MAN OF THE IRON MASK.
“His guardian, De Saint Mars, had been instructed by a royal order, or by an order from certain of the king’s favorites, to take his life immediately, should he attempt to reveal his identity.
“During his confinement on the Marguerite island, De Saint Mars ate and slept in the same room with him, and was always provided with weapons with which to despatch him, should he attempt to discover the secret of his history. If report is true, De Saint Mars might well exercise caution, for it is asserted that he was to forfeit his own life if by any want of watchfulness he allowed the prisoner to reveal his identity.
“The prisoner himself seemed anxious to make the forbidden discovery. He once wrote a word on some linen, and succeeded in communicating what he wished to an individual not in the secret of the mystery. But the ruse was discovered, and the person that received the linen died suddenly, being taken off, it was supposed, by poison. He once engraved something, probably his name, on a piece of silver plate. The person to whom it was conveyed was detected in his knowledge of the secret, and soon after died, as suddenly and mysteriously as the one who had received the linen.
“These incidents indicate that the prisoner was a man of shrewdness and learning.
“He was attended, during his imprisonment in the Bastile, by the governor of the fortress, who alone administered to his wants; and when he attended mass he was always followed by a detachment of invalides (French soldiers), who were instructed to fire upon him in case he should speak or attempt to uncover his face.
“These circumstances, and many others of like character, show that he was a person of very eminent rank, and that those who thus shut him out from mankind were conscious that they were committing a crime of no ordinary magnitude.
“Who, then, was this person of mystery, familiarly known as the Man of the Iron Mask?
“He is supposed by many to have been a son of Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, and consequently a half-brother of Louis XIV., and a co-heir to the throne of France. If so, it would appear, that, while Louis XIV. was luxuriating amid the splendors of the palace of Versailles, his brother was suffering the miseries of exile, or languishing in a dungeon, shut out not only from the outward world, but from all intercourse with mankind. But other writers think him to have been some less remarkable person.