In supposing that Vermandois could have given way to such a violent and hasty act towards the Dauphin, without the proof of it being handed down to us; that Louis XIV. was cruel enough to condemn a beloved son to perpetual imprisonment; and, finally, that it was possible to keep his abduction secret in the midst of the troops, how can we possibly admit that ceremonies, which the pious monarch always regarded as sacred, could have been ordered by him to deceive his subjects and take advantage of their credulity? How can we admit that this illness, of which we have traced all the phases, was feigned; that the despatches that have been analysed were false; that Louis XIV. had for the accomplices of his stratagem men such as the Lieutenant-General Boufflers, Marshal d’Humières, and the Marquis de Montchevreuil; that, not content with making them take part in such a singular project, he made a mockery of religion the better to mask it? How can we admit that this bier, round which prayers ascended and tears flowed, was empty,[147] and that the Prince, of whom pompous epitaphs vaunt the qualities, was then in rigorous confinement at Pignerol? Finally, how explain, if not as the testimony of his sincere piety and affection, this solemn service, founded in perpetuity by Louis XIV., and which, in prolonging it, would have aggravated an impious derision, and perpetuated the memory of a profane fraud? FOOTNOTES: [117] In the preceding chapters we have made no mention of a _Mémoire de M. de Saint-Mars sur la Naissance de l’Homme au Masque de Fer_, published in vol. iii. of the _Mémoires de Tous_ (Levasseur, 1835, 8vo). According to this document, “copied by M. Billiard from the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” M. de Saint-Mars had been the governor of the mysterious son of Anne of Austria, whose high origin was carefully hidden from him. But this brother of Louis XIV. having discovered it, was sent to the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, the command of which was then (in 1687) confided to his governor. If we have not spoken of this document, it is because its authenticity has already been completely disproved. It is nothing else than a copy of the apocryphal narrative of Soulavie, which we have transcribed and refuted in the first part of our work (see page 15). The author of this copy has contented himself with substituting Saint-Mars for the “anonymous governor of the unfortunate prince.” He did not think that he thereby added a fresh impossibility to those contained in the narrative of Soulavie. For how could Saint-Mars, before 1687, have been the governor of a brother of Louis XIV., when a hundred despatches establish the fact that, from 1664, he was successively governor of the donjon of Pignerol and of Exiles? As to the presence of this document in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there is no reason for astonishment. It is explained, like the presence of so many other documents in our archives, by the seizure of the