The qualities that make for success being quite different in a novel and
in a drama, I could easily have founded a romance on the fictitious loves
of Buckingham and the queen, or on a supposed secret marriage between her
and Cardinal Mazarin, calling to my aid a work by Saint-Mihiel which the
bibliophile declares he has never read, although it is assuredly neither
rare nor difficult of access. I might also have merely expanded my
drama, restoring to the personages therein their true names and relative
positions, both of which the exigencies of the stage had sometimes
obliged me to alter, and while allowing them to fill the same parts,
making them act more in accordance with historical fact. No fable
however far-fetched, no grouping of characters however improbable, can,
however, destroy the interest which the innumerable writings about the
Iron Mask excite, although no two agree in details, and although each
author and each witness declares himself in possession of complete
knowledge. No work, however mediocre, however worthless even, which has
appeared on this subject has ever failed of success, not even, for
example, the strange jumble of Chevalier de Mouhy, a kind of literary
braggart, who was in the pay of Voltaire, and whose work was published
anonymously in 1746 by Pierre de Hondt of The Hague. It is divided into
six short parts, and bears the title, 'Le Masque de Fer, ou les Aventures
admirables du Prre et du Fils'. An absurd romance by Regnault Warin, and
one at least equally absurd by Madame Guenard, met with a like favourable
reception. In writing for the theatre, an author must choose one view of
a dramatic situation to the exclusion of all others, and in following out
this central idea is obliged by the inexorable laws of logic to push
aside everything that interferes with its development. A book, on the
contrary, is written to be discussed; it brings under the notice of the
reader all the evidence produced at a trial which has as yet not reached
a definite conclusion, and which in the case before us will never reach
it, unless, which is most improbable, some lucky chance should lead to