eak or attempt to uncover his face.

"These circumstances, and many others of like character, show that he
was a person of very eminent rank, and that those who thus shut him
out from mankind were conscious that they were committing a crime of
no ordinary magnitude.

"Who, then, was this person of mystery, familiarly known as the Man of
the Iron Mask?

"He is supposed by many to have been a son of Anne of Austria and the
Duke of Buckingham, and consequently a half-brother of Louis XIV., and
a co-heir to the throne of France. If so, it would appear, that, while
Louis XIV. was luxuriating amid the splendors of the palace of
Versailles, his brother was suffering the miseries of exile, or
languishing in a dungeon, shut out not only from the outward world,
but from all intercourse with mankind. But other writers think him to
have been some less remarkable person.

"The iron mask, of which frequent mention has been made in sensational
books, was a very simple contrivance of velvet and springs of steel."

* * * * *

The Class made two excursions from Paris, one to Versailles and the
other to Fontainebleau.

Versailles, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, which has grown up around
one of the finest palaces and parks of Europe, was originally the
hunting-lodge of Louis XIII. Louis XIV. chose the place for a palace,
and employed almost an army of men for eleven years upon the
structure. He spent upon this palace nearly L40,000,000 sterling.
Thither in 1680 he removed his gay court, and here he passed in gloomy
grandeur his melancholy old age.

It is a place of beautiful gardens, wonderful fountains, fine statues,
and walks associated with the history of kings, queens, statesmen, and
scholars. The palace to the visitor seems a vast picture gallery,
wherein is shown the conquests of France. It is a long journey through
the glittering rooms. Here you see the representation of a king in his
moment of triumph, adored as a god, and there you see the same king
overthrown or stretched upon his bed of death. The fountains murmur,
the orange trees fill the air with perfume, and you turn from the
exhibition of the glowing and faded pomps of history to the gardens,
feeling that after all man's only nobility and kingship and hope of a
crown lies in his soul, and it is virtue alone that makes one royal.

Two small palaces or villas in the Park of Versailles, called Great
Trianon and Little Trianon, recalled