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."

Voltaire added a few further details which had been given him by M. de
Bernaville, the successor of M. de Saint-Mars, and by an old physician
of the Bastille who had attended the prisoner whenever his health
required a doctor, but who had never seen his face, although he had
"often seen his tongue and his body." He also asserted that M. de
Chamillart was the last minister who was in the secret, and that when
his son-in-law, Marshal de la Feuillade, besought him on his knees, de
Chamillart being on his deathbed, to tell him the name of the Man in the
Iron Mask, the minister replied that he was under a solemn oath never
to reveal the secret, it being an affair of state. To all these details,
which the marshal acknowledges to be correct, Voltaire adds a remarkable
note: "What increases our wonder is, that when the unknown captive was
sent to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite no personage of note disappeared from
the European stage."

The story of the Comte de Vermandois and the blow was treated as an
absurd and romantic invention, which does not even attempt to keep
within the bounds of the possible, by Baron C. (according to P.
Marchand, Baron Crunyngen) in a letter inserted in the 'Bibliotheque
raisonnee des Ouvrages des Savants de d'Europe', June 1745. The
discussion was revived somewhat later, however, and a few Dutch scholars
were supposed to be responsible for a new theory founded on history; the
foundations proving somewhat shaky, however,--a quality which it shares,
we must say, with all the other theories which have ever been advanced.

According to this new theory, the masked prisoner was a young foreign
nobleman, groom of the chambers to Anne of Austria, and the real father
of Louis XIV. This anecdote appears first in a duodecimo volume printed
by Pierre Marteau at Cologne in 1692, and which bears the title, 'The
Loves of Anne of Austria, Consort of Louis XIII, with M. le C. D. R.,
the Real Father of Louis XIV, King of France; being a Minute Account
of the Measures taken to give an Heir to the Throne of France, the
Influences at Work to bring this to pass, and the Denoument of the
Comedy'.

This libel ran through five editions, bearing date successively, 1692,
1693, 1696, 1722, and 1738. In the t