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Updated: June 16, 2025
The unknown prisoner, who always wore a black velvet mask, and whom M. de Saint-Mars brought with him from the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, and whom he had so long in charge, felt slightly unwell yesterday on coming back from mass. He died to-day at 10 p.m. without having a serious illness, indeed it could not have been slighter.
The unknown prisoner, who always wore a black velvet mask, and whom M. de Saint-Mars brought with him from the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, and whom he had so long in charge, felt slightly unwell yesterday on coming back from mass. He died to-day at 10 p.m. without having a serious illness, indeed it could not have been slighter.
But in THAT part of the letter Saint-Mars is not speaking of the actual state of things at Sainte-Marguerite, but is giving reminiscences of Fouquet and Lauzun, who, of course, at Piguerol, had valets, and had money, as he shows. Dauger had no money. This is odd, as M. Jung says that Melzac, or Malzac, "died in the end of 1692, or early in 1693."
They set out together, but at a short distance from the city were surrounded by a dozen horsemen, who carried off the secretary, 'disguised him, put a mask on him, and took him to Pignerol. He was not kept long in this fortress, as it was 'too near the Italian frontier, and although he was carefully guarded it was feared that the walls would speak'; so he was transferred to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite, where he is at present in the custody of M. de Saint-Mars.
The moment they were out of the reach of curious ears, "Well! Monsieur d'Artagnan," said he, "the prisoner?" "Is in his prison, sire." "What did he say on the road?" "Nothing, sire." "What did he do?" "There was a moment at which the fisherman who took me in his boat to Sainte-Marguerite revolted, and did his best to kill me. The the prisoner defended me instead of attempting to fly."
On the 13th of August 1789 it was announced in an article in a journal called 'Loisirs d'un Patriote francais', which was afterwards published anonymously as a pamphlet, that the publisher had seen, among other documents found in the Bastille, a card bearing the unintelligible number "64389000," and the following note: "Fouquet, arriving from Les Iles Sainte-Marguerite in an iron mask."
1st, that the precautions taken when Fouquet was sent to Pignerol resembled in every respect those employed later by the custodians of the Iron Mask, both at the Iles Sainte-Marguerite and at the Bastille; 2nd, that the majority of the traditions relative to the masked prisoner might apply to Fouquet;
Abbe Papon, in his roamings through Provence, paid a visit to the prison in which the Iron Mask was confined, and thus speaks: "It was to the Iles Sainte-Marguerite that the famous prisoner with the iron mask whose name has never been discovered, was transported at the end of the last century; very few of those attached to his service were allowed to speak to him.
In 1688, Dauger, at Sainte-Marguerite, is again the source and center of myths; he is taken for a son of Oliver Cromwell, or for the Duc de Beufort. In June 1692, one of the Huguenot preachers at Saint-Marguerite writes on his shirt and pewter plate and throws them out of the window. Legend attributes these acts to the Man in the Iron Mask, and transmutes a pewter into a silver plate.
We care more to know what passed in the cabinet and the court of an Augustus than for details of Attila's and Tamerlane's conquests. One of the most curious affairs in this connection is the mystery of the Man with the Iron Mask, who was placed in the Ile Sainte-Marguerite just after Mazarin's death, was removed to the Bastille in 1690, and died in 1703. His identity has never been revealed.
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