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.