the Isles Sainte-Marguerite to die obscurely in the Bastille. FOOTNOTES: [336] It is needless to say that I have put on one side the numerous opinions which are not worthy of being discussed, simply because they do not rest upon a pretext even. There was a period (that of the public disputes between Fréron, Saint-Foix, Lagrange-Chancel, Father Griffet, and Voltaire) when to imagine a solution of this problem was in fashion, and people suggested a name without troubling themselves with the proofs, or at least with the motives which might render this name probable. It is in this manner that two-and-twenty so-styled solutions have been put forward. I have discussed those which concern the brothers of Louis XIV. (son of Buckingham and Anne of Austria, son of Anne of Austria and an unknown person, son of Anne of Austria and Louis XIII., born some hours after Louis XIV.) I have subsequently refuted the Vermandois solution, and the Monmouth, Beaufort, and Avedick. I shall content myself with simply mentioning the opinions which make the Man with the Iron Mask a natural and adulterine son of Marie-Louise d’Orléans, wife of Charles II., King of Spain; a natural and adulterine son of Marie-Anne de Neubourg, second wife of Charles II., King of Spain, who would have been put out of the way by Louis XIV.; a natural son of the Duchess Henriette d’Orléans and Louis XIV.; a natural son of the same Princess and the Count de Guiche; a natural son of Marie-Thèrese, wife of Louis XIV. and of the negro servant whom she had brought with her from Spain; a son of Christine of Sweden and of her Grand Equerry Monaldeschi; a son of Cromwell; a lover of Louise d’Orléans, imprisoned when she became Queen of Spain; a woman; a pupil of the Jesuits incarcerated for an abusive distich, and sent to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite. All these opinions have, as may be seen, very little weight.