Horrors, and 
Russia in Turkistan, with other Tracts 
x v.— The Hellenic Factor in the Eastern 
Problem, with other Tracts x v. 


Hal Godfrey (Charlotte O’Conor- 
Eccles). 
The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore 


rv. 


Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


Oliver Goldsmith, ¢ 1774. 
Select Works (with Portrait) x v. 
Edward J. Goodman. 
Too Curious x v. 
Julien Gordon (Am.). 
A Diplomat’s Diary x v. 
Major-Gen. C. G. Gordon, f 1885. 
His Journals at Kartoum. Introduction 
and Notes by A. E. Hake (with eighteen 
Illustrations) 2 v. 
Mrs, Gore, ¢ 1861. 
ee in the Air x v. te Dean’s 
te _— Prejudice 
eins Maaies A Life's Lessons 


2 v.— Mammon 2 v. — 
2v. — The Two Aristocracies 2 v. — Heck- 


ington 2 v. 
Sarah Grand. 
Our Manifold Naturex v. 
Miss Grant. 
Victor Lescar 2 v. — The Sun-Maid 
2 v. — My Heart's in the Highlands 2 v. 
— Artiste 2 v. — Prince Hugo av. —Cara 
Roma 2 v. 
Maxwell Gray. 
The Silence of Dean Maitland a v. — 
The Reproach of Annesley 3 v. 
E. CG Grenville: Murray (Trois- 
Etoiles), + 1881. 


The Member for is 2 v. — Young 
Brown 2 v. — The Boudoir Cabal 3 v. — 
French Pictures in English Chalk (Ferst 
Series) 2 v. —The Russians of To-day 
1 v. — French Pictures in English Chalk 
(Second Series) 2 v. — Strange Tales 
rv. —That Artful Vicar 2 v. — Six Months 
in the Ranks x v. — People I have met x v. 


Ethel St Clair Grimwood. 
My Three Years in Manipur (with 
Portrait) x v. 
W. A. Baillie Grohman. 
Tyrol and the Tyrolese x v. 
Archibald Clavering Gunter(Am.). 
Mr. Barnes of New York x v. 

F. Anstey Guthrie, ode Anstey. 
Author of “Guy Livingstone” 
(George Alfred Laurence), ¢ 1876. 

Guy Livingstone : v. — Sword and 
Gown 1 v. — Barren Hononr r v. — 
Border and Bastiller v. — Maurice Dering 
xr v. — Sans Merci a v. — Breaking a 


Butterfly 2 v. — Anteros 2 v. — Ha- 
gareno 2 v. 


Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


Jobn Habberton (Am.). 
Helen’s Babies & Other People’s Chil- 
den xv. — The Bowsham Puzzle x v. — 
One Tramp; Mrs. Mayburn’s Twins : v. 


H. Rider Haggard. 

King Solomon’s Mines x v. — She av. — 
jon 2 v.— Allan Quatermain 2v. — The 

ith’s Head 2 v. — Maiwa’s Revenge 
1v.— Mr. Meeson’s Will x v. — Colonel 
Quazitch, V. C. 2 v. — Cleopatra av. — 
Allaa’s Wife 1 v.— Beatrice 2 vy. — Dawn 
2 v. — Montezuma’s Daughter 2 v. — The 
People of the Mist 2 v. — Joan Haste 2 v.— 
Heart of the World 2 v.— The Wizard 
1 v. — Doctor Therne 1x v. — Swallow 
2 v.— Black Heart and White Heart, 
and Elissa 1 v. 


H.Rider Haggard & AndrewLang. 
The World’s Desire 2 v. 


A. E. Hake, vide Gen. Gordon. 


Mrs. 8. C, Hall, ¢ 1881. 
Can Wrong be Right? x v. — Marian 
2%. 
Philip Gilbert Hamerton, f 1894. 
Marmorne 1 v.—French and English av. 


Miss Iza Hardy, vide Author of 
“Not Easily Jealous.” 


Thomas Hardy. 

The Hand of Ethelberta 2 v. — Far 
from the Madding Crowd 2 v.— The Re- 
tura of the Native 2 v. — The Trumpet- 

jor 2 v. — A Laodicean 2 v. — Two on 
a Tower 2 v. —A Pair of Blue Eyes 2 v. 
—A of Noble Dames 1 v. — Tess 
of trae D’Urbervilles 2v. — Life’s Little 
Tronies 1 v. — Jude the Obscure 2 v. 
Beatrice Harraden. 

s that pass in the Night rv. — 
Ie Vii g Moods 1 v. — Hilda Strafford, 
andtibe. Remittance Man x v. — The 
Fowler 2 v. 


Agnes Harrison. 

Martin’s Vineyard x v. 
Bret Harte oo Hee 
Prose and P (Tales of the o- 
nauts: — The rect f of Roaring Camp; 
The Ontcasts of Poker Flat, etc. — 
Spanish and American ends; Con- 
densed Novels; Civic and Character 
Sketches; Poems) 2 v. — Idyls of the 
Foothills 1 v, — Gabriel Conroy 2 v. — 
Two Men of Sandy Bar 1v. — Thankful 


’ 


15 


Blossom, and other Tales x v. — The 
Story of a Mine 1 v. — Drift from Two 
Shores r v. — An Heiress of Red Dog, 
and other Sketches x v. — The Twins of 
Table Mountain, and other Tales 1 v. — 
Jeff Briggs’s Love Story, and other Tales 
tv. — Flip, and other Stories 1 v. — On 
the Frontier 1 v, — By Shore and Sedge 


1v.— ja x v.-~ Snow-bound at 
Eagle’s, and Devil’s Ford x v. — The 
Crusade of the “Excelsior” 1 v. — A 


other Tales 1 v. — Jim's Friend, 
and the Argouauts of North Liberty r v. 
— Cressy 1 v.— The Heritage of Dedlow 
Marsh, and other Tales 1 v. — A Waif of 
the Plains x v. — A Ward of the Golden 
Gate 1 v. — A Sappho of Green Springs, 
and other Tales 1 v. — A First Family of 
Tasajara 1 v.—Colonel Starbottle’s Client, 
and some other People 1 v. — Susy 1 v. — 
Sally Dows, etc. rv. — A Protégée of 
Jack Hamlin’s, etc. x v. — The Bell- 

ger of Angel’s, etc. 1 v. — Clarence 
tv.—In a Hollow of the Hills, and The 
Devotion of Enriquez rv. — TheAncestors 
of Peter Atherly, etc. rv.— Three Partners 
x v. — Tales of Trail and Town rx v. — 
Stories in ‘ht and Shadow 1 v. — Mr. 
JackHamlin's Mediation,and otherStories 
1v. — From Sand-Hill to Pine 1 v. 


Sir Henry Havelock, vide Rev. W. 
Brock. 


Nathaniel Hawthorne (Am.), 
+ 1864. 

The Scarlet Letter x v. — Transforma- 
tion (The Marble Faun) 2 v. — Passages 
from the English Note-Books of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne 2 v. 


Mrs. Hector, vide Mrs. Alexander. 


Author of “The Heir of Red- 
clyffe,” vide Charlotte M. Yonge. 


Sir Arthur Helps, + 1875. 
Friends in Council 2v.— Ivan de Biron 
2Vv. 
Mrs. Felicia Hemans, + 1835. 
Select Poetical Works 1 v. 


Maurice Hewlett. 

The Forest Lovers 1 v. — Little Novels 
of Italy 1 v. — The Life and Death of 
Richard Yea-and-Nay 2 v, 

Robert Hichens. 

Flames 2 v. — The Slave 2 v. 


Millionaire of Rowgns and = Baad , and 


16 Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


Admiral Hobart Pasha, + 1886. 
Sketches from my Life x v. 


John Oliver Hobbes. 
The Gods, Some Mortals and Lord 
Wickenham 1 v, 


Mrs. Cashel Hoey. 
A Golden Sorrow 2 v. — Ont of Court 
2v. 


s 
Annie E. Holdsworth. 
The Years that the Locust hath Eaten 
rv. — The Gods Arrive 1 v. — The Val- 
ley of the Great Shadow x v. 


Holme Lee, vide Harriet Parr. 


Oliver Wendell Holmes (Am.), 


t 1894. 
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table 
x v. — The Professor at the Breakfast- 
Table 1 v. — The Poet at the Breakfast- 
Table 1 v. — Over the Teacups 1 v. 


Anthony Hope (Hawkins). 

Mr. Witt’s Widow 1 v. — A Change 
of Air rv. — Half a Hero xv. — The In- 
discretion of the Duchess x v. — The God 
in the Car x v. — The Chronicles of Count 
Antonio 1 v. — Comedies of Courtship 
x1 v. — The Heartof Princess Ozara x v. — 
Phroso 2 v.— Simon Dale 2 v.— Rupert 
of Hentzau 1 v. — The King’s Mirror 


2v.— tb x v. 
Tighe Hopkins. 
An Idler in Old France x v. 


Author of “Horace Templeton.” 
Diary and Notes 1 v. 


Ernest William Hornung. 

A Bride from the Bush x v. — Under 
Two Skies rt v. — Tiny Luttrell x v,. — 
The Boss of Taroomba x v. — My Lord 
Duke 1 v. — Young Blood 1 v. — Some 
Persons Unknown 1 v. — The Amateur 
Cracksman 1 v.— The Rogue's March rv. 
— The Belle of Toorak 1 v. — Peccavi x v. 


