courtyard of the Bastille or to see a physician without his mask, it must have been lest his too striking resemblance to someone should be remarked; he could show his tongue but not his face.  As regards his age, he himself told the apothecary at the Bastille, a few days before his death, that he thought he was about sixty; this I have often heard from a son-in-law to this apothecary, M. Marsoban, surgeon to Marshal Richelieu, and afterwards to the regent, the Duc d’Orleans.  The writer of this article knows perhaps more on this subject than Pere Griffet.  But he has said his say.”

This article in the ‘Questions on the Encyclopaedia’ was followed by some remarks from the pen of the publisher, which are also, however, attributed by the publishers of Kelh to Voltaire himself.  The publisher, who sometimes calls himself the author, puts aside without refutation all the theories advanced, including that of Baron Heiss, and says he has come to the conclusion that the Iron Mask was, without doubt, a brother and an elder brother of Louis xiv, by a lover of the queen.  Anne of Austria had come to persuade herself that hers alone was the fault which had deprived Louis xiii [the publisher of this edition overlooked the obvious typographical error of “XIV” here when he meant, and it only makes sense, that it was xiii.  D.W.] of an heir, but the birth of the Iron Mask undeceived her.  The cardinal, to whom she confided her secret, cleverly arranged to bring the king and queen, who had long lived apart, together again.  A second son was the result of this reconciliation; and the first child being removed in secret, Louis xiv remained in ignorance of the existence of his half-brother till after his majority.  It was the policy of Louis xiv to affect a great respect for the royal house, so he avoided much embarrassment to himself and a scandal affecting the memory of Anne of Austria by adopting the wise and just measure of burying alive the pledge of an adulterous love.  He was thus enabled to avoid committing an act of cruelty, which a sovereign less conscientious and less magnanimous would have considered a necessity.

After this declaration Voltaire made no further reference to the Iron Mask.  This last version of the story upset that of Sainte-Foix.  Voltaire having been initiated into the state secret by the Marquis de Richelieu, we may be permitted to suspect that being naturally indiscreet he published the truth from behind the shelter of a pseudonym, or at least gave a version which approached the truth, but later on realising the dangerous significance of his words, he preserved for the future complete silence.