stitute by M. Billiard, who upheld the conclusions
arrived at by Soulavie, on whose narrative our play was founded; the
other was a work by the bibliophile Jacob, who followed a new system of
inquiry, and whose book displayed the results of deep research and
extensive reading. It did not, however, cause me to change my opinion.
Even had it been published before I had written my drama, I should still
have adhered to the idea as to the most probable solution of the problem
which I had arrived at in 1831, not only because it was incontestably the
most dramatic, but also because it is supported by those moral
presumptions which have such weight with us when considering a dark and
doubtful question like the one before us. It will, be objected, perhaps,
that dramatic writers, in their love of the marvellous and the pathetic,
neglect logic and strain after effect, their aim being to obtain the
applause of the gallery rather than the approbation of the learned. But
to this it may be replied that the learned on their part sacrifice a
great deal to their love of dates, more or less exact; to their desire to
elucidate some point which had hitherto been considered obscure, and
which their explanations do not always clear up; to the temptation to
display their proficiency in the ingenious art of manipulating facts and
figures culled from a dozen musty volumes into one consistent whole.

Our interest in this strange case of imprisonment arises, not alone from
its completeness and duration, but also from our uncertainty as to the
motives from which it was inflicted. Where erudition alone cannot
suffice; where bookworm after bookworm, disdaining the conjectures of his
predecessors, comes forward with a new theory founded on some forgotten
document he has hunted out, only to find himself in his turn pushed into
oblivion by some follower in his track, we must turn for guidance to some
other light than that of scholarship; especially if, on strict
investigation, we find that not one learned solution rests on a sound
basis of fact.

In the question before us, which, as we said before, is a double one,
asking not only who was the Man in the Iron Mask, but why he was
relentlessly subjected to this torture till the moment of his death, what
we need in order to restrain our fancy is mathematical demonstration, and
not philosophical induction.

While I do not go so far as to assert positively that Abbe Soulavie has
once for all lifted the