“ Household Words.” 
Conducted by Charles Dickens. 1851-56. 
6 v. —Nove.s and Tass Peprinted from 
ousehold Words by Charles Dickens. 
1856-59. 11 V. 


Mre. Houstoun, vide “Recom- 
mended to Mercy.” 


Author of “How to be Happy 
though Married.” 

How to be Happy though Married 1 v. 
Blanche Willis Howard (Am.., 
+ 1899. 

One Summer rv. — Anant Serena 1 v. — 
Guenn 2 v.— Tony, the Maid, etc, rv. — 
The Open Door 2 v. 


Blanche Willis Howard, + 1899, 
& William Sharp. 
A Fellowe and His Wife x v. 


William Dean Howells (Am.). 

A Foregone Conclusion x v. — The 
Lady of the Aroostook : v. — A Modern 
Instance 3 v. — The Undiscovered Country 
1 v.— Venetian Life (with Portrait 1 v. 
— Italian Journeys r v. — A Chance Ac- 
quaintance 1 v. — Their Wedding Jouney 
rt v.—A Fearful} Responsibility, and 
Tonelli’s Marriage 1 v. — A Wonmn’s 
Reason 2 v. — Dr. Breen’s Practice x1. — 
The Rise of Silas Lapbam 2 v. 


Thomas Hughes, ¢ 1898. 
Tom Brown’s School-Days 1 v. 
Mrs. Hungerford (Mrs. Argles, 
¢ 1897. 
Molly Bawn 2 v. — Mrs. Geoffrey av. 
— Faith and Unfaith 2 v. — Portia 2 v.— 


Tales 1 v. — Phyllis 2 v. — Rossmoyne 
2v.— Doris 2v.— A Maiden all Forlo-n, 
etc. rv. — A Passive Crime, and other 
Stories xv. — Green Pleasure and Grey 
Grief 2 v. — A Mental Struggle 2 v. — 
Her Week's Amusement, and Ugly 
Barrington 1 ¥. — Lady B av. 
— Lady Valworth’s Diamonds x v.—A 
Moder Circe 2 v. — Marvel 2 v. —The 
Hon. Mrs. Voreker 1 v. — Under-Cur- 
rents 2v.— In Durance Vile, etc. rv.— A 
Troublesome Girl, and other Stories rv. — 
A Life’s Remorse 2 v. — A Born Coqette 
2v. — The Duchess x v. — Lady Vemer’s 
Flight x v.— A Conquering Hewmine, 
and “‘ When in Doubt”? 1 v. — Nora 
Creina 2v.— A Mad Prank, and other 
Stories 1 v. —The Hoyden 2 v. — The 
Red House Mystery rv. — An Unsatis- 
pom lave 1 v. — Peter’s Wife av. — 
The Three Graces 1 v. — A Tug of War 
x v. — The Professor’s Experiment 3 v. — 
A Point of Conscience a v. — A Lonely 
Girl x v. — Lovice rv. — The Coming of 
Chloe x v. 


. 


Tauchnits Edstion. Complete List. 


Mrs. Hunt, wide Averil 
Beaumont. 


Violet Hunt 
The Human Interest x v. 
Jean Ingelow, + 1897. 
Off the Skelligs 3 v. — Poems 2 v. — 
Fated to be av. Sarah de 
Berenger 2 v. — Don John 2 v. 


The Hon. Lady Inglis. 
The Siege of Lucknow x v. 

Jobn H. Ingram, vide E. A. Poe. 
Iota, vide Mrs. Mannington 
Caffyn. 

Washington Irving (Am.), + 1859. 

The Sketch Book (with Portrait) 1 v. — 
The Life of Mahomet x v. — Lives of the 
Successors of Mahomet 1 v.—Oliver Gold- 
smith 1 v. -- Chronicles of Wolfert’s Roost 
1 v. — Life of George Washington 5 v. 


Mrs. Helen Jackson (H. H.) 
(Am.), ¢ 1885. 
Ramona 2 v. 


W. W. Jacobs. 

Many Cargoes x v.— The Skipper’s 
Wooing, and The Brown Man’s Servant 
1 v. — Sea Urchins 1 v. — A Master of 

1v. 


Charles T. C. James. 
Holy Wedlock x v. 


G. P. R. James, ¢ 1860. 

Morley Ernstein (with Portrait) x v. — 
Forest Days x v. — The False Heir x v. — 
Arabella Stuart x v.— Rose d’Albret 
x v.— Arrah Neil x v. — Agincourt 1 v. — 
The Smuggler 1 v. — The Step-Mother 
2 v. — Beauchamp 1 v. — Heidelberg 
x v.— The Gipsy 1 v. — The Castle of 
Ehrenstein x v. — Darnley 1 v. — Russell 
2 v. — The Convict 2 v.— Sir Theodore 
Broughton 2 v. 


Henry James a fs 

The American 2 v. — The peans 
1 v. — Daisy Miller; An International 
Episode; Four Meetings 1 v. — Roderick 
Hudson 2 v. — The Madonna of the 
Fature, etc. 1 v. — Eugene Pickering, 
etc. x v. — Confidence x v. — Washing- 
ton Square, etc. 2 v. — The Portrait of a 
Lady 3 v. — Foreign Parts 1 v. — French 
Poets and Novelists x v. — The Siege of 
London; The Point of View; A Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim 1 v. — Portraits of Places 
rv. —A Little Tour in France 1 v. 


17 


J. Cordy Jeaffreson. 
A Book abont Doctors 2 v. — A 
Woman in spite of Herself 2 v. — The 
Real Lord Byron 3 v. 


Edward Jenkins. 
Ginx’s Baby, his Birth and other Mis- 
fortunes; Lord Bantam  v. 


Author of “Jennie of ‘The 
Prince’s,’” vide B, H. Buxton. 


Jerome K. Jerome. 

The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow 
zx v.— Diary of a Pilgrimage, and Six 
Essays : v. — Novel Notes z v. — Sketches 
in Lavender, Blue and Green x v. — 
The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow 
1 v. — Three Men on the Bummel x v. 


Doves Jerrold, + 1857. 
ming t. Giles and St. James 
a2vu— Seiol Cheraeec a! J 


Author of “John Halifax, Gentle- 
man,” wide Mire. Craik. 
Johnny Ludlow, vide Mrs. 
Henry Wood. 


Samuel Jobnson, + 1784. 
Lives of the English Poets 2 v. 


Emily Jolly. 
Celone! Dacre 2 v. 


Author of “Joshua Davidson,” 
vide Mra. E. Lynn Linton. 


Misa Julia Kavanagh, + 1877. 

Nathalie 2 v. — Daisy Burns 2 v. — 
Grace Lee 2 v. — Rachel Gray xv. — 
Adale 3 v.— A Summer and Winter in 
the Two Sicilies 2 v.— Seven Years, and 
other Tales 2 v. — French Women of 
Letters r v.— English Women of Letters 
1 v. — Queen Mab 2 v. — Beatrice 2 v. — 
Sybil’s Second Love 2 v. — Dora 2 v. — 
Silvia 2 v. — Bessie 2 v. — John Dorrien 
3 v.— Two Lilies 2 v. — Forget-me-nots 
2v. — Vide also Series for the Young, 
P- 29. 

Annie Keary, ¢ 1879. 
Oldbury 2 v. — Castle Daly zy. 


Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


D’Esterre- Keeling, vide Esterre. 


Thomas a Kempis. 
The Imitation of Christ. Translated 
from the Latin by W. Benham, 38.p. x v. 


Richard B. Kimball (Am.), 

Saint Leger 1 v.— Romances of S t 
Life Abroad x v. — Undercurrents 1 v. — 
Was he Successful? 1 v. — To-Day in New 
York x v. 


Alexander William Kinglake, 
f 1891. 

Eothen x v. — The Invasion of the 

Crimea 14 v. 
Charles Kingsley, ¢ 1875.- 

vee Iv. = Weapon bo) 2v.—Two 

ears . — Hypatia 2 v. — 
Locke Tv. = Verosined the Wake 2v.— 
At Last 2 v. — His Letters and Memories 
of his Life, edited by his Wife 2 v. 


Henry Kingsley, ¢ 1876. 
Phe ncn 2v.— a Se I es 
eofiry Hamlyn 2 v. — The an 
the Burtons 2 ea Leighton Comers w— 
Valentin 1 v. — Oakshott Castle 1 v. — 
Reginald Hetherege 2 v. — The Grange 

Garden 2 v. 


Albert Kinross. 
An Opera and Lady Grasmere 1 v. 
Rudyard Kipling. 
Plain Tales from the Hills : v.—The 
Second Jungle Book 1 v. — The Seven 


Seas x v. — “Captains Co 2 
1 v. — The Day's Ee eA Wine 


in Being rv. — & Co, 1v. — From 
Sea to 2v.— The City of Dreadful 
Night 1 v. 


May Laffan. 
Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor, 
etc. Iv. E 
Charles Lamb, + 1834. 
The Essays of Elia and Eliana x v. 
Mary Langdon (Am.). 
Ida May x v. 
Author of “The Last of the Cava- 
liers” (Miss Piddington). 
The Last of the Cavaliers 2 v. — The 
Gain of a Loss 2 v. 
M™ede Laszowska, wide E.Gerard. 


