he birth of the
Iron Mask undeceived her. The cardinal, to whom she confided her secret,
cleverly arranged to bring the king and queen, who had long lived apart,
together again. A second son was the result of this reconciliation; and
the first child being removed in secret, Louis XIV remained in ignorance
of the existence of his half-brother till after his majority. It was the
policy of Louis XIV to affect a great respect for the royal house, so he
avoided much embarrassment to himself and a scandal affecting the memory
of Anne of Austria by adopting the wise and just measure of burying
alive the pledge of an adulterous love. He was thus enabled to avoid
committing an act of cruelty, which a sovereign less conscientious and
less magnanimous would have considered a necessity.

After this declaration Voltaire made no further reference to the Iron
Mask. This last version of the story upset that of Sainte-Foix. Voltaire
having been initiated into the state secret by the Marquis de Richelieu,
we may be permitted to suspect that being naturally indiscreet he
published the truth from behind the shelter of a pseudonym, or at least
gave a version which approached the truth, but later on realising
the dangerous significance of his words, he preserved for the future
complete silence.

We now approach the question whether the prince who thus became the Iron
Mask was an illegitimate brother or a twin-brother of Louis XIV. The
first was maintained by M. Quentin-Crawfurd; the second by Abbe Soulavie
in his 'Memoires du Marechal Duc de Richelieu' (London, 1790). In 1783
the Marquis de Luchet, in the 'Journal des Gens du Monde' (vol. iv. No.
23, p. 282, et seq.), awarded to Buckingham the honour of the paternity
in dispute. In support of this, he quoted the testimony of a lady of
the house of Saint-Quentin who had been a mistress of the minister
Barbezieux, and who died at Chartres about the middle of the eighteenth
century. She had declared publicly that Louis XIV had consigned
his elder brother to perpetual imprisonment, and that the mask was
necessitated by the close resemblance of the two brothers to each other.

The Duke of Buckingham, who came to France in 1625, in order to escort
Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII, to England, where she was to
marry the Prince of Wales, made no secret of his ardent love for the
queen, and it is almost certain that she was not insensible to his
passion. An anonymous pamphlet, 'La Conference d