Anne of Austria had come to persuade herself that hers alone was the fault which had deprived Louis xiii [the publisher of this edition overlooked the obvious typographical error of “XIV” here when he meant, and it only makes sense, that it was xiii.  D.W.] of an heir, but the birth of the Iron Mask undeceived her.  The cardinal, to whom she confided her secret, cleverly arranged to bring the king and queen, who had long lived apart, together again.  A second son was the result of this reconciliation; and the first child being removed in secret, Louis XIV remained in ignorance of the existence of his half-brother till after his majority.  It was the policy of Louis XIV to affect a great respect for the royal house, so he avoided much embarrassment to himself and a scandal affecting the memory of Anne of Austria by adopting the wise and just measure of burying alive the pledge of an adulterous love.  He was thus enabled to avoid committing an act of cruelty, which a sovereign less conscientious and less magnanimous would have considered a necessity.

After this declaration Voltaire made no further reference to the Iron Mask.  This last version of the story upset that of Sainte-Foix.  Voltaire having been initiated into the state secret by the Marquis de Richelieu, we may be permitted to suspect that being naturally indiscreet he published the truth from behind the shelter of a pseudonym, or at least gave a version which approached the truth, but later on realising the dangerous significance of his words, he preserved for the future complete silence.

We now approach the question whether the prince who thus became the Iron Mask was an illegitimate brother or a twin-brother of Louis XIV.  The first was maintained by M. Quentin-Crawfurd; the second by Abbe Soulavie in his ‘Memoires du Marechal Duc de Richelieu’ (London, 1790).  In 1783 the Marquis de Luchet, in the ‘Journal des Gens du Monde’ (vol. iv.  No. 23, p. 282, et seq.), awarded to Buckingham the honour of the paternity in dispute.  In support of this, he quoted the testimony of a lady of the house of Saint-Quentin who had been a mistress of the minister Barbezieux, and who died at Chartres about the middle of the eighteenth century.  She had declared publicly that Louis XIV had consigned his elder brother to perpetual imprisonment, and that the mask was necessitated by the close resemblance of the two brothers to each other.

The Duke of Buckingham, who came to France in 1625, in order to escort Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis xiii, to England, where she was to marry the Prince of Wales, made no secret of his ardent love for the queen, and it is almost certain that she was not insensible to his passion.  An anonymous pamphlet, ‘La Conference du Cardinal Mazarin avec le Gazetier’ (Brussels, 1649), says that she was infatuated about him, and allowed him to visit her in her room.  She even permitted him to take off and keep one of her gloves, and his vanity leading