The Hon: Emily Lawless. 


Horrish x v. 


George Alfred Laurence, vide 
Author of “Guy Livingstone.” 


“Leaves from the Journal of 
our Life in the Highlands,” wide 
Victoria R. I. : 


Holme Lee, ¢ 1900, vide Harriet 
Parr. 


. S. Le Fanu, ¢ 1873. 
Silas 2 v. — Guy Deverell 2 v. 


Mark Lemon, + 1870. 
Wait for the End 2 v. — Loved at Last 
2 v. — Falkner Lyle 2 v. — Leyton Hall, 
and other Tales 2 v. — Golden Fetters 
2v. 


Charles Lever, 


Ua 


1872. 


e3v— 


The Dodd Famil 
Martins of Cro’ 


3v. — Davenport Dunn 3 v. — Confessions 
of Con Cregan 2 v.— One of Them 2v. — 
Maurice Tiernay 2 v. — Sir Jasper Carew 
2v.— i m sv. — A Day’s Ride 
av.— Luttrell of Arran 2 v.— Tony Butler 
2v.— Sir Brook Fossbrooke 2 v. — The 
Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly 2 v. —A 
Rent in a Cloud 1 v. — That of Nor- 
cott’s x v.— St. Patrick’s Eve; Paul 
Gosslett’s Confessions x v. — Lord Kil- 
gobbin 2 v. 


8. Levett-Yeats. 
The Honour of Savelli x: v. — The 
Chevalier d’ Auriac x v. 


G. H. Lewes, + 1878. 
Ranth . — The -Physi f 
Comenartite ee _ On hoteank the 
Art of Acting r v. 


Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, f 1898. 

The true Hi of Joshua Davidson 
1 v. — Patricia ball 2 v. — The 
Atonement of Leam Dundas 2 v. — The 
World well Lost 2 v.— Under which 
Lord? 2 v. — With a Silken Thread, and 
other Stories x v.— Todhunters’ at Loan- 
in’ Head, and other Stories x v. — ‘*M: 
Love!”’ 2v. — The Girl of the Period, 
and other Social Essays x v. — Ione 2 v. 


Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


Laurence W. M. Lockhart, ¢ 1882. 
Mine is Thine 2 v. 


Lord Augustus Loftus. 
Diplomatic Reminiscences 1837 - 1862 
(with Portrait) 2 v. 
Mme de Longard, vide D. Gerard. 


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 


(Am.), t 1882. 
Poetical Works od keer Portrait) 4 v. — 
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri 


v. — The New-England T: ies 1 v. 
= the Divine T: mete Iv. he “sent 
Luce, and Three of Song 1 v. — 
The Masque of Pandora, and other Poems 
xv. ; 

Margaret Lonsdale. 

Sister Dora (with a Portrait of Sister 

Dora) rv. 


Author of “A Lost Battle.” 
A Lost Battle s v. 


Sir John Lubbock, Bart. 

The Pleasures of Life x v. — The Beau- 
ties of Nature (with Dlustrations) x v. — 
The Use of Life 1 v. — Scenery of Switzer- 
land (with Illustrations) 2 v. 


“Lutfullah,” omde Eastwick 
Edna Lyall. 

We Two 2 v.— Donovan 2 v. —In 
the Golden os 2%— as 
2v.— Won aiting 2 v. — Wayfaring 
Men 2 v.— the Hermit s v. — 
Doreen 2 v. 


Lord Lytton, vide E. Bulwer. 


Robert Lord Lytton (Owen 
Meredith), ¢ 1891. 

Poems 2 v. — Fables in Song 2 v. 
Maarten Maartens. 

The Sin of Joost Avelingh 1 v. — An 
Old Maid’s Love 2 v. — God's Fool 2 v. 
— The Greater Glory 2v. — My Lady 
Nobody 2 v. — Her Memory x v. 
Thomas Babington, Lord Mac- 

pos es Portrait) 
wi! 
Teoria Historical Essays 5 v. 
— Lays of Ancient Rome 1v.—S oo 
2 v. — Biographical Essays 2 v. — Wi- 
Nam Pitt, Atterbury x v. — (Seo also 
Trevelyan). 


ope 


| ee 


History 
6 &7 (supplemental). 

George Mac Donald. 

pane rthose ital Sane a sb ery 

of a Quiet Neighbourhood 2 v. — David 
Elginbrod 2 v. — The Vicar’s Daughter 
2 v. — Malcolm 2 v. — St. George and 
St. Michael 2 v. — The Marquis of 
Lossie 2 v. — Sir Gibbio 2 v. — Mary 
Marston 2 v. — The Gifts of the Child 
Christ, and other Tales 1 v. — The Prin- 
cess and Curdie x v. 


Mrs. Mackarness, f 1881. 


Sanbeam Stories rx v. —A Peerless 
Wife 2 v. — A Mingled Yara 2 v. 


Eric Mackay, { 1898 
Love Letters of a Vio! , and other 
Poems x v. 


Charles MO Knight (Am.). 
Old Fort Duquesne 2 y. 
Ian Maclaren. 
Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush x v. — 
The Days of Auld Langsyne r v. 


Norman Macleod, ¢ 1872. 
The Old Lieutenant and his Son x v. 


James Macpherson, t 1696, wide 
Ossian. 


Mrs. Macquoid. 

Patty 2 v. — Miriam’s iage 2. — 
Pictures across the Coa ee fa 
Soon 1 v. — My Story 2 v. — Diane 2 v. 
— Beside the River 2v.—A Faithful 
Lover 8 v. 


Author of “Mademoiselle Mori” 


y 
Edge of the Storm x v. — The Atelier du 
Lys 3 v. — In the Olden Time 2 v. 


Lord Mahon, vide Stanhope. 


E. 8. Maine. 
Scarscliff Rocks 2 v. 


20 Tauchnits Edition. 


Lucas Malet. 
Colonel Enderby’s Wife 3 v. 


The Earl of Malmesbury, G.C.B. 
Memoirs of an Ex-Minister 3 v. 


Mary E. Mann. 
A Winter’s Tale 1 v. — The Cedar 
Star rv. 


Robert Blachford Mansfield. 
The Log of the Water Lily x v. 


Mark Twain, vide Twain. 


Author of “Marmorne,” wide 
P. G. Hamerton. 


Capt. Marryat, f 1848. 
Jacob Faithful (with Portrait) z v.— 
Percival Keene 1 v. — Peter Simple rv. — 
aphet in Search of a Father 1 v. — 
onsieur Violet x v. — The Settlers in 
Canada 1 v. — The Mission 1 v. — The 
Privateer’s-Man x v. — The Children of 
the New-Forest 1x v. — Valerie x v. — 
rs heaiee ars Easy 1 v. — The King’s 


Iv. 


Florence Marryat, ¢ 1899. 

Love’s Conflict 2 v. — For Ever and 
Ever 2 v. — The Confessions of Gerald 
Estcourt 2 v. — Nelly Brooke 2 v. — 
Véronique 2 v. — Petronel 2 v. — Her 
Lord and Master 2 v. — The Proy of the 
Gods 1 v. — Life and Letters of Captain 
ae x vy. — Mad Dumaresg 2 v. — 
No Intentions 2 v. — Fighting the Air 
eye Oat and cores An pray ae, 
possibility x v. — The Poison 5 
and other Stories 1 v.— A Lucky ° 
pointment, and other Stories x v. — ‘‘ 
own Child’? 2 v. ~ Her Father’s Name 
2v.— A Harvest of Wild Oats 2 v. — 
A Little Stepson x v. — Written in Fire 
2v.— Her World against a Lie 2v. — 
A Broken Blossom 2 v. — The Root of 
all Evil 2v. — The Fair-haired Alda 2 v. — 
With Cupid’s Eyes 2 v. — My Sister the 
Actress 2 v. — Phyllida 2 v. — How they 
loved Him 2 v. — Facing the Footlights 
(with Portrait) sv. — A Moment of Mad- 
ness, and other Stories x v. — The Ghost 
of Charlotte Cray, and other Stories 
xv. — Peeress and Player 2 v. — Under 
the Lilies and Roses 2 v. — The Heart 
of Jane Warner 2 v. — The Heir Pre- 
sumptive 3 v. — The Master Passion 2 v. 
— Spiders of Society 2 v.— Driven to Bay 
_ 8v.— A Daughter of the Tropics 2 v. — 


Complete List. 


Gentleman and Conrtier 2 v. — On Cir- 
cumstantial Evidence 2 v. — Mount Eden. 
A Romance 2 v. — Blindfold 2 v.—A 
Scarlet Sin xv. — A Bankrupt Heart 2v. 
— The Spirit World x v. — The Beautiful 
ove Yao ae Heart a = 2 lar 
© Stran grin, Seana Han 
Stubbs Tare Ths ream that Stayed 
2 v.—A Passing Madness x v. — The 
Blood of the Vampire x v. — A Soul on 
Fire x v. — Iris the Avenger x v. 


Mrs. Anne Marsh (Caldwell), 
1874. 

Ravenscliffe as — Emilis Wyndham 
2v. — Castle Avon 2 v. — Aubrey 2 v. — 
The Heiress of Haughton 2 v. — Evelyn 
Marston 2 v.— The Rose of Ashurst 
ay. 


