Giafer starts for the army with a magnificent train. Everything is carried out as had been projected, and whilst the death of this unfortunate prince is being lamented in the camp, he is conveyed by by-roads to the island of Ormus, and placed in charge of the governor, who had received in advance the order of Cha-abas not to let his prisoner be seen by any one whatever. A single servant, who was in the secret, was sent with the Prince. But, having died upon the journey, the leaders of the escort disfigured his face with dagger-strokes in order to prevent his being recognized, left him lying upon the road, and after having stripped him as a further precaution, continued their route. Giafer was transferred to the citadel of Ispahan (the Bastille) when Cha-abas bestowed the governorship of it upon the governor of the island of Ormus as a recompence for his fidelity. The precaution was taken at the island of Ormus, as at the citadel of Ispahan, to put a mask over the face of Giafer, when on account of illness, or other causes, it was necessary to let him be seen by any one.”[122] This narration, which for the first time presented to public curiosity the anecdote of the Man with the Iron Mask, at once furnished food for conversation and became the subject of the most lively controversies. Several distinguished critics hastened to adopt the opinion it expressed, while others combated it, and for a long time the _Année Littéraire_ of Fréron was the theatre of a debate which had the _savants_ and the curious of the whole world for attentive audience. Voltaire himself, in introducing for the first time the hypothesis which makes the Man with the Iron Mask a brother of Louis XIV., did not succeed in stifling an opinion which had secured a clever defender. Father Griffet, a patient disciple of Father Daniel, and the author of an excellent _Histoire de Louis XIII._, published in 1765, in his fine _Traité des Différentes Sortes des Preuves qui servent à établir la Vérité dans l’Histoire_, a long dissertation upon the Man with the Iron Mask, and in it pronounced resolutely for the Count de Vermandois. What proofs, or at least what probabilities, did he invoke?