nder
pain of death to wear his mask in their presence, but that when he was
alone he was permitted to pull out the hairs of his beard with steel
tweezers, which were kept bright and polished. I saw a pair of these
which had been actually used for this purpose in the possession of M. de
Formanoir, nephew of Saint-Mars, and lieutenant of a Free Company raised
for the purpose of guarding the prisoners. Several persons told me that
when Saint-Mars, who had been placed over the Bastille, conducted his
charge thither, the latter was heard to say behind his iron mask, 'Has
the king designs on my life?' To which Saint-Mars replied, 'No, my
prince; your life is safe: you must only let yourself be guided.'

"I also learned from a man called Dubuisson, cashier to the well-known
Samuel Bernard, who, having been imprisoned for some years in the
Bastile, was removed to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, where he was
confined along with some others in a room exactly over the one occupied
by the unknown prisoner. He told me that they were able to communicate
with him by means of the flue of the chimney, but on asking him why he
persisted in not revealing his name and the cause of his imprisonment,
he replied that such an avowal would be fatal not only to him but to
those to whom he made it.

"Whether it were so or not, to-day the name and rank of this political
victim are secrets the preservation of which is no longer necessary to
the State; and I have thought that to tell the public what I know would
cut short the long chain of circumstances which everyone was forging
according to his fancy, instigated thereto by an author whose gift of
relating the most impossible events in such a manner as to make them
seem true has won for all his writings such success--even for his Vie de
Charles XII."

This theory, according to Jacob, is more probable than any of the
others.

"Beginning with the year 1664.," he says, "the Duc de Beaufort had
by his insubordination and levity endangered the success of several
maritime expeditions. In October 1666 Louis XIV remonstrated with him
with much tact, begging him to try to make himself more and more capable
in the service of his king by cultivating the talents with which he was
endowed, and ridding himself of the faults which spoilt his conduct. 'I
do not doubt,' he concludes, 'that you will be all the more grateful to
me for this mark of my benevolence towards you, when you reflect how few
kings have ever