Mrs. Emma Marshall, ¢ 1899. 
Mrs. Mainwaring’s Jo 1%w— 
Benvenuta x v. — Lady Alice xr v. — 
Dayspring 1 v- — Life's Aftermath rv— 
In the East Country x v. — No. XII7; or, 
The Story of the Vestal x v. — In 
Four Reigns x v. — On the Banks of the 
Ouse x v. — In the City of Flowers x v. — 
Alms. 19) Uodel Salabary S ire fv. 
— The End Crowns All 1 v. — Winchester 
Meads x v. — Eventide Light x v. — 
Winifrede’s Journal x v. — Bri Bells 
1 v. —In the Service of Rachel Lady 
Russell rv. — A Lily among Thorns ¢ y. 
— Penshurst Castle x v. — mecsngton 
Palace x v.— The White King’s Daughter 
tv. — The Master of the Musicians r v. 
— An Escape from the Towerr v.—A 
Haunt of Ancient Peace 1 v. — Castle 
saitstec Abbey cer mus woaeg Oosen 
ter tv. — ihe Young 
of Hearts x v. — Under the Dome of St. 
Panl’s 1 v.— The Parson’s Daughter 
Iv. 


Helen Mathers -HenryReeves), 
“Cherry “ately = — “Land o’ the 
Leal’’ De tbe teers Sleeves 2 v. 
— As he comes up the Stair, etc. rv. — 
Sam’s Sweetheart 2 v.— Eyre’s Acquittal 
2 v. — Found Out fei ce Masderer ane 
slaughter? x v. — The Fashion of this 
World (80 Pf.) —Blind Justice, and “Who, 
Ppa et Speaketh’’ x v. — What 
the To! , and A Study of a Woman 
Wildfire 2 v. —- av, 


Iv. 


Colonel Maurice. 
The Balance of Military Power in 
Europe x v. 


Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


21 


George du Maurier, ¢ 1896. 
Trilby 2 v. — The Martian 2 v. 


Mrs. Maxwell, vide Miss Braddon. 


Author of “Mehalah,” vide Baring- 
Gould. 


George J. Whyte Melville, + 1878. 


drv.— 


A 2 v.— The 
Interpreter 2 v.— The White Roee 2v. — 
M,. or N. xv. — drvw— 
Sarchedon 2 v. — UncleJohn 2 v. — 
Katerfelto x v. — Sister Louise x v. — 
Rosine 1 v. — Roys’ Wife 2 v. — Black 
but Comely 2 v. —Riding Recollections rv. 


Memorial Volumes, vide Five 

Centuries (val. 500); The New 

Testament (vol. 1000); Henry 
. Morley (vol. 2000). 


George Meredith. 

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 2v. — 
Beauchamp’s Career 2 v. — The Tragic 
Comedians 1 v. — Lord Ormont and his 
Aminta 2 v. — The Amazing Marriage 
av. 


Owen Meredith, vide Robert Lord 
Lytton. 


Leonard Merrick 
The Man who was good x v. — This 
Stage of Fools 1 v. — Cynthia 1 v. — One 
Man’s View 1 v. — The Actor-Manager 
1 v. — The Worldlings 1 v. 


Henry Seton Merriman. 


Young Mi 
Captives 2 v. — 
Another 1 v. —With Edged Tools 2 v. — 
The Sowers 2 v. — Flotsam 1 v. — In 
Kedar’s Tents 1 v. — Roden’s Corner 
x v.— The Isle of Unrest r v. 


H.S8. Merriman &S. G. Tallentyre. 
The Money-Spinner, etc. x v. 


John Milton, + 1674. 
Poetical Works x v. 


Author of “Miss Molly.” 
Geraldine Hawthorne x v. 


Author of “Molly Bawn ,” vide 
Mrs. Hungerford. 


Florence Montgomery. 

Misunderstood z: v. — Thrown To- 
gether sv. — Thwarted 1 v. — Wild Mike 
x v. — Seaforth a v..— The Blue Veil 
I v. — Transformed 1 v. — The Fisher- 
man’s Daughter, etc. x v. — Colonel 
Norton 2 v. — Prejudged x v. 

Frank Frankfort Moore. 
**{ Forbid the Banns”’ 2 v. — A Gray 
a v.— One Fair Daughter 
ey Call it Love 2 v. — The 
Jessamy Bride x v. — The Millionaires 
rv. — Nell Gwynn. nD Xv. 
George Moore. 
Celibates x v. — Evelyn Innes 2 v. 
Thomas Moore, ¢ 1852. 
Poetical Works (with Portrait) 5 v. 
Lady Morgan, { 1859. 

Memoirs 3 v. 

Henry Morley, ¢ 1894. 

Of English Literature in the Reign of 
Victoria. With Facsimiles of the Signa- 
tures of Authors in the Tauchnitz Edition 
(v. 2000, published 188x) x v. 

William Morris. 

A Selection from his Poems. Kdited 

with a Memoir by F. Hueffer x v, 
Arthur Morrison. 

Tales of Mean Streets x v. — A Child 
of the Jago x v. — To London Town x v. 
— Cunning M rv. 

James Fullarton Muirhead. 

The Land of Contrasts r v. 


Miss Mulock, vide Mrs. Craik 


David Christie Murray. 
Rainbow Gold 2 v. 
Grenville: Murray, vide Grenville. 
Author of “My Little Lady,” vide 
E. Frances Poynter. 


The New Testament. 


the Original T 
dorf Aig mtheaells od 1869) 2 v. 
Mrs. C J. Newby. 
Common Sense 2 v. 


22 Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


Dr. J. H. Newman (Cardinal New- 


man), ¢ 1890. 
Callista x v. 


Mrs. Nicholls, vide Currer Bell 


Author of “Nina Balatka,” orde 
Anthony Trollope. 


Author of “No Church” (F. 
Robinson), 
No Church 2 v. — Owen :—a Waif a v. 


Lady Augusta Noel. 
From Generation to Generation 1 v. — 
Hithersea Mere 2 v. 


W. E. Norris. 

My Friend Jim x v. —A Bachelor’s 
Blunder 2 v. — rand Minor 2 v. — 
The Rogue 2 v. — Miss Shafto sv. — Mrs. 
Fenton 1 v. — Misadventure 2 v. — Saint 
Ann's 1 v. — A Victim of Good Luck 
x v. — The Dancer in Yellow 1 v. — 
Clarissa Furiosa 2 v. — Marietta’s Mar- 
riage 2 v. — The Fight for the Crown 
1v.— The Widower t v.—Giles Ingilby rv. 
— The Flower of the Flock z v. 


Hon. Mrs. Norton, f 1877. 
Stuart of Donleath 2 v. — Lost and 
Saved 2 v. — Old Sir Douglas a v. 


Author of “Not Easily Jealous” 


Iza Hi lo 
Not ly Jealous 2 mol 


“ Novelsand Tales,” vide“ House- 
hold Words.” 


Charlotte O’Conor-Eccles, vide 
Hal Godfrey. 


Laurence Oliphant, ¢ 1888. 
Altiora Peto 2v. — Masollam 2 v. 


Mrs. Oliphant, + 1897. 

The Last of the Mortimers 3 v. — Mrs. 
Margaret Maitland 1 v. — Agnes 3 v. — 
Madonna Mary 2 v. — The Minister’s 
Wife 2 v. — The Rector and the Doctor’s 
Family x v. — Salem Chapel a v. — The 
P Curate 2 v. — Marjori- 

2 v. — Ombra z v. — Memoir of 
Count de Montalembert 2 v. — Mayav. — 
Innocent 2 v. — For Love and Life zv. — 
A Rose in June x v. — The Story of 
Valentine and his Brother 2 v. — White- 
ladies 2 v.— The Curate in Charge xv. — 


hipscre tieigee vans Arthur 2 v. — 
ith 2 v. — Young Musgrave 2 v. — 
The Primrose Path 2 v. — Within the 
Precincts 3 v. — The Greatest Heiress in 
England 2 v. — He re will not when = 
may 2v. — Harry Joscelyn 2 v. — In 
Trust 2 v. — It was a Lover and his Lass 
3 v.— The Ladies Lindores 3 v. — Hester 

v. — The Wisard’s Son 3 v. — A 
Srecty Gentleman and his Family 3 v. — 
Nvighbours ontheGreen 1 v.—TheDuke’s 
Daughter x v. — The Fugitives x v. — 
Kirsteen 2 v. — Life of Laurence Oliphant 
and of Alice Oliphant, his Wife 2 v. — The 
Little Pilgrim in the Unseenz v. — The 
Heir Presumptive and the Heir. Apparent 
2 v. — The Sorceress 2 v. — Sir Robert’s 
Fortune 2 v. — The Ways of Life x v. — 
Old Mr. Tredgold 2 v. 


“One who has kept a Diary,” 
‘vide George W. E. Russell. 
Ossian. 

The Poems of Ossian. Translated by 

James Macpherson x v. 


Ouida. 

