The Man in the Iron Mask


I

THE LEGEND


The Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask is, despite a pleasant
saying of Lord Beaconsfield's, one of the most fascinating in
history. By a curious coincidence the wildest legend on the
subject, and the correct explanation of the problem, were offered
to the world in the same year, 1801. According to this form of the
legend, the Man in the Iron Mask was the genuine Louis XIV.,
deprived of his rights in favor of a child of Anne of Austria and
of Mazarin. Immured in the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, in the bay of
Cannes (where you are shown his cell, looking north to the sunny
town), he married, and begot a son. That son was carried to
Corsica, was named de Buona Parte, and was the ancestor of
Napoleon. The Emperor was thus the legitimate representative of
the House of Bourbon.

This legend was circulated in 1801, and is referred to in a
proclamation of the Royalists of La Vendee. In the same year,
1801, Roux Fazaillac, a Citoyen and a revolutionary legislator,
published a work in which he asserted that the Man in the Iron Mask
(as known in rumor) was not one man, but a myth, in which the
actual facts concerning at least two men were blended. It is
certain that Roux Fazaillac was right; or that, if he was wrong,