Note 13 — Chapter I

We shall speak of these briefly further on. We believe it useless to mention, otherwise than in a short note, the opinion of those who, despairing of finding the solution of the Man with the Iron Mask, have taken upon themselves to deny his existence. All the documents which we have just cited (official despatches of the Ministry of War, Dujonca’s Journal, &c. &c.) clearly establish the fact that a prisoner was sent with Saint-Mars to the Bastille in 1698, and that he died there in 1703, without any one ever having known his name. The silence of the Mémoires de Saint-Simon, which is very thoughtlessly evoked in support of the theory in question, will be explained very naturally in the course of this work. Neither is there any need to enlarge upon an opinion put forward a short time since in certain journals, which makes the Man with the Iron Mask a son of Louis XIV. and the Duchess of Orléans. This opinion, which there is nothing whatever to prove, which rests upon no document, nor even upon any historical fact, is, moreover, set forth in an article filled with errors. The only cause of the disgrace of the Marquis de Vardes, exiled to his government of Aigues-Mortes, was an intrigue in which he played an important part, and which had for its object the overthrow of Mademoiselle de la Vallière and the substitution of another mistress for her. As to the death of the Duchess of Orléans, it is now demonstrated that it was not due to poison. M. Mignet, in his Négociations Relatives, à la Succession d’ Espagne (vol. iii. p. 206), was the first to deny this poisoning, relying principally on a very conclusive despatch from Lionne to Colbert, of the 1st July, 1670. Since then, M. Littré, in the second number of La Philosophie Positive, has incontestably established by the examination of the procès-verbaux, and of all the circumstances relating to the death of Henrietta of England, that it must be attributed to an internal disease, unknown to the physicians of that period. [The Duchess of Orléans here referred to is Henrietta-Maria, youngest daughter of Charles I. of England, who married Philip, younger brother of Louis XIV., and first Duke of the existing branch of the House of Orléans.—Trans.]