The Man Behind the Iron Mask (5 page)

21
.  
Nicolas Fouquet
, 1615–1680. Finance Minister under Cardinal Mazarin from 1653 to 1661.

22
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Vaux-le-Vicomte
: château built by Fouquet south-east of Paris.

23
.  
d'Artagnan
: Dumas based his fictional character upon a real person: Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan, 1610–1673.

24
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Antibes
: town close to Cannes on the French Riviera.

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Gigelli
: modern town of Djidjelli in Algeria.

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Island of Saint-Honorat
: island close to Sainte-Marguerite.

2

THE MASKED PRISONER

T
he report of a mysterious masked man held prisoner in the Bastille had been circulating in French society long before Voltaire began his investigations and though he was the first to get his information into print, he was not the only one to do so, nor was he the first to get it onto paper. The same basic story was told in a letter written while Louis XIV was still alive, forty years before Voltaire published his first account, but not itself published until one hundred and forty years after. It was written by Madame, the Princess Palatine, who was the second wife of Monsieur, Louis XIV's brother, and the mother of the Regent who ruled after Louis XIV's death. She was a big horsy woman who, as the sister-in-law of the King, graced the upper reaches of the court, albeit in hefty graceless fashion, and passed her time into old age collecting geological specimens and palace gossip, riding to hounds and writing to friends. Every day she wrote to her relatives in the ruling families of Europe, filling her letters with titbits of family news and tittle-tattle of court conversation. On 10 October 1711, when she informed her aunt Sophie, the Electress of Hanover, of the latest story she had heard, she had no idea that she was serving posterity:

A man spent many years in the Bastille and died there wearing a mask. Two musketeers were at his side to kill him if he removed his mask. He ate and slept with the mask on. No doubt this treatment was unavoidable because he was otherwise very well treated, well lodged and given everything he desired. He received communion in his mask. He was very devout and read continuously. No one could ever learn who he was.

Where Madame got her story from she did not say. However, since her contacts were restricted to the inner circles of the court, one may assume that her information originated with someone highly placed and presumably well informed.

At least one of Voltaire's informants, the second Maréchal de La Feuillade, had the same credentials, although he had been dead for all of twenty-seven years when Voltaire presented his testimony. For him, apparently, the existence of the Man in the Iron Mask was not in question: it had been admitted by his father-in-law, Michel de Chamillart, who had been a government minister under Louis XIV from 1699 until 1709. Chamillart had claimed to know the prisoner's identity, and on his death-bed in 1721 had acknowledged that it was a state secret.

Voltaire gave the names of two more of his informants, one a physician named Marsolan, the other an army officer named Riouffe. Their testimony, which like that of La Feuillade was at best second-hand, was at least third-hand by the time it reached Voltaire: Marsolan's story by way of Maréchal de Richelieu and Riouffe's story by way of the Marquis d'Argens.
¹
Marsolan claimed to be passing on information given him by his father-in-law, who professed to have been the physician who treated the Iron Mask in the Bastille. Riouffe claimed that once in his youth he had seen the Iron Mask in Cannes, but he offered no information on that experience; his contribution was based upon local traditions which had grown up around the mysterious prisoner during his stay on Sainte-Marguerite. Who Voltaire's remaining sources were is not known. He dropped other names to suggest that his information was reliable, but was never specific about them.

The account he gave in 1751 was nonetheless particular and precise. In the excerpt already quoted he alleged that at the time of his arrest the Iron Mask was tall and young, handsome and noble, was made to wear a mask with a moveable jaw and threatened with death if he tried to take it off, that he stayed on Sainte-Marguerite from 1661 until 1690 and was then transferred by Saint-Mars to the Bastille where he died in 1703. In the rest of the passage he makes even more detailed assertions:

The Marquis de Louvois
²
(who was the Minister of War at the time) went to see him on the island before he was moved, and remained standing while he talked with him, showing great respect. The unknown man was conducted to the Bastille where he was lodged as well as one could be in that castle. He was refused nothing that he asked for. His greatest pleasure was in lace and linen of exquisite fineness. He used to play the guitar. He was fed sumptuously and the governor rarely sat down in his presence. An old physician of the Bastille, who had often treated this extraordinary man when he was sick, said that he had never seen his face, although he had often examined his tongue and the rest of his body. That physician said that he was admirably well built, that his skin was rather brown, that he held one's attention by the mere sound of his voice and that he never complained of his fate nor gave any hint of who he might be.

