Persuaded of the unsatisfactory nature of a method of procedure which had always produced such ephemeral results, I have thought that, extraordinary means having proved so inefficacious, more simple ones might perhaps lead to a new solution, (yet one hardly dared hope for it, when twenty-five hypotheses had already been put forward)--to a solution at once decisive, to an absolute conviction, to the certainty of not having to apprehend from the reader either doubt or objection. Commencing the study of this question without any fixed opinion, and with the firm resolution of seeking only the truth, I set about collecting from the whole of our archives authentic despatches relating to the State prisoners under Louis XIV. from the year 1660 to 1710. Without pre-occupying myself with the Ministers who signed them, or the prisoners whom they concerned; without limiting my researches to Saint-Mars, Pignerol, the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, or the Bastille, I arranged these despatches, of which more than three hundred are unpublished, in order of their dates. They then lent a material assistance; some explained others, and from this long and minute inquiry, slowly pursued through heaps of documents, has resulted, I hope, a definitive solution. It was expedient this solution should be obtained.[12] In this century, when the historian’s resources are increased by the progress in certain sciences, by so many spectacles offered as an instruction to his fruitful meditations, by a more complete knowledge of institutions and facts, by the facility afforded of penetrating into collections which it had been believed would remain for ever inaccessible to investigators--in this century, which is literally the century of history, it behoved us not to leave in our annals, without solving it, a problem which had so frequently attracted the attention of foreigners. It is this which determined me to undertake a task which some may consider more curious than important. But to the interest peculiar to this subject has to be added that which is attached to the principal persons in whom by turns people have seen the prisoner of Saint-Mars. Before bringing on the scene the true Man with the Iron Mask, I shall examine rapidly, and with the aid of unpublished documents, the illustrious usurpers of this romantic title, so that this work may serve, not only to satisfy a trivial curiosity, but also to throw a new light upon some of the most singular points of the inner history of our country. FOOTNOTES: