memorandum gives a detailed account of the abduction of a minister in
1679, who is styled a "minister of the Empire," and his arrival as a
masked prisoner at the islands, and states that he died there in
captivity nine years after he was carried off.

Dutens thus divests the episode of the element of the marvellous with
which Voltaire had surrounded it. He called to his aid the testimony of
the Duc de Choiseul, who, having in vain attempted to worm the secret of
the Iron Mask out of Louis XV, begged Madame de Pompadour to try her
hand, and was told by her that the prisoner was the minister of an
Italian prince. At the same time that Dutens wrote, "There is no fact in
history better established than the fact that the Man in the Iron Mask
was a minister of the Duke of Mantua who was carried off from Turin," M.
Quentin-Crawfurd was maintaining that the prisoner was a son of Anne of
Austria; while a few years earlier Bouche, a lawyer, in his 'Essai sur
l'Histoire de Provence' (2 vols. 4to, 1785), had regarded this story as a
fable invented by Voltaire, and had convinced himself that the prisoner
was a woman. As we see, discussion threw no light on the subject, and
instead of being dissipated, the confusion became ever "worse
confounded."

In 1790 the 'Memoires du Marechal de Richelieu' appeared. He had left
his note-books, his library, and his correspondence to Soulavie. The
'Memoires' are undoubtedly authentic, and have, if not certainty, at
least a strong moral presumption in their favour, and gained the belief
of men holding diverse opinions. But before placing under the eyes of
our readers extracts from them relating to the Iron Mask, let us refresh
our memory by recalling two theories which had not stood the test of
thorough investigation.