THE IRON MASK.
This subject, so inexhaustible, so interesting on account of the unfathomable mystery that surrounds it, has again been brought to our notice by some recent discoveries. Whether they amount to any thing or not, remains to be seen; but they are at least singular, and may stimulate the curiosity of the erudite, and even that of simple amateurs.
A young writer, M. Maurice Topin, so says a contemporary French paper, who has obtained a prize of six hundred dollars from the French Academy for his beautiful book, entitled, L'Europe et les Bourbons sous Louis XIV., has been diving into old papers among the public archives, and says he has at last found out the true name of the unfortunate prisoner of the Iron Mask.
Following the advice of his uncle, M. Mignet, he has addressed a letter to the President of the Academy of Moral and Political Science, in which he incloses his secret—sealed, however—and says it must not be unsealed without his order.
So some day soon, perhaps, we shall solve the enigma that has perplexed the world for over two centuries.
A monk has lately died, too, somewhere in a French monastery, leaving papers testifying that he was the true Iron Mask. Some say he was deranged. Perhaps so; and perhaps we would rather such might have been the case. A real bona fide, two-hundred-year-old mystery must not succumb to this practical age of would-be common sense. We could never find such another, so we must content ourselves with reviving old facts and eliciting further researches.
He who was called, under the reign of Louis XIV., The Man with the Iron Mask, was not permitted to wear so pretty a covering as that which preserved the complexion of the Empress Poppée; and the painters who have represented him with a sort of lowered visor, a rampart of iron on his face, have made a great mistake.
The unknown prisoner, to whom nobody approached, and nobody spoke, wore a mask of velvet.
The question is not decided upon what he wore on his way from the Isle Ste. Marguerite to the Bastille. Some say his chin was inclosed in a network of steel, to permit him to eat, while the upper part of his face was concealed in the mask of iron.
But this is a mystery, and his early training no less so.
He had been incarcerated a long time at Pignerol, the château of which had served for a prison of state, and since 1632 had belonged to France. The inhabitants still show a large dismantled tower that overlooks the town, and give the tradition concerning the Iron Mask and Fouquet, who were here confined.
They showed the chamber in 1818 that these poor victims inhabited.
After the taking of the Bastille, indications of the Iron Mask were sought for among the registers of this place of detention; but the largest book of records was sadly torn, and the folio numbered one hundred and twenty, coinciding with the year 1698, the epoch of the incarceration of the prisoner, had been taken away.
Later, a leaf was discovered among the papers of a former governor, and here it is, as historians have given it to us:
| Names and qualities of prisoners. | Date of their entrance. | Book. Page. | Motive of their detention. |
| Former prisoner of Pignerol, obliged to wear a velvet mask; his name or quality never known. | 18th of September, 1698, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. | Du Junca, vol. 37 | Never known. |
The date of the entrance of the Iron Mask into the Bastille is preserved at present in the library of the arsenal; and we read:
"Thursday, the 18th of September, 1698, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Monsieur de St. Mars, governor of the Bastille, arrived for the first time from the Isles of Ste. Marguerite and Honorat, bringing with him, in his own litter, an old prisoner he had guarded at Pignerol. His name was not given; he wore a velvet mask; and was first placed in the tower of the Bayimère to await the night, when I was to conduct him myself, at nine P.M., into the tower of the Bertandière, to the third-story room which, by order of M. St. Mars, I had completely furnished for his reception. In conducting him to the said room, I was accompanied by M. Rosarges, who was to serve and guard the prisoner at the government expense."
Here let me state that Du Junca was not a surname given to the prisoner, but the name of the lieutenant of the king at the Bastille. The prisoner was called Marchiali.
The young historian who pretends to have discovered the true name of the Iron Mask has, without doubt, studied all the evidences up to the time of Voltaire, who also knew more than he was willing to impart.
He knew the story of the silver plate connected with the Isle Ste. Marguerite, whose governor was charged by Louis XIV. in person not to permit the prisoner to communicate with any one.
St. Mars waited on him himself, and took the dishes from the cooks at the door of the apartment, so that no one ever saw the face of the captive.
One day the Iron Mask threw a silver plate out of the window into the water-course beneath. A fisherman picked it up and brought it back to the governor.
"Have you read what is written on the bottom of this silver plate?" asked the governor.
"No, sir," replied the fisherman; "I cannot read."
This reply saved the poor man, who doubtless would have paid with his liberty, and even his life, for the possession of the terrible secret, if he had been sufficiently educated to have discovered it.
