on, and one heard of nothing else. On the
13th of August 1789 it was announced in an article in a journal called
'Loisirs d'un Patriote francais', which was afterwards published
anonymously as a pamphlet, that the publisher had seen, among other
documents found in the Bastille, a card bearing the unintelligible number
"64389000," and the following note: "Fouquet, arriving from Les Iles
Sainte-Marguerite in an iron mask." To this there was, it was said, a
double signature, viz. "XXX," superimposed on the name "Kersadion." The
journalist was of opinion that Fouquet had succeeded in making his
escape, but had been retaken and condemned to pass for dead, and to wear
a mask henceforward, as a punishment for his attempted evasion. This
tale made some impression, for it was remembered that in the Supplement
to the 'Siecle de Louis XIV' it was stated that Chamillart had said that
"the Iron Mask was a man who knew all the secrets of M. Fouquet." But the
existence of this card was never proved, and we cannot accept the story
on the unsupported word of an anonymous writer.

From the time that restrictions on the press were removed, hardly a day
passed without the appearance of some new pamphlet on the Iron Mask.
Louis Dutens, in 'Correspondence interceptee' (12mo, 1789), revived the
theory of Baron Heiss, supporting it by new and curious facts. He proved
that Louis XIV had really ordered one of the Duke of Mantua's ministers
to be carried off and imprisoned in Pignerol. Dutens gave the name of the
victim as Girolamo Magni. He also quoted from a memorandum which by the
wish of the Marquis de Castellane was drawn up by a certain Souchon,
probably the man whom Papon questioned in 1778. This Souchon was the son
of a man who had belonged to the Free Company maintained in the islands
in the time of Saint-Mars, and was seventy-nine years old. This
memorandum gives a detailed account of the abduction of a minister in
1679, who is styled a "minister of the Empire," and his arrival as a
masked prisoner at the islands, and states that he died there in
captivity nine years after he was carried off.

Dutens thus divests the episode of the element of the marvellous with
which Voltaire had surrounded it. He called to his aid the testimony of
the Duc de Choiseul, who, having in vain attempted to worm the secret of
the Iron Mask out of Louis XV, begged Madame de Pompadour to try her
hand, and was told by her that the prisoner was the mini