In the 1752 account, a story told by Riouffe and supposedly well known in the region of Cannes, was added. It was a story which later caught the imaginations of numerous writers including both Alfred de Vigny and Alexandre Dumas.

The governor himself used to serve him at table and then withdraw, locking him in. One day the prisoner wrote with a knife on a silver plate and threw it out of the window towards a boat which was near the shore, almost at the foot of the tower. The fisherman, whose boat it was, picked up the plate and took it to the governor. He in astonishment asked the fisherman: ‘Have you read what is written on this plate and has anyone seen it in your hand?' ‘I cannot read,' replied the fisherman. ‘I have just found it and no one else has seen it.' The peasant was detained until the governor was sure that he could not read and that the plate had not been seen by anyone else. ‘Off you go,' he said to him then, ‘and count yourself lucky that you cannot read.'

In 1758, an old man of eighty-two, living in Périgueux, read Voltaire's book, found his account of the Iron Mask inaccurate and wrote off to an editor in Paris to set the record straight. The old man was Joseph de Lagrange-Chancel, a poet and playwright, who in the time of Louis XIV had been something of a prodigy at court, writing verse with ease when still a child and having his first tragedy performed when only eighteen. With the support of Racine
³
and the protection of the Princesse de Conti,
⁴
his reputation and fortune seemed well assured, but in 1717 he fell out of favour and in 1720 he took revenge by publishing an invective in verse against the Regent. He was arrested soon after and imprisoned on Sainte-Marguerite. Escaping after three years, he published another invective in Holland, but was pardoned after the Regent's death and allowed to return to France. However, he was received coldly by his former friends and retired to live out his life on his estate at Périgueux. The letter he wrote was addressed to Elie Fréron, the editor of a periodical called
L'Année Littéraire
, a man detested by Voltaire as someone who sought to build a reputation for himself by contriving to demolish the reputations of others. Lagrange-Chancel wrote his letter on 4 June 1758 and died that same year without seeing it in print. Fréron loaned it to someone soon after he received it and was unable to get it back and publish it until May 1759.

According to Lagrange-Chancel, Voltaire was misinformed on two important points: the Iron Mask had been arrested in 1669 not 1661, and Saint-Mars had been the governor of Sainte-Marguerite and in charge of the Iron Mask before taking him to the Bastille. Three witnesses supplied Lagrange-Chancel with further evidence and all three claimed to have got their information at first hand. The first was Charles de Lamotte-Guérin, the deputy governor of Sainte-Marguerite, who had succeeded Saint-Mars in those duties and had also deputised for the King's Lieutenant on the island for at least six years before that. The second was Louis de Formanoir, a lieutenant commanding the prison guard, who was the nephew of Saint-Mars and had been a member of the garrison in the time the Iron Mask was there. The third was a certain Dubuisson, who had been an employee of the great financier Samuel Bernard
⁵
and had been imprisoned in the Bastille at the same time as the Iron Mask.

M. de Lamotte-Guérin, who had the command of those islands in the time that I was detained there, assured me … that M. de Saint-Mars, who obtained the governorship of these islands after that of Pignerol, showed great respect for this prisoner, that he always served him himself on dishes of silver and often provided him with clothes as rich as he might desire; that when he was ill or had need of a physician or surgeon he was obliged on pain of death not to appear in their presence except in his mask of iron, and when he was alone he could amuse himself by pulling out the hairs of his beard with tweezers of brilliantly polished steel. I saw a pair which he had used in this way in the hands of M. de Formanoir, nephew of Saint-Mars and lieutenant of a Free Company assigned to the guard of the prisoners. Several people told me that when Saint-Mars was leaving with his prisoner to take up the governorship of the Bastille the prisoner, who was wearing his iron mask, was heard to say to him, ‘Does the King want my life?' ‘No, my prince,' Saint-Mars replied, ‘your life is safe. You have only to allow yourself to be led.' I learned more from a man named Dubuisson, cash-clerk of the famous Samuel Bernard, who after spending some years in the Bastille was transferred to Sainte-Marguerite. He was in a room with some other prisoners directly above the room occupied by this unknown man and by means of the chimney-flue they were able to communicate and exchange information. When they asked him why he refused to reveal his name and fortune, he replied that such a confession would cost him his life and the lives of those to whom he disclosed the secret.

