“When you have any information to send me relative to the prisoner who has been in your charge for twenty years, I most earnestly enjoin on you to take the same precautions as when you write to M. de Louvois.”

The Comte de Vermandois, the official registration of whose death bears the date 1685, cannot have been twenty years a prisoner in 1691.

Six years after the Man in the Mask had been thus delivered over to the curiosity of the public, the ‘Siecle de Louis xiv’ (2 vols. octavo, Berlin, 1751) was published by Voltaire under the pseudonym of M. de Francheville.  Everyone turned to this work, which had been long expected, for details relating to the mysterious prisoner about whom everyone was talking.

Voltaire ventured at length to speak more openly of the prisoner than anyone had hitherto done, and to treat as a matter of history “an event long ignored by all historians.” (vol. ii. p. 11, 1st edition, chap. xxv.).  He assigned an approximate date to the beginning of this captivity, “some months after the death of Cardinal Mazarin” (1661); he gave a description of the prisoner, who according to him was “young and dark-complexioned; his figure was above the middle height and well proportioned; his features were exceedingly handsome, and his bearing was noble.  When he spoke his voice inspired interest; he never complained of his lot, and gave no hint as to his rank.”  Nor was the mask forgotten:  “The part which covered the chin was furnished with steel springs, which allowed the prisoner to eat without uncovering his face.”  And, lastly, he fixed the date of the death of the nameless captive; who “was buried,” he says, “in 1704., by night, in the parish church of Saint-Paul.”

Voltaire’s narrative coincided with the account given in the ’Memoires de Peyse’, save for the omission of the incident which, according to the ‘Memoires’, led in the first instance to the imprisonment of Giafer.  “The prisoner,” says Voltaire, “was sent to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, and afterwards to the Bastille, in charge of a trusty official; he wore his mask on the journey, and his escort had orders to shoot him if he took it off.  The Marquis de Louvois visited him while he was on the islands, and when speaking to him stood all the time in a respectful attitude.  The prisoner was removed to the Bastille in 1690, where he was lodged as comfortably as could be managed in that building; he was supplied with everything he asked for, especially with the finest linen and the costliest lace, in both of which his taste was perfect; he had a guitar to play on, his table was excellent, and the governor rarely sat in his presence.”