Louis xiii; the extraordinary birth of Louis-Dieudonne, so called because he was born in the twenty-third year of a childless marriage, and several other remarkable circumstances connected with the birth, all point clearly to a father other than the prince, who with great effrontery is passed off by his adherents as such.  The famous barricades of Paris, and the organised revolt led by distinguished men against Louis xiv on his accession to the throne, proclaimed aloud the king’s illegitimacy, so that it rang through the country; and as the accusation had reason on its side, hardly anyone doubted its truth.”

We give below a short abstract of the narrative, the plot of which is rather skilfully constructed:—­

“Cardinal Richelieu, looking with satisfied pride at the love of Gaston, Duc d’Orleans, brother of the king, for his niece Parisiatis (Madame de Combalet), formed the plan of uniting the young couple in marriage.  Gaston taking the suggestion as an insult, struck the cardinal.  Pere Joseph then tried to gain the cardinal’s consent and that of his niece to an attempt to deprive Gaston of the throne, which the childless marriage of Louis xiii seemed to assure him.  A young man, the C. D. R. of the book, was introduced into Anne of Austria’s room, who though a wife in name had long been a widow in reality.  She defended herself but feebly, and on seeing the cardinal next day said to him, ’Well, you have had your wicked will; but take good care, sir cardinal, that I may find above the mercy and goodness which you have tried by many pious sophistries to convince me is awaiting me.  Watch over my soul, I charge you, for I have yielded!’ The queen having given herself up to love for some time, the joyful news that she would soon become a mother began to spread over the kingdom.  In this manner was born Louis xiv, the putative son of Louis xiii.  If this instalment of the tale be favourably received, says the pamphleteer, the sequel will soon follow, in which the sad fate of C. D. R. will be related, who was made to pay dearly for his short-lived pleasure.”

Although the first part was a great success, the promised sequel never appeared.  It must be admitted that such a story, though it never convinced a single person of the illegitimacy of Louis xiv, was an excellent prologue to the tale of the unfortunate lot of the Man in the Iron Mask, and increased the interest and curiosity with which that singular historical mystery was regarded.  But the views of the Dutch scholars thus set forth met with little credence, and were soon forgotten in a new solution.

The third historian to write about the prisoner of the Iles Sainte-Marguerite was Lagrange-Chancel.  He was just twenty-nine years of age when, excited by Freron’s hatred of Voltaire, he addressed a letter from his country place, Antoniat, in Perigord, to the ‘Annee Litteraire’ (vol. iii. p. 188), demolishing the theory advanced in the ’Siecle de Louis xiv’, and giving facts which he had collected whilst himself imprisoned in the same place as the unknown prisoner twenty years later.