She hesitated. Where should she hide this dangerous document? At last, she opened her book of hours and slipped the paper into a sort of secret pocket contrived between the leather of the binding and the parchment that covered it. “Why so late?” she had asked. It is, in fact, probable that this document, if it could have saved her, came too late, for, in the month of October next, Queen Marie Antoinette ascended the scaffold in her turn. Now the officer, when going through his family papers, came upon his ancestor’s manuscript. From that moment, he had but one idea, which was to devote his leisure to elucidating this strange problem. He read all the Latin authors, studied all the chronicles of France and those of the neighboring countries, visited the monasteries, deciphered account-books, cartularies, treaties; and, in this way, succeeded in discovering certain references scattered over the ages. In Book III of Cæsar’s _Commentaries on the Gallic War_ (MS. edition, Alexandria), it is stated that, after the defeat of Veridovix by G. Titullius Sabinus, the chief of the Caleti was brought before Cæsar and that, for his ransom, he revealed the secret of the Needle— The Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, between Charles the Simple and Rollo, the chief of the Norse barbarians, gives Rollo’s name followed by all his titles, among which we read that of Master of the Secret of the Needle. The _Saxon Chronicle_ (Gibson’s edition, page 134), speaking of William the Conqueror, says that the staff of his banner ended in a steel point pierced with an eye, like a needle. In a rather ambiguous phrase in her examination, Joan of Arc admits that she has still a great secret to tell the King of France. To which her judges reply, “Yes, we know of what you speak; and that, Joan, is why you shall die the death.” Philippe de Comines mentions it in connection with Louis XI., and, later, Sully in connection with Henry IV.: “By the virtue of the Needle!” the good king sometimes swears. Between these two, Francis I., in a speech addressed to the notables of the Havre, in 1520, uttered this phrase, which has been handed down in the diary of a Honfleur burgess; “The Kings of France carry secrets that often decide the conduct of affairs and the fate of towns.” All these quotations, all the stories relating to the Iron Mask, the captain of the guards and his descendant, I have found to-day in a pamphlet written by this same descendant and published in the month of June, 1815, just before or just after the battle of Waterloo, in a period, therefore, of great upheavals, in which the revelations which it contained were likely to pass unperceived.