Idalia 2 v. — Tricotrin 2 v. —Puck 2v. — 
Chandos av. — Strathmore 2 v. — Under 
two Flags 2 v. — Folle-Farine 2 v.— A 
Leaf in the Storm; A Dog of Flanders; 
A Branch of Lilac; A Provence Rose 
1v.— Castlemaine’s Gage, and other 
Novelettes rv. — Madame la uise, 
and other Novelettes x v. — P: av. 
— Held in Bondage 2 v. — Two little 
Wooden Shoes 1 v.— Signa (with Portrait) 
7° a Winter City rv.— Ariadné2v.— 

‘riendship 2 v. — Moths 3 v. — Pipi ; 
and other Stories rv. — A Village Com- 
mune 3 v. — In Maremma 3 v. — Bimbi 
rv. — Wanda 3 v. — Frescoes and other 
Stories 1 v. — Princess Napraxine 3 v. — 
Othmar 3v. — A Rainy June (60Pf.). Don 
Gaiden e one aad 

2v.— in 3¥.— . an 
other Stories x v. — Santa Barbara, otc. 
x v. — Two Offenders x v. — The Silvee 
Christ, etc. 1 v. — Toxin, and other Papers 
x v. — Le Selve, and Tonia r v. — The 
Massarenes 2 v. — An Altruist, and Four 
Essays 1 v. — La Strega, and other 
Stories r v. — The Waters of Edera rv. 


Author of “The Onutcasts,” vide 
“Roy Tellet.” 


Gilbert Parker. 
The Battle of the Strong 2 v. 


Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


Harriet Parr (Holme Lee), ¢ 1900. 

Basil Godfrey’s Caprice s v. — For 
Mint Barrington atv; Hee Tite of 

mn 2 v. — Her Title o 
Honour 1 v. — Echoes of a Famous 
Year x v. — Katherine’s Trial 1 v. — The 
Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax 2 v. — Ben 
Milner’s Wooing x v. — Straightforward 
2v. — Mrs, Denys of Cote av. — A Poor 
Iv. 


Mre. Parr. 
Dorothy Fox 1 v. — The Prescotts of 
Pamphillon 2 v. — The Gosau Smithy, etc. 
xv. — Robin 2 v. — Loyalty George 2 v. 


George Paston. 
A Stody in Prejudices x v. — A Fair 
Deceiver x v. 


Mrs. Paul, vide Author of “Still 
Waters.” . 


Author of “Paul Ferroll” (Mrs. 
Caroline Clive). 

Paul Ferroll x v. — Year after Year 

Iv. — Why Paul Ferroll killed his Wife 


Iv. 
James Payn, f 1898. 

Found Dead x v. — Gwendoline’s Har- 
vest x v. — Like Father, like Son 2 v. — 
Not Wooed, but Won 2 v. — Cecil’s Tryst 
xz v- — A Woman’s Vengeance 2 v. — 
Murphy’s Master x v. — In the Heart of 
a Hill, and other Stories 1 v. — At Her 
Mercy 2 v. — The Best of Husbands 2 v. — 
Walter's Word 2 v. — Halves 3 v. — 
Fallen Fortunes 2 v. — What He cost Her 
av. — By Proxy 2 v. — Les¢ Black than 
we're Painted 2 v. ~ Under one Roof 
2v.— h Spirits x v. — High Spints 
(Second es) 1 v. — A Confidential 
Agent 2v. — From Exile zv. — A Grape 
from a Thorn 2 v. — Some Private Views 
1v. — For Cash Only sv. — Kit: A Mo- 
mory 2 v. — The on’s Ward (with 
Portrait) 2 v. — Some Literary Re- 
collections x v. — The Talk of the Town 
x v. — The Luck of the Darrells 2 v. — 
The Heir ofthe Ages 2 v.— Holiday Tasks 
xv. — Glow-Worm Tales (First Series) 
xv.—Glow-Worm Tales (Second Serses) 
x v. — A Prince of the Blood Ae rae 
Mystery of Mirbridge 2. — The Burnt 
Million 2 v. — The Word and the Will 
2 v. — Sunny Stories, and some Shady 
Ones 1 v. — A Modern Dick Whitting- 
ton 2 v. — A Stumble on the Thresho 
av. — A Trying Patient x v. — Gleams 
of Memory, and The Ea’ Iv. 


23 


Ta Market Overt 1 v. — The Disa: - 
ance of George Driffell, and other Talos 
xv. — Another’s Burden etc. 1 v. — The 
Backwater of Life, or Eesays of a Literary 
Veteran 1 v. 


Frances Mary Peard. 

One Year 2v. — The Rose-Garden 1 v.— 
Unawares 1 v. — Thorpe Regis rv. — A 
Winter Story 1 v. — A Madrigal, and 
other Stories 1 v. — Cartouche x v. — 
Mother Molly x v. — Schloss and Town 
2 v. — Contradictions 2 v. — Near Neigh- 
bours x v. — Alicia Tennant x v. — Ma- 
dame’s Granddaughter 1 v. — Donna 
Teresa x v. 


Max Pemberton. 

The Impregnable City: v. — A Woman 
ot t xv. — The Phantom Army 
1 v. — The Garden of Swords x v. — The 
Footsteps of a Throne x v. 


Bishop Thomas Percy, t+. 1811. 
Reliques of Anclent English Poetry 3 v. 


F. C Philips. 

Asin a Looking Glass 1 v. — The Dean 
and his Daughter 1 v. — Lucy Smith rv. — 
A Lucky Young Woman x v. — Jack and 
Three Jills r v. — Little Mrs. Murray x v.— 
Young Mr, Ainslie’s Courtship xv.—Social 
Vicissitudes x v. — Exteauating Circum- 
stances, and A French M: Iv. — 
More Social Vicissitudes rv. — Constance 
2v.— That Wicked Mad’moiselle, etc. 
tv. — A Doctor in Difficulties, etc. x. — 
Black and White rv. — “One Never 


_ Bouverie 
estion of Colour, and otherStories rv.— 
Devil in Nun’s Voiling x v. — A Full 
Confession, and other Stories x v. — The 
Luckiest of Three x v.— Poor Little Bella 
Iv. 
F. G Philips & Percy Fendall. 
A Danughter’s Sacrifice x y. — Margaret 
Byng x v. 
F. C. Philips & C. J. Wills. 
Tho Fatal Phryne 1v.—The Scudamores 
xv. — A Maiden Fair toSee1rv. — Sybil 
Ross’s Marriage 1 v. 
Eden Phillpotts. 
Ly Prophets's v. — The Human B 
1 bs don fre of the Morning 2 v. “sd 
Miss Piddington, wide Author of 
“The Last of the Cavaliers.” 


24 Tauchnits Edition. Complete Lest. 


Edgar Allan Poe (Am.), ¢ 1849. 
Poems and Essays, edited 
Memoir by John H. Ingram 1 v. — Tales, 
edited by John H. Ingram 1 v. 
Alexander Pope, ¢ 1744. 
Select Poetical Works (with Portrait) xv. 


Miss E. Frances Poynter. 

My Little Lady a v. — Ersilia 2 v. — 

Among the rv. — Madame de 
Presnel x v. 

Mrs. Campbell Praed. 

Zéro x v. — Affinities x v. — The Head 

Station 2 v. 


Mrs. E. Prentiss (Am.), { 1878. 
Stepping Heavenward 1 v. 


The Prince Consort, { 1861. 

His Principal Speeches and Addresses 
(with Portrait) x v. 

Richard Pryce. 

Miss Maxwell’s Affections 1 v. — The 

Quiet Mrs, Fleming 1 v. — Time and the 

Woman t v. 


Hor. N. Pym, vide Caroline Fox. 


Q (A. T. Quiller-Couch). 

Noughts and Crosses x v. — I Saw Three 
Ships 1 v. — Dead Man’s Rock rv. — Ia 
and other Tales x v. — The Ship of Stars 
iv. 


H. M. the Queen, v:de Victoria R. I. 


W. Fraser Rae. 
Westward by Rail 1 v. — Miss Bayle’s 
Romance 2 v. — The Business of Travel rv. 
C. E. Raimond (Miss Robins), 
The Open Question 2v. 


Author of “The Rajah’s Heir.” 
The Rajah’s Heir 2 v. 


Charles Reade, ¢ 1884. 

**Tt is never too late to mend” 2 v. — 
“Love me little, love me long” x v. — 
The Cloister and the Hearth 2 v. — Hard 
Cash 3 v. — Put Yourself in his Place 2v, — 
A Terrible her Sora 2v. — Peg Wof- 
fington 1 v. — Christie Johnstone x v. — 
A Simpleton 2 v.—The Wandering Heir 
1v. — A Woman-Hater 2v. — Readiana 
1 v. — Singleheart and Doubleface x v. 


Author of “Recommended to 


Mercy” (Mrs. Houstoun). 
“Recommended to Mercy” 2 ¥. — 
Zoe’s “Brand” av. 


with anew 


Mrs. Reeves, vide Helen Mathers. 


Grace Rhys. 
Mary Dominic rv. 


James Rice, vide Walter Besant 


Alfred Bate Richards, ¢ 1876. 

So very Human 3 v. 

S. Richardson, t 1761. 
Clarissa Harlowe 4 v. 

Mrs. Riddell (F. G. Trafford). 
George Geith of Fen Court 2 v. — Mar- 
well Drewitt 2v. — The Race for Wealth 
2v.— Far above Rubies 2 v.— The Earl’s 
Promise 2 v. — Mortomley’s Estate 2 v. 
Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie, vide 
Miss Thackeray. 


Miss Roberts, vide Author of 
“Mademoiselle Mori.” 
Rev. Frederick W. Robertson, 
t 1853. 

