And so the problem is solved. The legend, which had reared itself even as high as the throne of France, topples down. The satisfaction of the historian springs from his reflection that all serious historical works for more than a century, resting on far-reaching researches and eschewing all preoccupations foreign to science--such, for example, as the desire of attaining a result different from the solutions proposed by one's predecessors--have arrived at the same conclusion, which proves to be the correct solution. Heiss, Baron de Chambrier, Reth, Roux-Fazillac, Delort, Carlo Botta, Armand Baschet, Marius Topin, Paul de Saint-Victor, Camille Rousset, Chéruel, Depping, have not hesitated to place under the famous mask of black velvet the features of Mattioli. But at each new effort made by science, legend throws itself once more into the fray, gaining new activity from the passions produced by the Revolution. The truth, in history, sometimes suggests to our mind's eye those white or yellow flowers which float on the water among broad flat leaves; a breeze springs up, a wave rises and submerges them, they disappear; but only for a moment: then they come to the surface again. CHAPTER V. MEN OF LETTERS IN THE BASTILLE. Speaking of men of letters in France under the _ancien régime_, Michelet calls them "the martyrs of thought"; he adds: "The world thinks, France speaks. And that is precisely why the Bastille of France, the Bastille of Paris--I would rather say, the prison-house of thought--was, among all bastilles, execrable, infamous, and accursed." In the course of the article devoted to the Bastille in the _Grande Encyclopédie_, M. Fernand Bournon writes: "After Louis XIV. and throughout the eighteenth century, the Bastille was especially employed to repress, though it could not stifle, that generous and majestic movement (the glory of the human spirit) towards ideas of emancipation and enfranchisement; it was the epoch when philosophers, publicists, pamphleteers, the very booksellers, were imprisoned there in large numbers." And to substantiate this eloquent apostrophe, M. Bournon cites the names of Voltaire, La Beaumelle, the Abbé Morellet, Marmontel, and Linguet, imprisoned in the Bastille; and of Diderot and the Marquis de Mirabeau placed in the château of Vincennes. Let us recall the story of these poor victims in turn, and trace the history of their martyrdom. VOLTAIRE.