“What renders these circumstances doubly astonishing is, that at the time when he was sent to the isle of St. Margaret no eminent personage disappeared in Europe. Yet that the prisoner was one is beyond all doubt, for the following event took place during an early period of his residence in the isle. The governor himself put the dishes on the table, and then withdrew, after having locked him in. The prisoner one day wrote with his knife on a silver plate, and threw the plate out of the window, towards a boat, which was near the shore, almost at the foot of the tower. A fisherman, to whom the boat belonged, picked up the plate, and took it to the governor. Greatly astonished, the latter asked the fisherman, ‘Have you read what is written on this plate, or has anybody seen you with it?’—‘I cannot read,’ replied the fisherman, ‘I have only just found it, and nobody has seen it,’ This countryman was detained till the governor was thoroughly convinced that he could not read, and that no one had seen the plate. ‘You may go now,’ said he, ‘and think yourself lucky that you know not how to read.’ Of the persons who had a direct knowledge of this fact there is one, of undoubted veracity, who is still living. M. de Chamillart was the last minister who was intrusted with this strange secret. The second Marshal de Feuillade, his son-in-law, told me that, when his father-in-law was on his death-bed, he begged him on his knees to tell him who was the man who was never known by any other name than that of the man with the iron mask. Chamillart replied that it was a state secret, and that he had taken an oath never to reveal it. There are, besides, others of my contemporaries who can testify to my statement, and I know no fact which is more extraordinary or more firmly established.”