mooted, it is probable the Duke d’Orléans or Cardinal Fleury may have informed Louis XV. about it. All the replies of the latter, when questioned, tend to confirm the opinion we have just established, by the examination of the despatches and are perfectly applicable to Matthioly.[637] That Louis XV. may have transmitted the secret to his grandson is also possible, although there is nothing to establish the fact of his having done so. But how was Louis XVIII. in a position to have been acquainted with it, as he is said to have been? When, as Count de Provence, he quitted Paris, Louis XVI. did not foresee the catastrophe which was so near. Will it be said that in the depths of his prison, the unhappy King may have remembered the necessary transmission, and have therefore occupied himself with informing his brother? But then, also, Louis XVII. was still living. If, therefore, Louis XVIII. has, by means of skilfully obscured answers, given out that he, too, was in the secret, it was only that he might not seem to be deprived of a privilege which some persons still regarded as a prerogative of the Crown. Such are the embellishments with which time has adorned the story of the masked prisoner, and which, by transfiguring him, have rendered him unrecognizable. But, as has often been said to us, how is it that, reduced to his proper proportions, he has not been previously recognized in a definitive manner? How is it, too, since he has been the object of such long researches, that people have passed over so many despatches concerning him, without even reading them? To this we shall content ourselves with replying, that these despatches are in existence, that their authenticity cannot be contested, and that any one may take cognizance of them in the Archives of the Ministry of War or of Foreign Affairs. If they have remained unpublished to the present time, it is doubtless because they have escaped notice, containing, as they do, mere indications, and no proof revealing in a direct manner the identity of the Man with the Iron Mask. It is by bringing them together, and comparing them, that light is thrown upon them. Isolated they remain obscure; having no clearness of their own, they have not attracted attention, and have remained buried in the heaps of documents among which they are still to be found.