Others have maintained that he was a twin
brother of the grajid monarch and had been put
away to avoid complications — the theory seized
upon by Dumae for the plot of his novel, "The
Man in the Iron Mask."

Thete was once circulated a story that this man



The Man of the Iron Mask 79

dt mystery had been the rightful Louis XIV, that
he had been mairied upon the island of Sainte-
Marguerite to bis jailer's daughter and that there
had bem bom to this union a son who was smug-
ged over to Corsica, where his foster parents were
amply told that he "came £rom good part,"
which assurance bnnslated into Italian gave him
the name "Buonaparte." He was the grand-
father of the great Napoleon, who tiius, in the
third generation, came forward to avenge the
ans of the fatiiersl

That the Man of the Iron Mask was a person^e
of less than royal blood has been maintained in
more recent years; but these theories do not
account for the fact that he was treated with the
deference due only to blood royal. Some authori-
ties claim that he was the French office, Bulonde,
who had displeased his royal master during a
military siege; others that he was M. de Marchlel,
a French soldier of fortune who led a conspiracy
for the assassination of Louis XIV; that he was
Count Mattioli,* the Duke of Mantua's Minister
of State, who left a disappearance mystery behind
him, and that he was that human enigma, James
de la Cloche, that son of Charles II of England,
who dissolved into nothingness about the time
that the Man of the Iron Mask appears to have



80 Famous Mysteries

been placed in confinement at P^eita and whose
Btrange Btory we will next relate.
