Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-11-17

dated April %. 1910, has also been dis
covered. 1t says explicitly: 1T is neces-
sary that no one should know what has
become of this man
We must now go back to the register of
the Bastile which declares that the man
with the mask had been a prisoner of M.
de Saint-Mars at Pignerol. Now Saint
Mars transferred from Pignerol to
Exilles near Mont-Cenis) in the August of
1851 and we have the list of the five pris-
oners then under his charge They were
a crazy dominican frar, who died In 1858;
two domestic servants of Foucquet (an-
other of Dumas characters in the same
''Vicomte de Bragelonne'D, of whom 1t is
known that one died in 1856 while the
other continued in EXilles; that from
the only two remaining the Man of the
Mask must be identified, the register of
the Bastille says that he was taken to the
prison of Sainte-Marguerite. One of these
two was Dubreuil, a common enough spy,
captured on the still unsettled frontier of
Alsace, lately won from the Germans;
about him no mystery has ever been made.
Mattioli was the other.
The Conclusions Reached.
To sum up, the man of the mask must
have been at Pignerol with Saint-Mars and
afterward at Sainte-Marguerite before he
came up to the Bastille. Now there were
five at Pignerol, of whom only two went 20
Sainte-Marguerite, and of these one could
not have been the man of the mask. There
fore, he was the other, who was Mattioli.
General Jung, who was not aware of this
mathematical proof, admitted that Ma ttioli
was indeed confined at Sainte-M Marguerite,
but he thought he had found proof that he
died there in the year 1864. Further inveS-
tigation has lately shown that this was a
mistake. resulting from confusion with an
other prisoner.
Still other proofs are forthcoming 1t IL
known that the Man of the Iron Mask was
buried on the 10th of November, 1703, in
nameleSs grave in the cemetery of Saint
M Pierre nd ria Of he
French ministry of foreign affairs has dis
covered, in an official register of burals for
that date, the name Of Hercule-Antoine
Mattioli.
Evidence From Royalty.
Again. when the court of Louis XIV was
whispering strange things about the mys-
FERROUS prisoners connection with the Bour-
bons, Madame de Pompadour, the kings
mistress, made bold to ask him what he
knew about the matter. The king, who had
succeeded Louis XIV his great grandfather,
when but child, naturally had no personal
knowledge of the affair He could only say
what he had been told, that 1t was an
Italian minister of state. This Is vouched
for by his own minister, the Due de Choi-
seul, to whom La Pompadour confided 1t.
In the next reign. when The legend had in
creased yet further, Marie Antoinette ques-
toned Louis XVI on the affair. The king
answered that the only information that he
ever had received came to him from the
aged Maurepas, long secretary of state of
TIE kings household. 1t was to the effect
that the man was "a very dangerous pris-
oner on account of his intriguing spirit;
that he was a subject of the Duke Of Man.
tua, and that he had been seized on the
frontier and confined. first at Pignerol. and
afterward in the Bastille"
1t should be noted that, at the time of
these declarations of the two kings,
writer had yet spoken the name Of Mat
toll.
1t remains to be seen, however, whether
all this evidenc:, from what is now known
history, from prison registers and state
&C rrespondence, and from parties who, II
must be confessed were interested in the
matter, will satisfy the public curiosity
which has 50 long found agreeable pasture
in the story of the Man of the Iron Mask.
STERLING HELLO.