which their explanations do not always clear up; to the temptation to
display their proficiency in the ingenious art of manipulating facts and
figures culled from a dozen musty volumes into one consistent whole.

Our interest in this strange case of imprisonment arises, not alone from
its completeness and duration, but also from our uncertainty as to the
motives from which it was inflicted. Where erudition alone cannot
suffice; where bookworm after bookworm, disdaining the conjectures of his
predecessors, comes forward with a new theory founded on some forgotten
document he has hunted out, only to find himself in his turn pushed into
oblivion by some follower in his track, we must turn for guidance to some
other light than that of scholarship; especially if, on strict
investigation, we find that not one learned solution rests on a sound
basis of fact.

In the question before us, which, as we said before, is a double one,
asking not only who was the Man in the Iron Mask, but why he was
relentlessly subjected to this torture till the moment of his death, what
we need in order to restrain our fancy is mathematical demonstration, and
not philosophical induction.

While I do not go so far as to assert positively that Abbe Soulavie has
once for all lifted the veil which hid the truth, I am yet persuaded that
no other system of research is superior to his, and that no other
suggested solution has so many presumptions in its favour. I have not
reached this firm conviction on account of the great and prolonged
success of our drama, but because of the ease with which all the opinions
adverse to those of the abbe may be annihilated by pitting them one
against the other.