The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies

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Lang Andrew. The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies

PREFACE

I. THE VALET’S TRAGEDY

II. THE VALET’S MASTER

APPENDIX

III. THE MYSTERY OF SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY

IV. THE FALSE JEANNE D’ARC

V. JUNIUS AND LORD LYTTELTON’S GHOST

VI. THE MYSTERY OF AMY ROBSART

VII. THE VOICES OF JEANNE D’ARC

VIII. THE MYSTERY OF JAMES DE LA CLOCHE

IX. THE TRUTH ABOUT ‘FISHER’S GHOST’

X. THE MYSTERY OF LORD BATEMAN

XI. THE QUEEN’S MARIE

XII. THE SHAKESPEARE-BACON IMBROGLIO*

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The Mystery of the Man in the Iron Mask is, despite a pleasant saying of Lord Beaconsfield’s, one of the most fascinating in history. By a curious coincidence the wildest legend on the subject, and the correct explanation of the problem, were offered to the world in the same year, 1801. According to this form of the legend, the Man in the Iron Mask was the genuine Louis XIV., deprived of his rights in favour of a child of Anne of Austria and of Mazarin. Immured in the Isles Sainte-Marguerite, in the bay of Cannes (where you are shown his cell, looking north to the sunny town), he married, and begot a son. That son was carried to Corsica, was named de Buona Parte, and was the ancestor of Napoleon. The Emperor was thus the legitimate representative of the House of Bourbon.

This legend was circulated in 1801, and is referred to in a proclamation of the Royalists of La Vendee. In the same year, 1801, Roux Fazaillac, a Citoyen and a revolutionary legislator, published a work in which he asserted that the Man in the Iron Mask (as known in rumour) was not one man, but a myth, in which the actual facts concerning at least two men were blended. It is certain that Roux Fazaillac was right; or that, if he was wrong, the Man in the Iron Mask was an obscure valet, of French birth, residing in England, whose real name was Martin.

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Meanwhile, an Italian news-letter, copied into a Leyden paper, of August 1687, declared that Mattioli had just been brought from Pignerol to Sainte-Marguerite. There was no mystery about Mattioli, the story of his capture was published in 1682, but the press, on one point, was in error: Mattioli was still at Pignerol. The known advent of the late Commandant of Pignerol, Saint-Mars, with a single concealed prisoner, at the island, naturally suggested the erroneous idea that the prisoner was Mattioli. The prisoner was really Dauger, the survivor of the two valets.

From 1688 to 1691 no letter about Dauger has been published. Apparently he was then the only prisoner on the island, except one Chezut, who was there before Dauger arrived, and gave up his chamber to Dauger while the new cells were being built. Between 1689 and 1693 six Protestant preachers were brought to the island, while Louvois, the Minister, died in 1691, and was succeeded by Barbezieux. On August 13, 1691, Barbezieux wrote to ask Saint-Mars about ‘the prisoner whom he had guarded for twenty years.’ The only such prisoner was Dauger, who entered Pignerol in August 1669. Mattioli had been a prisoner only for twelve years, and lay in Pignerol, not in Sainte-Marguerite, where Saint-Mars now was. Saint-Mars replied: ‘I can assure you that nobody has seen him but myself.’

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