Oliver Cromwell. Mattioli was not mystery, no secret. Dauger is
so mysterious that probably the secret of his mystery was unknown
to himself. By 1701, when obscure wretches were shut up with the
Mask, the secret, whatever its nature, had ceased to be of moment.
The captive was now the mere victim of cruel routine. But twenty
years earlier, Saint-Mars had said that Dauger "takes things
easily, resigned to the will of God and the King."

To sum up, on July 1, 1669, the valet of the Huguenot intriguer,
Roux de Marsilly, the valet resident in England, known to his
master as "Martin," was "wanted" by the French secret police. By
July 19, a valet, of the highest political importance, had been
brought to Dunkirk, from England, no doubt. My hypothesis assumes
that this valet, though now styled "Eustache Dauger," was the
"Martin of Roux de Marsilly. He was kept with so much mystery at
Pigernol that already the legend began its course; the captive
valet was said to be a Marshal of France! We then follow Dauger
from Pignerol to Les Exiles, till January, 1687, when one valet out
of a pair, Dauger being one of them, dies. We presume that Dauger
is the survivor, because the great mystery still is "what he HAS
DONE," whereas the other valet had done nothing, but may have known
Dauger's secret. Again the other valet had long been dropsical,
and the valet who died in 1687 died of dropsy.

In 1688, Dauger, at Sainte-Marguerite, is again the source and
center of myths; he is taken for a son of Oliver Cromwell, or for
the Duc de Beufort. In June 1692, one of the Huguenot preachers at
Saint-Marguerite writes on his shirt and pewter plate and throws
them out of the window.[1] Legend attributes these acts to the Man
in the Iron Mask, and transmutes a pewter into a silver plate.