CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE

BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

IN EIGHT VOLUMES


THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK [An Essay]

(This is the essay entitled The Man in the Iron Mask, not the novel
"The Man in the Iron Mask" [The Novel] Dumas #28[nmaskxxx.xxx]2759])


For nearly one hundred years this curious problem has exercised the
imagination of writers of fiction--and of drama, and the patience of the
learned in history. No subject is more obscure and elusive, and none
more attractive to the general mind. It is a legend to the meaning of
which none can find the key and yet in which everyone believes.
Involuntarily we feel pity at the thought of that long captivity
surrounded by so many extraordinary precautions, and when we dwell on the
mystery which enveloped the captive, that pity is not only deepened but a
kind of terror takes possession of us. It is very likely that if the
name of the hero of this gloomy tale had been known at the time, he would
now be forgotten. To give him a name would be to relegate him at once to
the ranks of those commonplace offenders who quickly exhaust our interest
and our tears. But this being, cut off from the world without leaving
any discoverable trace, and whose disappearance apparently caused no
void--this captive, distinguished among captives by the unexampled nature
of his punishment, a prison within a prison, as if the walls of a mere
cell were not narrow enough, has come to typify for us the sum of all the