ry to guard the secret, did not
permit him to take the further step of putting an end to the days of an
unfortunate man, who in all probability was guilty of no crime.

Courtiers are seldom obsequious to the enemies of their master, so that
we may regard the respect and consideration shown to the Man in the Mask
by the governor Saint-Mars, and the minister Louvois, as a testimony,
not only to his high rank, but also to his innocence.

For my part, I make no pretensions to the erudition of the bookworm, and
I cannot read the history of the Man in the Iron Mask without feeling my
blood boil at the abominable abuse of power--the heinous crime of which
he was the victim.

A few years ago, M. Fournier and I, thinking the subject suitable for
representation on the stage, undertook to read, before dramatising it,
all the different versions of the affair which had been published up to
that time. Since our piece was successfully performed at the Odeon two
other versions have appeared: one was in the form of a letter addressed
to the Historical Institute by M. Billiard, who upheld the conclusions
arrived at by Soulavie, on whose narrative our play was founded; the
other was a work by the bibliophile Jacob, who followed a new system
of inquiry, and whose book displayed the results of deep research and
extensive reading. It did not, however, cause me to change my opinion.
Even had it been published before I had written my drama, I should still
have adhered to the idea as to the most probable solution of the problem
which I had arrived at in 1831, not only because it was incontestably
the most dramatic, but also because it is supported by those moral
presumptions which have such weight with us when considering a dark and
doubtful question like the one before us. It will, be objected, perhaps,
that dramatic writers, in their love of the marvellous and the pathetic,
neglect logic and strain after effect, their aim being to obtain the
applause of the gallery rather than the approbation of the learned. But
to this it may be replied that the learned on their part sacrifice a
great deal to their love of dates, more or less exact; to their desire
to elucidate some point which had hitherto been considered obscure, and
which their explanations do not always clear up; to the temptation to
display their proficiency in the ingenious art of manipulating facts and
figures culled from a dozen musty volumes into one consistent whole.

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