e same
man's guard, Saint-Mars, who saw him die. Father Griffet, Jesuit, has
communicated to the public the diary of the Bastille, which testifies to
the dates. He had this diary without difficulty, for he held the
delicate position of confessor of prisoners imprisoned in the Bastille.

The man in the iron mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess
the answer. Some say that he was the Duc de Beaufort: but the Duc de
Beaufort was killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669; and
the man in the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662. Besides, how would
one have arrested the Duc de Beaufort surrounded by his army? how would
one have transferred him to France without anybody knowing anything
about it? and why should he have been put in prison, and why this mask?

Others have considered the Comte de Vermandois, natural son of Louis
XIV., who died publicly of the small-pox in 1683, with the army, and was
buried in the town of Arras.

Later it was thought that the Duke of Monmouth, whose head King James
II. had cut off publicly in London in 1685, was the man in the iron
mask. It would have been necessary for him to be resuscitated, and then
for him to change the order of the times, for him to put the year 1662
in place of 1685; for King James who never pardoned anyone, and who on
that account deserved all his misfortunes, to have pardoned the Duke of
Monmouth, and to have caused the death, in his place, of a man exactly
like him. It would have been necessary to find this double who would
have been so kind as to have his neck cut off in public in order to save
the Duke of Monmouth. It would have been necessary for the whole of
England to have been under a misapprehension; for James then to have
sent his earnest entreaties to Louis XIV. to be so good as to serve as
his constable and gaoler. Then Louis XIV. having done King James this
little favour, would not have failed to have the same consideration for
King William and for Queen Anne, with whom he was at war; and he would
carefully have preserved in these two monarchs' consideration his
dignity of gaoler, with which King James had honoured him.

All these illusions being dissipated, it remains to be learned who was
this prisoner who was always masked, the age at which he died, and under
what name he was buried. It is clear that if he was not allowed to pass
into the courtyard of the Bastille, if he was not allowed to speak to
his doctor, unless covered by a mas