MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF MARIE ANTOINETTE,

QUEEN OF FRANCE

Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan,

First Lady in Waiting to the Queen




Volume 3




CHAPTER VI.


During the first few months of his reign Louis XVI. dwelt at La Muette,
Marly, and Compiegne. When settled at Versailles he occupied himself with
a general examination of his grandfather's papers. He had promised the
Queen to communicate to her all that he might discover relative to the
history of the man with the iron mask, who, he thought, had become so
inexhaustible a source of conjecture only in consequence of the interest
which the pen of a celebrated writer had excited respecting the detention
of a prisoner of State, who was merely a man of whimsical tastes and
habits.

I was with the Queen when the King, having finished his researches,