[104] It is generally believed that the famous vow of Louis XIII., placing his kingdom under the protection of the Virgin, was made on account of Anne of Austria’s pregnancy. It was not so. The Queen’s condition was manifest in January, 1638, and “the declaration for the protection of the Virgin” is of December, 1637. It was made “on account of gratitude for so many evident favours accorded to the King.”—Lettres et Papiers de Richelieu, vol. v. p. 908.
[105] Richelieu left Ruel at the end of July, and went successively to Amiens, Abbeville, Ham, and Saint-Quentin. It was in this last town that he learnt the happy event and went at once to the church with a grand cortège. “He heard mass sung there by his chaplain, then the Te Deum and the Domine salvum.” He then wrote to the King and Queen to congratulate them.—Gazette de France, p. 535; Lettres et Papiers de Richelieu, vol. vi. p. 75, et seq. The 2nd October, Richelieu left the army to return to Saint-Germain. “The King arrived on Wednesday at Saint-Germain, whither the Cardinal-duke repaired from our armies the same day and almost the same hour as his Majesty, whom he found in the room of Monseigneur the Dauphin, where the Queen also was. It would be difficult to express with what transports of joy his eminence was seized on seeing between the father and the mother this admirable child, the object of his desires and the limit of his content.”—Gazette de France, p. 580.
[106] At this part of his work, M. Topin has thought it necessary for his argument to dwell on certain medical details, which, out of delicacy to English readers, I have preferred to suppress.—Trans.
[107] In the account we have reproduced in Chap. I. See p. 15 ante.
CHAPTER V.
Motives which hinder one from admitting the Existence, the Arrest and the Imprisonment of a mysterious Son of Anne of Austria—The Period at which he is said to have been handed over to Saint-Mars, according to the Authors of this Theory, cannot be reconciled with any of the Dates at which Prisoners were sent to this Gaoler—Other Considerations which formally oppose even the Probability of the Theory that makes the Man with the Iron Mask a Brother of Louis XIV.
Let us forget the scenes that have just been recalled. Let us cease for an instant to take into account proofs brought forward and considerations advanced, and consent to admit each of the assertions previously combated. This mysterious son of Anne of Austria came into the world either in 1629, having Buckingham for father; or, in 1631, on account of the danger that the life of Louis XIII. was in; or else in 1638, some hours after the birth of a brother. He exists. Received by an agent as devoted as discreet, he has been brought up in the country, the resemblance which reveals his high origin has been successfully hidden from every one, and his person placed in security from all investigations. But at what period was he imprisoned, and for what cause? Of his youth, of his early years, passed in the obscurity of a retreat far from the court, there are no traces, and there is no reason for surprise at this. But as soon as he becomes the famous prisoner whom Saint-Mars brought in 1698 from the Isles Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille, we have the right to ask, and we must seek when, how, and under what circumstances he was arrested and confided to his gaoler.
It would be to a certain extent probable that, left at liberty as long as his mother was alive, he was imprisoned only after her death. But Anne of Austria dies on January 20, 1666, and Saint-Mars receives no prisoner. Does the arrest date, as Voltaire affirms, from the year 1661, when Mazarin died? But Saint-Mars was then, and was to remain for three years, a brigadier of musketeers; and it is in December, 1664, that D’Artagnan, his captain, points him out to the choice of Louis XIV. as governor of the prison of Pignerol, whither, a month afterwards, Fouquet is taken and confided to his vigilant guardianship. On August 20, 1669, a second prisoner, Eustache d’Auger, arrives; but he is only an obscure spy, and is soon placed with Fouquet to serve him as a domestic. Would one have charged with this care,—would one have placed in the service of Fouquet, who, during the whole of his life had lived near Louis XIV. and Anne of Austria, a prince whose features recalled those of the King? No other prisoner is brought to Saint-Mars until the arrival of the Count de Lauzun in 1671. Since then, and from time to time, others are confided to him, but we know their crimes or their offences, are not ignorant of the causes of their arrest, and see them rather badly treated; and when, in 1681, Saint-Mars passes from the governorship of Pignerol to that of the fortress of Exiles, he only takes with him two prisoners, of whom he speaks contemptuously as “two crows.”[108] At Exiles as at Pignerol—at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, of which Saint-Mars was in 1687 appointed governor, as at Exiles—if fresh culprits are confided to him, we know to what motive to attribute their detention, and nothing in their past, nothing in the treatment of which they are the object, nothing in their actions, allows us to suspect in any one of them a brother of Louis XIV. Certainly, one would hardly expect to find a despatch designating one of Saint-Mars’ prisoners by the title of prince, and in order to be convinced we do not exact anything of the kind. But when, examining, one by one, each of the captives sent to the future governor of the Bastille, and amongst whom is necessarily the one that he traversed France with in 1698, we account for the causes of their arrest, and penetrate into their past; when a hundred authentic despatches[109] enable us to affirm that there are no other prisoners besides these, are we not justified in demanding where, then, is the son of Anne of Austria?
This famous despatch, a fragment of which was timidly quoted some years ago in a work from which it has since been omitted,[110]—this despatch, in the existence of which criticism had concluded to disbelieve,[111] and which is of capital importance, actually does exist and is authentic. It was dictated by Barbézieux,[112] and addressed to Saint-Mars, at the moment when the latter had under his guardianship the prisoner whom he was to take with him to the Bastille, and who died there in 1703:—
“Monsieur—I have received, with your letter of the 10th of this month, the copy of that which Monsieur de Pontchartrain has written to you concerning the prisoners who are at the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, upon orders of the King, signed by him, or of the late Monsieur de Seignelay. You have no other rules of conduct to follow with respect to all those who are confided to your keeping beyond continuing to look to their security, without explaining yourself to any one whatever about what your old prisoner HAS DONE.”[113]