Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1900-09-20

aWOke to a state of unusual excite
ment. Workmen moved to and fro,
boats laden with stones and beams lay
at the little quay and tubs of mortar
stood in the court beneath the Flagstaff,
for, it is said. new chapel was being
prepared and the governors house was
to be raised another story. A new
governor was coming and prisoner or
rare Importance was to be placed under
his charge.
His Jailer
Benigne d'Auvergne, Count de Saint
Mars, was named governor of ST. Mar
guerite. Late in April he started for
this new post. He brought with him
his wife, his family, his baggage his
servant Ru and a masked prisoner"
whom, says one authority, EIGHT Pied
montese carried every league of the
way in a covered chair, over which was
fitted frame covered with oilcloth.'
face; no one heard the sound
of his voice. A boat was wait
ing at the landing-place; the gov
ernor and the masked man were borne
over to the island prison, and to this
was consigned the individual who was
known to the authorities as the pris-
oner of Provence" and to the world at
large for over two hundred years as
"The Man in the Iron Mask"
The Iron Mask"
One writer relates that the mask was
not of iron, but of black velvet, and
that a spacious cell was given him,
though the governor, Saint Mars,
boosted that there was nothing to COM
pare to the thick walls of this prison in
all Europe nor to it's triple iron grating
and corridor where the prisoner might
take exercise without being seen. A
few prisoners were already here. In
significant Huguenot pastors, who sang
hymns to the sea waves and who, says
sympathizing authoress, were beat
en- for doing So" No human being, re-
ported the jailer, had set eyes on the
masked prisoner during the journey.
cali along the route lowing to the way
in which I concealed him) people did
seek to know who my prisoner might
be. They all declare here that he is
either NJ. de Beaumont or son OF
Cromwell"
A Romantic Legend.
And for 200 years the reading world
has been asking who was the man con-
clealed beneath the black velvet mask
in the prison of ST. Marguerite. What
a mass of paper that story has black
! ened during the last two centuries
says Victorien Sardou. Voltaire was
the first to draw attention to the ro-
mantle tale of a princely person, says
Miss Dempster, whom as the MAN
! in the Iron Mask" he has rendered
famous All through the eighteenth
century the legend grew. Few facts
being known about it, imagination hao
free scope Louvois. who sent him &c
the island prison, says Of him:
Though obscure, he was none the less
| a person of consequence; that he was
a prodigious scoundrel, who, on a very
important matter had cozened many
persons of Distinctions" that he was
ito be hardly treated and jealousy Sc
Guided from every eye" and you are
to give him only the things necessary
, for life, with no comforts whatever"
This harsh treatment marked out fol
L. him endears him the more to the dra
matist. 1t is not true, says Miss Demp
, ster, that his mask was of iron. 1t wa!
made Of black velvet, but it had a stee
!, spring in it. It is also a fiction that h
J wrote his name on a silver plate AM
threw it out OF his window, to b.
picked up by boatman of Cannes. H
was over the middle height, tall AM
, well made, and toward the close of hi
life he told the governors servant tina