impulsively adopted opinion was wrong? Do we regard our belief as a
poetical illusion? I do not think so; on the contrary, it seems to me
that our good sense approves our fancy's flight. For what can be more
natural than the conviction that the secret of the name, age, and
features of the captive, which was so perseveringly kept through long
years at the cost of so much care, was of vital importance to the
Government? No ordinary human passion, such as anger, hate, or
vengeance, has so dogged and enduring a character; we feel that the
measures taken were not the expression of a love of cruelty, for even
supposing that Louis XIV were the most cruel of princes, would he not
have chosen one of the thousand methods of torture ready to his hand
before inventing a new and strange one? Moreover, why did he voluntarily
burden himself with the obligation of surrounding a prisoner with such
numberless precautions and such sleepless vigilance? Must he not have
feared that in spite of it all the walls behind which he concealed the
dread mystery would one day let in the light? Was it not through his
entire reign a source of unceasing anxiety? And yet he respected the
life of the captive whom it was so difficult to hide, and the discovery
of whose identity would have been so dangerous. It would have been so
easy to bury the secret in an obscure grave, and yet the order was never
given. Was this an expression of hate, anger, or any other passion?
Certainly not; the conclusion we must come to in regard to the conduct of
the king is that all the measures he took against the prisoner were
dictated by purely political motives; that his conscience, while allowing
him to do everything necessary to guard the secret, did not permit him to
take the further step of putting an end to the days of an unfortunate
man, who in all probability was guilty of no crime.

Courtiers are seldom obsequious to the enemies of their master, so that
we may regard the respect and consideration shown to the Man in the Mask