Sermons ¢ v. 
Miss Robins, vide Raimond. 
F. Robinson, ‘vide Author of “No 
Church.” 
Charles H. Ross. 
The Pretty Widow xv. — A London 


Romance 2 v. 
Martin Ross, vide Somerville. 


Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ¢ 1882. - 
Poems x v. — Ballads and Sonnets rv. 


“Roy Tellet.” 
The Outcasts x v.— A Dranght of 
Lethe x v. — Pastor and Prelate 2 v. 


J. Ruffini, ¢ 1881. 

Lavinia 2 v. — Doctor Antonio 1 vy. — 
Lorenzo Benoni 1 v. — Vincenzo 2 v. ~ 
A Quiet Nook in the Jura x v. — The 
Paragreens on a Visit to Paris xv, — 
Carlino, and other Stories x v. 


W. Clark Russell. 
A Sailor’s Sweetheart 2 v. — The 
‘Lady Maud” 2v. — A Sea Queen 2 v. 
George W. E. Russell. 


Collections and Recollections. By One 
who has kept a Diary 2 v, 


Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 


George Augustus Sala, { 1895. 
The Seven Sons of Mammon ¢ v. 


John Saunders. 
Israel Mort, Overman 2 v. — The 
Shipowner’s Daughter 2 v. — A Noble 
Wife 2 v. 


Katherine Saunders (Mrs. Cooper). 

Joan Merryweather, and other Tales 
x v. — Gideon’s Rock, and other Tales 
1v. — The High Mills s v. — Sebastian 1 v. 


Col Richard Henry Savage ase 
My Official Wife x v. — The Little Lady 
of Lagunitas (with Portrait) 2v. — Prince 
Schamyl’s Wooing 1 v. — The Masked 
Venus 2 v. — Delilah of Harlem 2 v. —The 
Anarchist 2 v.— A Daughter of Judas 
Sra raeviainee: iv. — Miss 
jevereux 0} i y 
Through 2 v. — A Modern Corsair 2 v. — 
In the Swim 2 v. — The White Lady of 
inavatka 2 v. 


Olive Schreiner. 
Trooper Peter Halket of Mashona- 
land 1 v. 


Sir Walter Scott, ¢ 1832. 

Waverley (with Portrait) 1 v. — The 
Antiquary 1 v. — Ivanhoe 1 v. — Kenil- 
worth 1v. — Quentis Durward: v,. — Old 
Mortality x v. — Guy Mannering 1 v. — 
Rob Roy 1 v. — The Pirate 1 v. — The 
Fortunes of Nigel x v. — The Black Dwarf; 
A Legend of Montrose x v. — The Bride 
of Lammermoor v. — The Heart of Mid- 
Lothian 2 v. — The Monastery 1 v. — The 
Abbot 1 v. — Peveril of the Peak 2v. — 
Poetical Works 2 v. — Woodstock 1v. — 
The Fair Maid of Perth 1 v. — Anne of 
Geierstein x v. 


Prof. J. R. Seeley, M.A., ¢ 1895. 

Life and Times of Stein (with a Portrait 
of Stein) 4 v. — The Expansion of Eng- 
land x v. — Goethe 1 v. 


Elizabeth Sewell 
Amy Herbert 2 v. — Ursula av.—A 
Saag oko the World 2 v. — The Journal 
of a Home Life 2 v. — After Life 2v. — 
The Experience of Life 2 v. 


William Shakespeare, { 1616. 

Playsand Poems (with Portrait) (Second 
Bdition) 7 v. — Doubtfal Plays x v. 

Shakespeare's Plays may be had in 
37 numbers, at 4 0,30. each number, 


William Sharp, v. Miss Howard. 


25 


Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘{ 1822. 
A Selection from his Poems 1 v. 
Nathan Sheppard (Am.), + 1888. 
Shut up in Paris x v. 
Richard BrinsleySheridan, { 1816. 
The Dramatic Works x v. 
J. Henry Shorthouse. 
John Inglesant 2 v. — Blanche, Lady 
ry, 


Falaise 1 v. 
Rudolf C. Slatin Pasha, C.B. 
Fire and Sword in the Sudan (with 
two Maps in Colours) 3 v. 
F. E. Smedley, wide Author of 
“Frank Fairlegh.” 


Tobias Smollett, ¢ 1771. 
Roderick Random 1 v. — Humphry 
Clinker x v. — Peregrine Pickle 2 v. 
Anthor of “Society in London.” 

Society in London. By a Foreign 
Resident 1 v. 

E. CZ. Somerville & Martin Ross. 

Naboth’s Vineyard r v. 

Author of“ The Spanish Brothers.” 

The Spanish Brothers 2 v. 

Earl Stanhope (Lord Mahon), 

ft 1875. 

The History of England 7 v. — Reign 
of Queen Anno 2 v. 

G. W. Steevens, ¢ 1900. 

From Capetown to Ladysmith x v. 

Laurence Sterne, ¢ 1768. 

Tristram Shandy 1 v. — A Sentimental 
Journey (with Portrait) x v. 

Robest Louis Stevenson, + 1894. 

Treasure Island 1 v. — Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde, and An Inland Voyage x v. — 
Kidnapped 1 v. — The Black Arrow 1 v. — 
The Master of Ballantrae r y.— The Merry 
Men, etc. 1 v. — Across the Plains, etc. 1 v. 
— Island Nights’ Entertainments x v. — 
Catriona 1v. —Weir of Hermiston 1 v. — 
St. Ives 2 v. — In the South Seas 2 v. 

Author of “Still Waters” (Mrs. 
Paul). 

Still Waters 1 v. — Dorothy 1 v. — De 
Cressy x v.— Uncle Ralph 1 v.— Maiden 
Sisters z v. — Martha Brown rv.— Vanessa 
Iv. 

M. C. Stirling, vide G. M. Craik, 
Frank R. Stockton (Am.), 
The House of Martha x v, 


26 


Tauchnits Edition. 


Complete List. 


Author of “The Story of a Penitent 


Soul.” 

The Story of a Penitent Soul x v. 
Authorof“The Story of Elizabeth,” 
vide Miss Thackeray. 

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe 

(Am.), f 1896. 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (with Portrait) 2 v.— 
A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin 2 v. — Dred 
2v. — Tho Minister’s Wooing 1 v. — Old- 
town Folks 2 v. 

Author of “Sunbeam Stories,” 

vide Mrs. Mackarnees. 


Jonathan Swift (Dean Swift), 


t 1745. 

Galliver’s Travels x v. 
John Addington Symonds, + 1893. 
Sketches in Italy x v. — New Italian 


Sketches x v. 
S.G. Tallentyre, v. H.S. Merriman. 


Tasma. 
Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill 2 v. 
Baroness Tautphoeus, ¢ 1893. 


Cyrilla 2 v. — The Initials 2 v. — Quits 
av. — At Odds 2 v. 


Col. Meadows Taylor, + 1876. 
Tara; a Mabratta Tale 3 v. 


Templeton, wide Author of 
“Horace Templeton.” 


Serabraaee Tennyson, t+ 1892. 
Poetical Works 8 v. — Queen 

x1 v. — Harold x v. — Becket; The Cup; 
The Falcon 1 v. — Locksley Hall , sixty 
Years after ; The Promise of May ; Tiresias 
and other Poems x v.— A Memoir. By 
His Son (with Portrait) 4 v. 


The New Testament, vide New. 


William Makepeace Thackeray, 
1863. 

Vanity Fair 3 v. — Pendennis 3 v. — 
Miscellanies 8 ¥. — Henry Esmond 2v. — 
The English Humonurists of the Eighteenth 
Century 1 v. — The Newcomes 4v. — The 
Virginians 4 v.— The Four Georges; 
Lovelthe Widower 1 v. — The Adventures 
of Philip 2 v. — Denis Duval x v. — 
Roundabout Papers 2 v. — Catherine 
rv. —The Irish Sketch Book 2v. — The 
Paris Sketch Book (with Portrait) 2 v. 


Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie). 
The Story of Elizabeth 1 v.—The Village 
on the Cliff xv. — Old Kensington 2 v. — 
Bluebeard’s Keys, and other Stories 1 v. — 
Five Old Friends: v. — Miss Angel x v. — 
Ost of the World, and other Tales xv. — 
FulhamLawn, andother Tales rv. — From 
an Island. A Story and some Easays 1 v. — 
~ Capo, os — ie Iv. i a 
Sévigné; From a Stage Box; 
Williamson’s Divagations 1 v. — A Book 
of Sibyls x v. — Mrs. Dymond 2 v. — 
Chapters from some Memoirs x v. 
Thomas a Kempis, vide Kempis. 
A. Thomas (Mrs. Pender Cudlip). 
Denis Donne 2 v. — On Guard 2 v. — 
Walter Goring 2 v. — Played Out 2 v. — 
Called to Account 2 v. — Only Herself 
2v. — A Narrow Escape 2 v. 
James Thomeon, + 1748. 
Poetical Works (with Portrait) xv. 
Author of “Thoth.” 
Thoth x v. 
Author of “Tim.” 
Tim xv. 

F. G. Trafford, vide Mrs. Riddell 
Right Hon. Sir George Otto 
Trevelyan. 

The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay 
se Portrait) 4 v. — Selections from the 

ritings of Lord Macaulay 2 v. — The 
American Revolution (with a Map) 2 v. 

Trois-Etoiles, vide Grenville: 

Murray. 
Anthony Trollope, + 1882. 

