In 1826, M. de Taules wrote that, in his opinion, the masked prisoner was none other than the Armenian Patriarch.  But six years later the great success of my drama at the Odeon converted nearly everyone to the version of which Soulavie was the chief exponent.  The bibliophile Jacob is mistaken in asserting that I followed a tradition preserved in the family of the Duc de Choiseul; M. le Duc de Bassano sent me a copy made under his personal supervision of a document drawn up for Napoleon, containing the results of some researches made by his orders on the subject of the Man in the Iron Mask.  The original Ms., as well as that of the Memoires du Duc de Richelieu, were, the duke told me, kept at the Foreign Office.  In 1834 the journal of the Institut historique published a letter from M. Auguste Billiard, who stated that he had also made a copy of this document for the late Comte de Montalivet, Home Secretary under the Empire.

M. Dufey (de l’Yonne) gave his ‘Histoire de la Bastille’ to the world in the same year, and was inclined to believe that the prisoner was a son of Buckingham.

Besides the many important personages on whom the famous mask had been placed, there was one whom everyone had forgotten, although his name had been put forward by the minister Chamillart:  this was the celebrated Superintendent of Finance, Nicolas Fouquet.  In 1837, Jacob, armed with documents and extracts, once more occupied himself with this Chinese puzzle on which so much ingenuity had been lavished, but of which no one had as yet got all the pieces into their places.  Let us see if he succeeded better than his forerunners.

The first feeling he awakes is one of surprise.  It seems odd that he should again bring up the case of Fouquet, who was condemned to imprisonment for life in 1664, confined in Pignerol under the care of Saint-Mars, and whose death was announced (falsely according to Jacob) on March 23rd, 1680.  The first thing to look for in trying to get at the true history of the Mask is a sufficient reason of state to account for the persistent concealment of the prisoner’s features till his death; and next, an explanation of the respect shown him by Louvois, whose attitude towards him would have been extraordinary in any age, but was doubly so during the reign of Louis XIV, whose courtiers would have been the last persons in the world to render homage to the misfortunes of a man in disgrace with their master.  Whatever the real motive of the king’s anger against Fouquet may have been, whether Louis thought he arrogated to himself too much power, or aspired to rival his master in the hearts of some of the king’s mistresses, or even presumed to raise his eyes higher still, was not the utter ruin, the lifelong captivity, of his enemy enough to satiate the vengeance of the king?  What could he desire more?  Why should his anger, which seemed slaked in 1664, burst forth into hotter flames seventeen years later, and lead him to inflict