Another historian, the Abbé Papon, does not believe that the governor said to the fisherman, "Go; you are happy in not being able to read!" He states that, instead of a silver plate, the mysterious prisoner used a white shirt, covered from one end to the other with the written history of his life.
"I had," said he, "the curiosity to enter the chamber of the unfortunate man. It was lighted only by a window to the north, inclosed in a thick wall and cased by three gratings of iron placed at equal distances. This window overlooked the sea. I found in the citadel an officer of the French company, about sixty-nine years old. He told me that his father had often told him in secret that a watchman one day perceived under the window of the prisoner something white floating on the water.... It was a very fine shirt, plaited with negligence, and upon which the prisoner had written from one end to the other.
"The watchman took means to recover it, and carried it to M. de St. Mars, the governor of the Isle Ste. Marguerite.
"He protested that he had read nothing; but two days afterward he was found dead in his bed."
It is said that the Regent of Orleans left the secret of the name of the Iron Mask with his daughter. We give what he related to her, this authority being a pretended governor of the interesting captive. His account may be found in the archives of the English government:
"The unfortunate prince that I raised and guarded," said he, "until the end of my days, was born the 6th of September, 1638, at eight o'clock in the evening, during the supper of the king, Louis XIII. His brother, now reigning, Louis XIV., had been born in the morning at twelve o'clock, during the dinner hour of his father; but as the birth of the first child was splendid and brilliant, that of his brother was most sad and carefully concealed; for the king, advised by the midwife that the queen would bring forth a second child, caused to remain in her chamber the chancellor of France, the midwife, the first almoner, the confessor of the queen, and myself, to be witnesses of what might happen, and of what he would do, if this child should be born alive."
Actors have for many years studied carefully the costume of The Man with the Iron Mask and he who played in the drama by this name, M. Lockroy, is still alive. He personated the prisoner, and was clothed in black velvet, with black stockings and buckled shoes. He wore the double mask of velvet with steel springs over his lips.
In this piece, that all Paris went to see, Chilly represented Louis XIII.; Delaistre, M. de St. Mars; and Ligier, who was afterward the Duke of Gloucester and the Louis XI. of Casimir Delavigne, took the part of the protector of the unfortunate recluse.
Again, under another name—The Prisoner of the Bastille—the same story has been dramatized, and fresh interest added by an imaginary conversation between the captive and Louis XIV.
It is easily seen that the most general opinion of the Iron Mask considered him the twin-brother of Louis XIV., kept out of the way for fear of future trouble and collision in the government of France.
Some authors affirm, too, that he must have been deformed, his face distorted, or with some physical infirmity that it was necessary to conceal.
Others have thought that the brother of Louis XIV., being born the last, was the elder by right, if the opinion of physicians and legislators is to be consulted; and that the tenderness inspired by the first born of the two brothers occasioned the act of ostracism, which history has sought in vain for a hundred years to elucidate.
In 1837, there appeared a remarkable dissertation on the Iron Mask, by M. Paul Lacroix. He says that he who bore the name of Marchiali during his lifetime was not the twin-brother of Louis XIV., and not even a son born clandestinely of the queen, but the superintendent, Fouquet himself.
But the Iron Mask has in turn been believed to be Fouquet, Marchiali, Arwediks, and other people who disappeared about that time.
He, however, who was called Marchiali, and who entered the Bastille the 18th of September, 1698, died there suddenly the 19th of November, 1703.
Very singular precautions were taken after his decease.
The body and face were mutilated, and every thing composing his furniture was burned; even the doors and windows of his bedroom. The silver he used was melted. The walls of his apartment were scraped and re-whitened.
He was buried the 20th of November, 1703, in the Church of St. Paul, under the name of Marchiali.
Time has not given the answer to this lugubrious enigma, and we fear M. Maurice Topin has failed to solve it.
But let us give him his meed of praise for having consecrated his nights to seeking for documents, comparing dates, and confronting the evidence of the most celebrated writers on the subject.
Honor to the brave historian whom the night of time does not intimidate, and who is willing to grope among the shades of the past for what is hidden, and above all a secret of the state!
Among all the victims of the old régimes, The Man with the Iron Mask was the most interesting.
This popular story was in every mouth the day of the taking of the Bastille.
If he had lived until 1789, would it have been a pretender to the crown, or simply a suspected prisoner, that the people would have delivered?
We wait for M. Topin to answer.