Doctor Thorne 2 v. —The Bertrams 
2 v.— The Warden x v. — Barchester 
Towers2 v. — Castle Richmond 2 v. — The 
West Indies x v. — Framley Parsonage 2 v. 
— North America 3 v. — Orley Farm 3 v. 
— Rachel Ray 2 v. — The Small House 
at Allin v. — Can you forgive her? 

v. — The m Estate 2 v. — Nina 
Baiatka xv. — The Last Chronicle of 
Barset 3 v.—The Claverings 2v. — Phineas 


Finn 3v. — He knew he was right 3 v. — 
The of Bullham 2v.— ic iarey 
Hotspur of Humblethwaite r vy. — Ralp 


the Heir 2 v. — The Golden Lion of 
Granpere x v. — Australia and New Zea- 
land 3 v. — Lady Anna 2 v. — Harry 
H te of Gangoil x v. — The Way we 
live now 4 v. — The Prime Minister 4 v. — 
The American Senator 3 v.— South héica 
av. — Is He Popenjoy? 3 v. — An Eyo for 


Tauchnits Edition. 


an Eye x v. — John Caldigate 3 v. — Cousin 
Hen: seg edict rears Ban 
Dr. Wortle’s School: v. — Ayala’s 
3v.—The Fixed Period r v. — Marion Fay 
av. — Kept in the Dark xv. — Frau Froh- 
mann, other Stories z v. — Alice Dug- 
dale, and other Stories x v. — La Mére 
Bauche, and other Stories r v. — The 
Mistletoe Bough, and other Stories r v. — 
An Autobiography 1 v. — An Old Man’s 
Love x v. 


T. Adolphus Trollope, + 1892. 
Th f 
Se ter ar of Garstang 2v 
Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) 
(Am.). 
The eee of ae Sa Iv 


The Innocents Abroad; or, The New 
ims’ Progress 2 v. —A Tramp Abroad 
av. — “Roughing it”? x v. — The In- 
nocents at Home x v. — The and 
the Pauper 2 v. — The Stolen White 
hant, etc. 1 v. — Life on the Mis- 
i 2 v. — Sketches (with Portrait) 
1 v. — Huckleberry Finn 2 v. — Selections 
from American Humonr rv. — A Yankees 
at the Court of King Arthur 2 v. — The 
American Claimant x v. — The £ 1 c00 000 
Bank-Note and other new Stories x v. — 
Tom Sawyer Abroad 1 v. — Pudd’nhead 
Wilson 1 v. — Personal Recollections of 
Joan of Arc 2v.—TomSa , Detective, 
and other Tales 1 v. — More Tramps 
Abroad 2 v. — The Man that 
Hadleyburg, etc. 2 v. 
Author of “The Two Cosmos.” 

The Two Cosmos x v. 

Author of “Venus and Cupid.” 

Venus and Cupid 1 v. 

Author of “Véra.” 
Vara rv.— The H6tel du Petit St. 
‘ean x v. — Blue Roses 2 v. — Within 
and of the Sea 2v. — The Maritime 
Alps and their Seaboard 2 v.—Ninette 1 v. 
Victoria R. I. 

Leaves from the Journal of our Life in 
the Highlands from 1848 to 1861 1 v. ~ 
More Leaves, etc, from 1862 to 1882 1 v. 

Author of “Virginia.” 
Iv. 
Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. 

With Zola in England x v. 

L. B. Walford. 

Mr. Smith 2¥. — Pauline 2 v. — Cousins 

2 v. — Troublesome Daughters 2 v. — 


Leddy Marget 1 v. 


Complete List. 


D. Mackenzie Wallace. 
3v- 
Lew. Wallace (Am.). 
Ben-Hur 2 v. 
Eliot Warburton, 
The Crescent and the 
Darien 2 v. 
Mrs. Humphry Ward. 


Robert Elsmere 3 v. — David Grieve 
v. — Miss Bretherton 1 v. — Marcella 3 v. 


27 


1852. 


2 


Costrell 1 v. — Sir George Tressady 
2 v.— Helbeck of Bannisdale 2: v. — 
Eleanor 2 v. 


Susan Warner, vide Wetherell. 


Samuel Warren, f 1877. 
Diary of a late Physician 2 v. — Ten 
Thousand a-Year 3 v. — Now and Then 
1 v. — The Lily and the Bee 1 v. 


Author of “The Waterdale Neigh- 
bours,” wide Justin M¢Carthy. 
Theodore Watts-Dunton. 

Aylwin 2 v. 

H. G. Wells. 

The Stolen Bacillus, etc. r v. — The 
War of the Worlds x v. — The Invisible 
Man 1 v. — The Time Machine, and The 
RETF of Dore Morean Se vi hewe 
the Sleeper Wakes x v.— es of Space 
and Time r v. — The Plattner Story, and 
Others x v. — Love and Mr. Lewisham r v, 


Hugh Westbury. 
Acte 2 v. 
Elizabeth Wetherell (Susan War- 
ner) ay t 1885. 
The wide, wide World x v. — Queechy 
av. — The Hills of the Shatemuc zv. — 
Say and Seal sv. — The Old Helmet sv. 


Stanley J. Weyman. 

The House of the Wolf x v. —The Story 
of Francis Cladde 2 v. — A Gentleman of 
France 2 v. — The Man in Black x v. — 
Under the Red Robe 1 v. — My Lady 
Rotha 2 v. —From the Memoirs of a Minis- 
ter of France 1 v. — The Red Cockade 2 v. 
2 v. — The Castle Inn 2 v. 


Author of “A Whim, and its Con- 
sequences.” 
A Whim, and its Consequences x v. 
Beatrice Whitby. 


The Awakening of Mary Fenwick 2 y. — 
In the Suntime of ber Youth 2 v. 


28 Tauchnits Edition. Complete List. 
ercy Whi 2 v. — Pomeroy Abbey 2 v. — Court 
Mr ste ve Netherleigh 2 v. — (The following by 
. Walter White. Johnny Ludlow): Lost in the Post, and 
other Tales x v. — A Tale of Sin, and other 
Holidays in Tyrol 1 v. Tales 1 v. — Anne, and other Tales 1 ¥.— 


Richard Whiteing. 

The Island; or, An Adventure of a Per- 
son of Quality 1 v. —No. 5 John Street 1 v. 
— The Life of Paris 1 v. 

Sidney Whitman. 

Imperial Germany x v. — The Realm 
of the Habsburgs x v. — Teuton Studies 
1wv— are ae Lad King of 
Roumania, edited idne itman Iv. 
— Conversations oish Prieto Bismarck, 
edited by Sidney Whitman x v. 

George J. Whyte Melville, vide 
Melville. 
Author of “Who Breaks— Pays,” 
vide Mra. Jenkin. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin (Am.). 

Timotby’s ee x1 v.— A Cathedral 
Courtship, and Penelope’s English Ex- 
periences x v. 

Mary E. Wilkins (Am.). 

Pembroke x v. — Madelon x v. — 
Jerome 2 v.—Silence, and other Stories rv. 
— The Love of Parson Lord, etc. x v. 

C. J. Wills, vide F. C Philips. 

Mrs. J. S. Winter. 

Regimental Legends r v. 


Charles Wood, vide Author of 
“Buried Alone.” 


H. F. Wood. 

The Passenger from Scotland Yard 1 v. 
Mrs. Henry Wood (Johnny Lud- 
low), + 1887. 

East ne 3 v. — The Channings 2 v. — 
Mrs. Hallibarton’s Troubles 2 v. — 
Verner’s Pride 3 v. — The Shadow of 
Ashlydyat 3 v. — Trevlyn Hold 2 v. — 
Lord Oakburn’s Daughters 2 v. — Oswald 
Cray 2 v. — Mildred Arkell 2 v. — St. 
Martin’s Eve 2v. — Elster’s Folly 2v. — 
Lady Adelaide’s Oathav.—OrvilleCollege 
rv.—A Life’s Secret 1 v.—The Red Court 
Farm 2v. — Anne Hereford 2 v. — Roland 
Yorke 2 v. — George Canterbury’s Will 
2v.— Rane 2 v. — Dene Hollow 
2v.— Tho Foggy Night at Offord; Martyn 
Ware’s Temptation; The Night-Walk 
over the Mill Stream x v. — Within the 
Mazo 2 v.—TheMaster of Greylands 2 v.— 
Jobnny Ludlow 2 v. — Told in the Twilight 
av. — Adam Grainger x v. — Edina 


The Mystery of Jessy Page, and otherTales 
rv. — Helen itney’s Wedding, and 
other Tales x v. — The Story of Dorothy 
Grape, and other Tales 1 v. 
Margaret L. Woods. 

A Village Tragedy x v. — Tho Vaga- 
bonds x v. 

William Wordsworth, + 1850. 

Select Poetical Works 2 v. 

Lascelles Wraxall, ¢ 1865. 
Wild Oats x v. 
Edmund Yates, + 1894. 

Land at Last 2 v.—Broken to Harness 2 v. 
— The Forlorn Hope 2 v. — Black Sheep 
2v. — The Rock Ahead 2 v. —Wrecked in 
Port 2 v.— Dr. Wainwright’s Patient 2 v. 
— Nobody’s Fortune 2 v. — Castaway 2v. 
— AWaiting Raco 2 v. —The yellow Flag 
2 v. — The Impending Sword 2 v. — Two, 

Tricks x v. — A silent Witness 2 v. — 
ecollections and Experiences 2 v. 
Yeats, vide Levett-Yeats. 
Charlotte M. Yonge. 

