And when we calmly reflect on the whole case, do we feel that our first impulsively adopted opinion was wrong?  Do we regard our belief as a poetical illusion?  I do not think so; on the contrary, it seems to me that our good sense approves our fancy’s flight.  For what can be more natural than the conviction that the secret of the name, age, and features of the captive, which was so perseveringly kept through long years at the cost of so much care, was of vital importance to the Government?  No ordinary human passion, such as anger, hate, or vengeance, has so dogged and enduring a character; we feel that the measures taken were not the expression of a love of cruelty, for even supposing that Louis XIV were the most cruel of princes, would he not have chosen one of the thousand methods of torture ready to his hand before inventing a new and strange one?  Moreover, why did he voluntarily burden himself with the obligation of surrounding a prisoner with such numberless precautions and such sleepless vigilance?  Must he not have feared that in spite of it all the walls behind which he concealed the dread mystery would one day let in the light?  Was it not through his entire reign a source of unceasing anxiety?  And yet he respected the life of the captive whom it was so difficult to hide, and the discovery of whose identity would have been so dangerous.  It would have been so easy to bury the secret in an obscure grave, and yet the order was never given.  Was this an expression of hate, anger, or any other passion?  Certainly not; the conclusion we must come to in regard to the conduct of the king is that all the measures he took against the prisoner were dictated by purely political motives; that his conscience, while allowing him to do everything necessary to guard the secret, did not permit him to take the further step of putting an end to the days of an unfortunate man, who in all probability was guilty of no crime.

Courtiers are seldom obsequious to the enemies of their master, so that we may regard the respect and consideration shown to the Man in the Mask by the governor Saint-Mars, and the minister Louvois, as a testimony, not only to his high rank, but also to his innocence.

For my part, I make no pretensions to the erudition of the bookworm, and I cannot read the history of the Man in the Iron Mask without feeling my blood boil at the abominable abuse of power—­the heinous crime of which he was the victim.

A few years ago, M. Fournier and I, thinking the subject suitable for representation on the stage, undertook to read, before dramatising it, all the different versions of the affair which had been published up to that time.  Since our piece was successfully performed at the Odeon two other versions have appeared:  one was in the form of a letter addressed to the Historical Institute by M. Billiard, who upheld the conclusions arrived at by Soulavie, on whose narrative our play was founded; the other was a work by the bibliophile