thither, the latter was heard to say behind his iron mask, 'Has the king
designs on my life?' To which Saint-Mars replied, 'No, my prince; your
life is safe: you must only let yourself be guided.'

"I also learned from a man called Dubuisson, cashier to the well-known
Samuel Bernard, who, having been imprisoned for some years in the
Bastile, was removed to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, where he was confined
along with some others in a room exactly over the one occupied by the
unknown prisoner. He told me that they were able to communicate with him
by means of the flue of the chimney, but on asking him why he persisted
in not revealing his name and the cause of his imprisonment, he replied
that such an avowal would be fatal not only to him but to those to whom
he made it.

"Whether it were so or not, to-day the name and rank of this political
victim are secrets the preservation of which is no longer necessary to
the State; and I have thought that to tell the public what I know would
cut short the long chain of circumstances which everyone was forging
according to his fancy, instigated thereto by an author whose gift of
relating the most impossible events in such a manner as to make them seem
true has won for all his writings such success--even for his Vie de
Charles XII"

This theory, according to Jacob, is more probable than any of the others.

"Beginning with the year 1664.," he says, "the Duc de Beaufort had by his
insubordination and levity endangered the success of several maritime
expeditions. In October 1666 Louis XIV remonstrated with him with much
tact, begging him to try to make himself more and more capable in the
service of his king by cultivating the talents with which he was endowed,