The Heir of Redclyfte 2 v. — Hearts- 

ease 2 v. — The Dai 


2v.— 
Dynevor Terrace 2 v. — Hopes and Fears 
2 v. — The Young Step-Mother 2 v. — 


The Trial 2 v. — The Clever Woman of 
the Family 2 v. — The Dove in the a" 
Nest 2 v. — The Danvers rapes: C) 
Prince and the Page 1 v. — The Chaplet 
of Pearls 2 v. — The two Guardians x v. — 
The Caged Lion 2 v.— The Pillars of the 
House 5 v. — Lady Hester x v. — My 
Young Alcides 2 v. — The three Brides 
2v.— Womankind 2 v. — Magnum Bonum 
2 v. — Love and Life x v. — Unknown 
to History 2 v.— Stray Pearls (with 
Portrait) 2 v. — Tho Armonurer’s Prentices 
2v. — The two Sides of the Shield 2 v. — 
Nuttie’s Father 2 v. — Beechcroft at 
Rockstone 2 v.— A Reputed Changeling 
2 v. — Two Penniless Princesses x v. — 
That Stick xv. — Grisly Grisell x v. — 
The Long Vacation 2 v. 

Author of “Young Mistley,” vide 


Henry Seton Merriman. 
I. Zangwill. 
Dreamers of the Ghetto 2 v. 


“Z. Zo” 
The World and a Man 2 v, 


Series for the Young. 


30 Volumes. Published with Continental Copyright on the same 
conditions as the Collection of English and American Authors. Vide p.1. 


— Price 1 M. 60 Pf. or 2 Fr. per Volume. — 


Lady Barker (Lady Broome). 
Stories About :— x v. 
MariaLouisaCharlesworth,{ 1880, 
Ministering Children x v. 
Mrs. Craik (Miss Mulock), pepate 
Our Year x v. — Three Tales 
1 v. — Three Tales for Girls x v. 
Georgiana M. Craik (Mrs. May). 
Cousin Triz, and her welcome Tales: v. 
Maria Edgeworth, + 1849. 
Moral Tales x v. — Popular Tales 2 v. 
Bridget & Julia Kavanagh, + 1877. 
The Pearl Fountain, and other Fairy- 
Tales x v. 
Charles & Mary Lamb, 
} 1834 and 1847. 
Tales from Shakspeare x v. 
Captain Many ets { 1848. 
Masterman Ready x 


Mrs. Emma marsbal { 1899. 
Rez and Regina 1 v 


Florence Mon‘ ery. 

The Town-Crier; to which is added: 

ape Children with the Indian-Rubber 
Iv. 


Author of “ Ruth and her Friends.” 
Roth and berFriends. AStory forGirls rv. 


Mrs. Henry Wood, ¢ 1887, 
William Allair x v. 


Charlotte M. Yonge. 

Kenneth; or, the Rear-Guard of the 
Grand x v. — The Little Duke. 
Ben Sylvester’s Word 1 v. — The 
Stokesley Secret 1 v. — Countess Kate v. 
— A Book of Golden Deeds 2 v. — Friars- 
wood Post-Office x v. — Henrietta’s Wish 
rv. — Ki of England x v. — The 
Lances of Lynwood ; the Pigeon Pie x v. 
—P’sandQ’sr v.—AuntChariotte’sStories 
oitogiieh ry 1 v. — Bye- Words rv.— 

Lads and Lasses of Langley, etc. x v. 


Collection of German Authors. 


51 Volumes. Translations from the German, published with universal 
copyright. These volumes may be imported into any country. 


— Price 1 M. 60 Pf. or 2 Fr. per Volume. — 


Berthold Auerbach, + 1882. 


On the Heights, (Second Hdstion)3v. — 


‘Brigitta x v. — Spinoza 2 v. 


Georg Ebers, + 1898. 
An Egyptian Princess 2 v. — Uarda 


2v. — Homo Sum 2v. —The Sisters [Dio 
Schwestern) 2 v. — Joshua 2 v. — Per 


Aspera 2 v. 
De la Motte Fouqué, f 1843. 
Undine, Sintram, ete. x v. 
Ferdinand Freiligrath, + 1876, 
Poems (Second Edstson) 1 v. 
Wilhelm G6rlach. 
Prince Bismarck (with Portrait) 1 v. 


W. v. Goethe, ¢ 1832. 
Faust x v. — Wilhelm Meister’s Ap- 
prenticeship 2 v. 
Karl Gutzkow, { 1878. 
Through Night to Light x v. 
F. W. Hacklander, ¢ 1877. 
Behind the Counter [Handel und 
Wandel] x v. 
Wilhelm Hauff, ¢ 1827. 
Three Tales 1 v. 
Paul Heyse. 
L’ Arrabiata, etc. 1 v. —TheDead Lako, 
etc. x v. — Barbarossa, etc. x v. 
Wilhelmine von Hillern. 
The Vulture Maiden [die Geier-Wally] 
1 vy. — The Hour will come 2 v, 


30 Tauchnits Ed:tion. Collection of German Authors, Students’ Series. 


Salomon Kohn. 
Gabriel x v. 


G. E. Leasing, ¢ 1781. 
Nathan the Wise and Emilia Galottiz v. 


Fanny Lewald, ¢ 1889. 
Stella 3 v. 


E. Marlitt, + 1887. 
The ere of the (das Haide- 
2. 


Frits Reuter, t 1874. 
In the Year ’r31 v. — An old Story 
of my farming Days (Ut mine Stromtid] 3 v. 


J.P. Friedrich Richter (Jean Paul), 
1825. 
Flower, Fruit and Tien Piecesav. | 


Victor von Scheffel, ¢ 1886. 
Ekkehard s v. 


George Taylor. 
Klytia 3 v. 
Heinrich Zechokke, + 1848. 
The Princess of B: -Wolfen- 


bilttel, etc. x v. 


Students’ Series for School, College, and Home. 
Ausgaben 


mit deutschen Anmerkungen und Special-Wérterbiichern. 
Br.«=Broschiert, Kart. == Kartoniert. 


Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, 


t 1873. 
The Lady of Lyons. Von Dr. cole 
Bischoff. Br. 4 0,50. Kart. 0,60 


Frances Hodgson Burnett ney 

Little Lord Fauntleroy. Von Dr. Arnst 
Groth. Br. 41,90. Kart. 4 1,60.— An- 
merkungen und Wirterbuch. Br. .4 0,40. 


Thomas Carlyle, + 1881. 


The Reign of Terror (French Revo- 
lution). Von Dr. Ludwig Herrig. Br. 
41%,00. Kart. @ 1,10. 

Mre. Craik (Miss Mulock), t 1887. 

A Hero. A Tale for Boys. Von Dr. 
Otte Dost. Br. & 0,80. Kart. & 0,90.— 
Wirterboch. Br. 4 0,40. 

Charles Dickens, + 1870. 

Sketches. First Series. Won Dr. 4. 
oi Br. 41,30. Kart. 4 1,30. 

etches. Second Series. Von Dr. A. 

oppe. Br. Mi, 38 Kart..@1,50.— Wrter- 

cet ch (iitind’s oes pea Br. ryan 
Carol in Prose. 


© Gow Stat of Citeaanioatie 
G. Tanger. » M 1,00. Kart. @ 1,10. 
George Eliot (Miss Evans—Mrs, 
Cross), + 1880. 
The Mill on the Floss. Von Dr. 2. 
Conrad. Br. 1,70. Kart. @ 1,80. 


Juliana Horatia Ewing, { 1885. 
Jackanapes. Von Z. Roes. Br. 40,50. 
Kart, 4 60.— W5rterbuch. Br. .4 0,30. 
The Brownies; and The Land of Lost 
Toys. Von Dr. A, Miller, Br. & 0,60. 
Kart. #4 9470. .— Wérterbuch Br. 4 0,30. 
Timothy’s Shoes; An Idyll of the 
Wood ; Benjyin Beastland. Von Z. Roos. 
Br. 4“ 0,70. Kart. 0,80. — Wéarter- 
buch. Br. 4 0,30. 
Benjamin Franklin (Am.), ¢ 1790. 


His Autobiography. Von Dr. Kari 
Feyerabend, 1. Teil. Die eaiie 


(3706-3730). Br. Br. 1,00. 
Mannesjabre (x 
3ST) Mit i ler pBeten t The Way to 
. Karl Feyerabend. 
Br. & 3,20. rues 4 1,30. 
Edward A. Freeman, + 1892. 
Three Historical Essays. Von Dr. C. 
Balser. Br. & 0,70. & 0,80, 
Bret Harte (Am.). 
Tales of the Argonauts. Von Dr. G. 
Tanger. Br. 41,40. Kart. @ 1,50. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne (An). 
Wonder Book for Boys and Girls. Von 
Z. Ross. Br. 40,70. Kart. 4 0,80. — 
Anmerkungen und ‘buch. Br. 40,40. 


Thomas Hughes, + 1898. 


Tom Brown's School Days. Von Dr. 7. 
Kart. 


Schmidt. 2 Parts. Br. 3,00. 


Ty : | “Pes Crain. 9 ise 
. 7 nS © ou? Lam. Ore 


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