iew in her box." (Ibid., vol. i. p.
342).

Abbe Soulavie, in vol. vi. of the 'Memoires de Richelieu', published in
1793, controverted the opinions of M. de Saint-Mihiel, and again advanced
those which he had published some time before, supporting them by a new
array of reasons.

The fruitlessness of research in the archives of the Bastille, and the
importance of the political events which were happening, diverted the
attention of the public for some years from this subject. In the year
1800, however, the 'Magazin encyclopedique' published (vol. vi. p. 472)
an article entitled 'Memoires sur les Problemes historiques, et la
methode de les resoudre appliquee a celui qui concerne l'Homme au Masque
de Fer', signed C. D. O., in which the author maintained that the
prisoner was the first minister of the Duke of Mantua, and says his name
was Girolamo Magni.

In the same year an octavo volume of 142 pages was produced by M.
Roux-Fazillac. It bore the title 'Recherches historiques et critiques
sur l'Homme au Masque de Fer, d'ou resultent des Notions certaines sur ce
prisonnier'. These researches brought to light a secret correspondence
relative to certain negotiations and intrigues, and to the abduction of a
secretary of the Duke of Mantua whose name was Matthioli, and not
Girolamo Magni.

In 1802 an octavo pamphlet containing 11 pages, of which the author was
perhaps Baron Lerviere, but which was signed Reth, was published. It took
the form of a letter to General Jourdan, and was dated from Turin, and
gave many details about Matthioli and his family. It was entitled
'Veritable Clef de l'Histoire de l'Homme au Masque de Fer'. It proved
that the secretary of the Duke of Mantua was carried off, masked, and
imprisoned, by order of Louis XIV in 1679, but it did not succeed in
establishing as an undoubted fact that the secretary and the Man in the
Iron Mask were one and the same person.

It may be remembered that M. Crawfurd writing in 1798 had said in his
'Histoire de la Bastille' (8vo, 474 pages), "I cannot doubt that the Man
in the Iron Mask was the son of Anne of Austria, but am unable to decide
whether he was a twin-brother of Louis XIV or was born while the king and
queen lived apart, or during her widowhood." M. Crawfurd, in his
'Melanges d'Histoire et de Litterature tires dun Portefeuille' (quarto
1809, octavo 1817), demolished the theory advanced by Roux-Fazillac.

In 1825, M. Delort discovered in the archives se