Suddenly the door of the room where Joan was so earnestly praying opened with a dull sound:  two Hungarian barons in armour entered and signed to the queen to follow them.  Joan arose silently and obeyed; but a cry of pain went up from her heart when she recognised the place where both Andre and Charles of Durazzo had died a violent death.  But she collected her forces, and asked calmly why she was brought hither.  For all answer, one of the men showed her a cord of silk and gold....

“May the will of a just God be done!” cried Joan, and fell upon her knees.  Some minutes later she had ceased to suffer.

This was the third corpse that was thrown over the balcony at Aversa.

The man in the iron mask [An Essay]

  (This is the essay entitled The Man in the Iron Mask, not the novel
  “The Man in the Iron Mask” [The Novel] Dumas #28[nmaskxxx.xxx]2759])

For nearly one hundred years this curious problem has exercised the imagination of writers of fiction—­and of drama, and the patience of the learned in history.  No subject is more obscure and elusive, and none more attractive to the general mind.  It is a legend to the meaning of which none can find the key and yet in which everyone believes.  Involuntarily we feel pity at the thought of that long captivity surrounded by so many extraordinary precautions, and when we dwell on the mystery which enveloped the captive, that pity is not only deepened but a kind of terror takes possession of us.  It is very likely that if the name of the hero of this gloomy tale had been known at the time, he would now be forgotten.  To give him a name would be to relegate him at once to the ranks of those commonplace offenders who quickly exhaust our interest and our tears.  But this being, cut off from the world without leaving any discoverable trace, and whose disappearance apparently caused no void—­this captive, distinguished among captives by the unexampled nature of his punishment, a prison within a prison, as if the walls of a mere cell were not narrow enough, has come to typify for us the sum of all the human misery and suffering ever inflicted by unjust tyranny.

Who was the Man in the Mask?  Was he rapt away into this silent seclusion from the luxury of a court, from the intrigues of diplomacy, from the scaffold of a traitor, from the clash of battle?  What did he leave behind?  Love, glory, or a throne?  What did he regret when hope had fled?  Did he pour forth imprecations and curses on his tortures and blaspheme against high Heaven, or did he with a sigh possess his soul in patience?