1939-11-17 — Page 21

THE CHINA MAIL, NOVEMBER 17, 1939 · TO-DAY'S STRANGE STORY OF REAL PEOPLE

NO. 87- THE MAN IN

1

THE IRON MASK

By VINCENT TOWNE

Instant death was the penalty the mysterious prisoner must pay should he ever reveal his face--this by royal command of Louis the Grand who boasted, "I am the State!"

The only clue to the unfortunate's identity was this entry upon the re- gister of the grim Bastille:

"On Thursday, the 18th of Septem- ber 1698, at a o'clock of the afternoon, M. de Saint-Mars, governor of the chateau of the Bastille, arrived for the first entrance into office, coming from his government of the islands of Sainte-Marguerite, having brought with him in his litter à former pri- soner of his at Pigneroi, whom he obliges to keep himself always mask- ed, and whose name is not told."

For 17 years this masked prisoner had languished in the dungeon of Sainte-Marguerite after having him brought there from Pigneroi.

:

It was rumoured that his features had to be forever hidden because they bore a resemblance compromising to the grand monarch. He must have been a personage of great rank. His jailers were commanded to treat him always with that respect which was due

His Features Had to

Be Forever Hidden.

mystery had been the rightful Louis XIV that he had been married upon the island of Sainte-Marguerite to his jailer's daughter and that there had been born to this union a son who was

foster parents were simply told that he "came from good part," which as- surance translated into French gave him the name "Bounaparte." He was the grandfather of the great Napoleon, who thus in the third generation came forward to avenge the sins of the fathers!

hind closed doors. The first published attempt to unravel the mystery was In the "Memoirs" of an anonymous author who claimed the masked man had been the Duc de Vermandois, na- tural son of Louis XIV by the beauti-smuggled over to Corsica, where his ful Louise de la Valliere. During an outburst of anger he had dare strike the Dauphin and had suffered a life- time of torture for this attack.

Voltaire, in his "Century of Louis XIV," related that shortly after 1661, when Cardinal Mazarin died and Louis XIV took the government into his to royalty alone. Even M. de

own hands, "a prisoner of greater than Saint-Mars himself had to stand bare-ordinary stature, young and of most headed when addressing his charge.

handsome and noble form, was sent The mask was of black velvet. So under strict secrecy to the island of another entry in the prison register | Sainte Marguerite." The King's stated. According to Voltaire it had minister, Louvois, went to see the steel springs at the chin piece, allow- prisoner on the island and spoke to ing the wearer to eat without un-him, standing with every, sign of res- covering his face: but this detail is supposed to have been one of the fruits of Voltaire' imagination. Yet its suggestion yielded the name: "Man of the Iron Mask."

pect. According to Voltaire, the pri- soner was a half-brother of Louis XIV, the son of that monarch's mother, "Haughty" Anne of Austria.

This disclosure was shortly follow- He languished in the cruel Bastille ed by a pamphlet emphatically stat- five years, two months and one day.ing that this natural son of Anne had Then his tortured soul was relieved been put on the throne in substitution of a hell of torment known to have for the real Louis XIV, that the per- lasted 22 years and which probably sonage who for more than 70 years had covered a longer period of agony. | enjoyed all the presentige of "The He left behind no clues as to his Grand Monarch" was, therefore a identity or his antecedents. Only M.

pseudo king, and that the unknown de Saint-Mars and the grand monarch prisoner of the Bastille was the right- could tell; and they never did.

ful ruler of France. According to a For a dozen years after the masked

further theory, the Man of the Iron prisoner had died, not even M. de Mask was a half-brother of Louis, Saint-Mars' brothers in arins, who

but his father was the English Duke had helped guard that wretched exis- of Buckingham. Others have main- tence, dared to ask themselves who tained that he was a twin brother of their prisoner might have been. Then the grand monarch and had been put Louis XIV went up for his final judg-away to avoid complications. This ment after more than 70 years on the was seized upon by Dumas for the throne, and men dared to gossip be- | plot of his novel, "The Man in the

Iron Mask."

сруу

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There was once circulated an ex- travagant theory that this man of

Trapped by the hurricane. Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer shown in a tense moment from Univer. `sal's "When To-morrow Comas," now at the Alhambra Theatre.

Some authorities claim that the

Man of the Iron Mask was the French

SOLID SILVER

officer Bulonde, who had displeased his royal master" during a military siege; others that he was M de Mar- chicl, a French soldier of fortune who led a conspairacy for the assassination of Louis XIV; that he was Count Mattioll, the Duke of Mantau's Minis- ter of State, who left a disappearance mystery behind him, and that he was that human enigma, fames de lu Cloche, son of Charles II of England, who dissolved into nothingness, about the time that the Man of the Iron Mask appears to have been placed in confinement at Piggnorio.

10-4

· Esit tyndicata, fac.1

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