having, in company with several young
nobles, indulged in the most reprehensible excesses.

"The king," says Mademoiselle de Montpensier ('Memoires de Mademoiselle
de Montpensier', vol. xliii. p. 474., of 'Memoires Relatifs d'Histoire
de France', Second Series, published by Petitot), "had not been satisfied
with his conduct and refused to see him. The young prince had caused his
mother much sorrow, but had been so well lectured that it was believed
that he had at last turned over a new leaf." He only remained four days
at court, reached the camp before Courtrai early in November 1683, was
taken ill on the evening of the 12th, and died on the 19th of the same
month of a malignant fever. Mademoiselle de Montpensier says that the
Comte de Vermandois "fell ill from drink."

There are, of course, objections of all kinds to this theory.

For if, during the four days the comte was at court, he had struck the
dauphin, everyone would have heard of the monstrous crime, and yet it is
nowhere spoken of, except in the 'Memoires de Perse'. What renders the
story of the blow still more improbable is the difference in age between
the two princes. The dauphin, who already had a son, the Duc de
Bourgogne, more than a year old, was born the 1st November 1661, and was
therefore six years older than the Comte de Vermandois. But the most
complete answer to the tale is to be found in a letter written by
Barbezieux to Saint-Mars, dated the 13th August 1691:--

"When you have any information to send me relative to the prisoner who
has been in your charge for twenty years, I most earnestly enjoin on you
to take the same precautions as when you write to M. de Louvois."

The Comte de Vermandois, the official registration of whose death bears
the date 1685, cannot have been twenty years a prisoner in 1691.

Six years after the Man in the Mask had been thus delivered over to the
curiosity of the public, the 'Siecle de Louis XIV' (2 vols. octavo,
Berlin, 1751) was published by Voltaire under the pseudonym of M. de
Francheville. Everyone turned to this work, which had been long
expected, for details relating to the mysterious prisoner about whom
everyone was talking.

Voltaire ventured at length to speak more openly of the prisoner than
anyone had hitherto done, and to treat as a matter of history "an event
long ignored by all historians." (vol. ii. p. 11, 1st edition, chap.
xxv.). He assigned an approximate date to the beginning of