In 1763 Voltaire came back to the subject in the sequel to his
Essai sur l'Histoire Générale
. He had received a letter from a certain Guillaume-Louis de Formanoir de Palteau of the Château de Palteau near Sens in Burgundy, claiming that the mysterious prisoner ‘stayed in this château, that several people saw him get down from a litter, that he was wearing a black mask and that the event is still remembered in the district.' The credentials of this new informant were exceptional: he was the son and heir of the nephew and heir of Saint-Mars himself. When Saint-Mars died in 1708, his children were already dead. The property he had acquired during his lifetime went to the three sons of his sister, the youngest of whom, Louis de Formanoir, had been a lieutenant on Sainte-Marguerite when Lagrange-Chancel was there. The great house and estate of Palteau was inherited by the eldest of these nephews, Guillaume de Formanoir de Corbé, who like Louis had been a member of the prison staff serving under Saint-Mars. He had accompanied his uncle to the Bastille and had served as his lieutenant there, hoping to succeed him as governor. When on the death of Saint-Mars he was passed over in favour of someone else, he retired to Burgundy, married although already turned sixty, and left a son, born in 1712, to inherit the estate of Palteau along with its name. This son was Voltaire's informant. The letter itself Voltaire did not publish, but five years later, on 19 June 1768, Guillaume-Louis de Palteau wrote another letter on the same subject to Fréron, who published it immediately in his
L'Année Literaire
. In his letter Palteau made frequent mention of another member of the family whom he called Blainvilliers. This was his uncle, Joseph de Formanoir de Blainvilliers, the third nephew and heir of Saint-Mars. He had served with the garrison of Sainte-Marguerite in the time Saint-Mars was governor there.

Since it appears that … the Man in the Iron Mask continues to exercise the imagination of our writers, I am going to inform you of what I know about this prisoner. On Sainte-Marguerite and at the Bastille he was known only by the name of ‘Tower'. The governor and the other officers showed him the greatest respect: he was accorded all that a prisoner could be. He often took walks and always with a mask on his face. It is only since the publication of M. de Voltaire's
Si cle de Louis XIV
that I heard it said that the mask was made of iron and fitted with a spring mechanism: this circumstance was perhaps forgotten in the accounts I was told; but he only wore this mask when he went out to take the air or when he was obliged to appear before some stranger. M. de Blainvilliers, an infantry officer, who was a family friend of M. de Saint-Mars, the governor of Sainte-Marguerite and afterwards of the Bastille, told me on several occasions that to satisfy his curiosity, which had been greatly aroused by the lot of ‘Tower', he had taken the uniform and arms of a soldier on sentry duty in a gallery under the window of the room which the prisoner occupied while on Sainte-Marguerite and from there he had spied on him all through the night and had seen him very clearly. He said that he was not wearing his mask, that he was white-faced, tall and well-built, though somewhat thick in the lower part of the leg, and white-haired although he was still in the prime of life. He spent almost the whole of that night pacing about his room. Blainvilliers added that he was always dressed in brown, that he was given fine linen and books, that the governor and officers remained standing with their hats off in his presence until he allowed them to put their hats back on and sit down, and that they often went to keep him company and to eat with him.

In 1698, M. de Saint-Mars moved from the governorship of the island of Sainte-Marguerite to that of the Bastille. On his way to take up his new post, he stopped off with his prisoner at his estate of Palteau. The man with the mask arrived in a litter which preceded that of M. de Saint-Mars and they were accompanied by several men on horseback. The peasants went to greet their master. M. de Saint-Mars ate with his prisoner, whose back was turned to the dining-room windows which gave onto the courtyard. The peasants I have questioned could not see if he ate with his mask on, but they saw very well that M. de Saint-Mars, who was facing him at the table, had two pistols beside his plate. They had only one man-servant to wait on them, and the dishes were brought to an ante-chamber where he went to get them, being careful to close the door of the dining-room behind him. Whenever the prisoner crossed the courtyard he had the black mask on his face; the peasants noticed that his teeth and lips were visible and that he was tall with white hair. M. de Saint-Mars slept in a bed put up for him beside the bed of the man with the mask. M. de Blainvilliers told me that when he died, which was in 1704, he was buried secretly at Saint-Paul's and drugs were put into the coffin to consume the body. I never heard it said that he had any trace of a foreign accent.