“I have received your letter of the 5th of this month, by which I learn the death of one of your prisoners. I do not reply to you concerning your desire to change your government, because you have since learnt that the King has granted you one more important[562] than yours, with a good climate, at which I am delighted, and I rejoice again with you at the share which I have taken in what concerns you.”[563] Thus we see that the death of one of the two prisoners brought by Saint-Mars from Pignerol to Exiles is undeniable. Supposing that we reject the testimony of the Sieur Souchon--which, although not possessing the character of an official document, does not the less deserve the most serious attention--supposing that we are not absolutely convinced that the prisoner who died of dropsy was Matthioly, it is, nevertheless, necessary to admit that the fact of this death places in the greatest uncertainty and almost entirely destroys the value of the theory put forward by Baron d’Heiss, De Chambrier, Reth, Roux-Fazillac, Delort, Depping, and Rousset. How, in fact, can one now insist that Matthioly was the Man with the Iron Mask, who mysteriously entered the Bastille September 18, 1698, when we see that he was confided to the care of Saint-Mars along with another prisoner; that one of the two captives died in 1687; and that from this time the name of the Mantuan Minister altogether disappears from the correspondence of Louvois and Saint-Mars? After having attentively read M. Loiseleur’s work, and especially after having found the despatches confirming the essential portions of it, I by no means arrived at the conclusion that Catinat in 1681 abducted some spy, the fact of whose arrest or even existence is altogether devoid of proof; but I acquired the conviction that this problem would never receive a definitive solution, and that it was impossible to disperse the mysterious gloom with which the Man with the Iron Mask was surrounded. Such was my confirmed opinion when, studying more attentively one of the despatches which I had been permitted to examine, a new direction was impressed on my researches, and led me to a result which I am about to unfold. FOOTNOTES: