leave his
book on the principal persons at court. At ten o'clock, when he had
fulfilled four of these errands, he was arrested by a captain in the
guards, who took him to the king's closet and forthwith set off in
search of the four copies distributed.

When the hundred copies were got together, counted, carefully looked
through and verified, the king himself threw them into the fire and
burnt them, all but one, which he kept for his own purposes.

Then he ordered the captain of the guards to take the author of the
book to M. de Saint-Mars, who confined his prisoner first at Pignerol
and then in the fortress of the Ile Sainte-Marguerite. This man was
obviously no other than the famous Man with the Iron Mask.

The truth would never have been known, or at least a part of the truth,
if the captain in the guards had not been present at the interview and
if, when the king's back was turned, he had not been tempted to
withdraw another of the copies from the chimney, before the fire got to
it.

Six months later, the captain was found dead on the highroad between
Gaillon and Mantes. His murderers had stripped him of all his apparel,
forgetting, however, in his right boot a jewel which was discovered
there afterward, a diamond of the first water and of considerable value.

Among his papers was found a sheet in his handwriting, in which he did
not speak of the book snatched from the flames, but gave a summary of
the earlier chapters. It referred to a secret which was known to the
Kings of England, which was lost by them when the crown passed from the
poor fool, Henry VI., to the Duke of York, which was revealed to
Charles VII., King of France, by Joan of Arc and which, becoming a
State secret, was handed down from sovereign to sovereign by means of a
letter, sealed anew on each occasion, which was found in the deceased
monarch's death-bed with this superscription: "For the King of France."

This secret concerned the existence and described the whereabouts of a
tremendous treasure, belonging to the kings, which increased in
dimensions from century to century.

One hundred and fourteen years later, Louis XVI., then a prisoner in
the Temple, took aside one of the officers whose duty it was to guard
the royal family, and asked:

"Monsieur, had you not an ancestor who served as a captain under my
predecessor, the Great King?"

"Yes, sire."

"Well, could you be relied upon--could you be relied upon--"

He hesitated. The