y man alluded to above was confined along with a mad Jacobin, and
at last became mad himself, and succumbed to his misery in 1686.

Voltaire, who was probably the first to supply such inexhaustible food
for controversy, kept silence and took no part in the discussions. But
when all the theories had been presented to the public, he set about
refuting them. He made himself very merry, in the seventh edition
of 'Questions sur l'Encyclopedie distibuees en forme de Dictionnaire
(Geneva, 1791), over the complaisance attributed to Louis XIV in acting
as police-sergeant and gaoler for James II, William III, and Anne, with
all of whom he was at war. Persisting still in taking 1661 or 1662 as
the date when the incarceration of the masked prisoner began, he attacks
the opinions advanced by Lagrange-Chancel and Pere Griffet, which they
had drawn from the anonymous 'Memoires secrets pour servir a l'Histoire
de Perse'. "Having thus dissipated all these illusions," he says, "let
us now consider who the masked prisoner was, and how old he was when
he died. It is evident that if he was never allowed to walk in the
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 t