papers of great personages after their deaths, or, more commonly, by having been transmitted by some ambassador inhabiting the country in which these apocryphal writings circulated freely. But the place where they are found gives them no authenticity. At all periods, and to-day even, ambassadors send to the Government copies of anonymous memoirs, pamphlets, and different papers, which remain joined to their despatches, but to which no historical value can be ascribed. It has been the same with this pretended _Mémoire de Saint-Mars_, of which, in addition, a mere perusal demonstrates the untruth to any one acquainted with the usual style of the illiterate governor of the Isles Sainte-Marguerite. One sometimes hears it related--and this fact has been repeated to ourselves--that a great personage of a former Government introduced one of his friends, with much precaution, into the galleries of the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and there showed him a document which contained the secret of the Man with the Iron Mask. It is doubtless the document attributed to Saint-Mars that is referred to in this anecdote. [118] Letter of Madame la Présidente d’Osembray to Bussy-Rabutin, dated December 22, 1683:--_Lettres de Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy_, vol. vi. p. 135, edition of 1716. Testimony of Lauzun in the _Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier_, vol. vii. pp. 90, 92. [119] That of High Admiral. See amongst the papers of Colbert, MSS. of the Imperial Library, a curious memorandum drawn up by him, “to know what name and title it is necessary to give to M. le Comte de Vermandois.” Vermandois was endowed on November 12, 1669, at the age of twenty-two months, with this office of High Admiral of France, which, suppressed in 1626 by Richelieu, and changed by him into the office of “Grand Master, Chief, and General Superintendent of the Navigation and Commerce of France,” had been held successively by the Cardinal himself; his nephew Armand de Maillé-Brézé, Duke de Fronsac; Anne of Austria; César, Duke de Vendôme; and his son François de Vendôme, Duke de Beaufort. [120] Letter of the Présidente d’Osembray, already cited. [121] Published by the Compagnie des Libraires Associés (Company of Associated Booksellers) in 12mo. [122] _Mémoires Secrets pour servir à l’Histoire de Perse._ [123] The academy here mentioned is not the present French Academy, but a kind of gymnasium, where the nobles met to learn riding, fencing, dancing, &c. It is frequently referred to in the memoirs of the time.--_Trans._ [124] _Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier_, vol. vii. p. 91. [125] We shall see, in the course of this work, that they succeeded in securing at least a portion of this enormous fortune, thanks to the imprisonment of Lauzun, the husband of Mademoiselle de Montpensier. [126] _Mémoires_ already cited, vol. vii. p. 92.