The Man Behind the Iron Mask (42 page)

If Eustache Danger was arrested as a consequence of being a messenger for Madame then, Petitfils suggests, he could have been responsible for or at least involved in whatever incident it was which in July 1669 caused Louis XIV to question the reliability of Madame and seek to exclude her from the negotiations. That something of significance in the cross-Channel exchange did occur at that time seems likely since of all the correspondence which passed between Charles and Madame after 4 July 1669 until the secret treaty was signed nearly a year later, not a single letter has been allowed to survive. Such an identification of Eustache Danger would also explain why in the course of his stay at Exiles and even more noticeably on Sainte-Marguerite Island he lost importance in the eyes of the authorities in Paris. In 1685, two years before the move to Sainte-Marguerite, Charles II died and was succeeded by his Roman Catholic brother, James, and in 1688 the year after the move to Sainte-Marguerite, James was driven out of England and replaced by the Protestant couple William and Mary. Within the space of four years, from February 1685 to February 1689, the secret which had cost Eustache Danger his liberty lost its political relevance and the disruptive threat its disclosure would have posed.

13

THE VALET IN THE FACE-SAVING MASK

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N
ot even a Hindu god', it has been said of the Iron Mask, ‘ever underwent so many transformations, so many incarnations', and looking back at the welter of theories produced so far, the multitude of candidates presented in these pages, it may seem that unless and until more relevant and reliable documents are uncovered the mystery will never be solved. Ill-served though we are, I would nonetheless venture to propose that we already have all the information we need to solve the mystery. I would even suggest that the mask has been lifted many times already but, because those who lifted it could never understand why the face behind it should have been masked in the first place, the mystery has been allowed to continue. It is the mask which fascinates and mystifies us, drawing our attention to the prisoner even while rendering him anonymous, and among all the contradictions which rise to baffle us in the Iron Mask story it is this contradiction at the heart of the mystery, the fact that the masked prisoner was made noticeable by the very means used to hide his identity, that none of the theories advanced so far has ever been able to resolve. My own theory does not pretend to answer all the questions posed, but this particular contradiction it does explain. Illogical as it may seem, I suggest that the prisoner known to the world as the Man in the Iron Mask was a nonentity whose face without the mask would have meant nothing to anyone and, irrational as it may seem, I suggest that the mystery surrounding him, including the fact that he was once even made to wear an actual mask of steel, was the fabrication pure and simple of his gaoler Saint-Mars.

Little is known about the prisoner but, though for the moment we cannot say much about who he was, we can say a great deal about who he was not. He was not for instance Eustache Dauger or Eustache d'Auget. His name was Danger or d'Angers, as Petitfils maintained back in 1970. Most theorists since that time, like Mast and Dijol, have ignored this claim but, at the International Symposium on the Iron Mask held in Cannes in 1987, Bernard Caire removed all remaining doubt on the matter with an analysis of the handwriting of the original warrants and dispatches.
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Furthermore, this man called Danger was neither well-born nor well-known. For all his importance as a prisoner, he was not in himself a person of any significance. The fact that Louvois described him as ‘only a valet', that Saint-Mars thought he would make ‘a fine valet' for Lauzun, that he was given to Fouquet ‘as a servant' and ‘to serve as a valet', and that La Rivière was described as ‘his colleague', is evidence enough: in seventeenth-century France only a valet would have been required, or indeed prepared, to act as a valet.

If further proof of the prisoner's humble condition is needed, it is not lacking. When in July 1669 Louvois told Saint-Mars to make ready for Danger's arrival he was quite specific about the man's social status: ‘you will prepare the furniture necessary', he wrote, ‘taking note of the fact that since the prisoner is only a valet he will need nothing of any significance', and later, when Saint-Mars moved Danger from Exiles to Sainte-Marguerite, he informed Louvois that all the prisoner's belongings including his bed had been so old and broken that they had not been worth the expense of transporting them. By contrast the overall cost of what furniture, linen and clothes were judged necessary to prepare a prison apartment for a gentleman like Lauzun amounted to more than 4,000 livres and included the provision of 460 livres worth of table-silver and such things as twelve lace nightcaps, four pairs of gloves and a Bergamo tapestry. In 1681, when Danger and La Rivière were the only prisoners Saint-Mars had, Louvois wrote to him: ‘You may buy new clothes for your prisoners, but clothes for that kind of people should be expected to last three or four years.' For Danger's upkeep at Pignerol, Saint-Mars was allowed 4 livres per day and at Exiles 5 livres per day, the same as for La Rivière; the allowance he was given merely for feeding Lauzun and his servant amounted to 20 livres per day. Just to provide Lauzun with sheets and towels cost the equivalent of Danger's entire upkeep for more than four months.
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It has been argued that if Danger had been only a valet, the authorities would not have wasted so much time and money keeping him in prison. A valet, as Pagnol put it, ‘could have been hanged in five minutes with a rope for forty sous'; but Pagnol was wrong. Though the power of Louis XIV and his ministers was supreme, it was nonetheless governed by law and there was no place in the legal order for them to save government time and money by killing people. As it was, La Rivière, who was certainly nothing but a valet, was not killed when it was discovered that he knew too much, and Matthioli's valet, who was kidnapped to stop him talking about the circumstances of his master's disappearance, was not killed either. Both were kept in prison, like Danger at a cost of 5 livres per day, La Rivière until his death from dropsy seven years later and Matthioli's valet until his death more than fifteen years later.

The valet Eustache Danger was certainly the prisoner who ended his days wearing a mask in the Bastille in November 1703, but when he was arrested and imprisoned in August 1669 there was no concern to hide his face. Captain de Vauroy was simply ordered to arrest him on sight and take him immediately to Pignerol where Saint-Mars was ordered ‘to keep him under safe custody preventing him from communicating with anyone by word of mouth or in writing.' The order for reimbursement issued to Vauroy for his journey from Dunkirk to Calais and from there to Pignerol makes it clear that he had with him only three constables to serve as escort and that the group travelled on horseback by regular roads, stopping to eat and sleep and change horses at the ordinary post-houses along their way. The danger to the State which the prisoner represented was real enough, but it had nothing to do with his face. He knew something which the authorities were afraid he might reveal and he was arrested and imprisoned to stop him talking. ‘You must make sure,' Louvois warned Saint-Mars, ‘that the windows are so placed that they do not give on to anywhere accessible to anyone and that there are enough doors closing one upon the other that the sentries will not be able to hear anything. You personally must take the wretch whatever he needs for the day once a day and you must never listen to anything he tries to tell you, no matter what the pretext might be.' The following month, the prisoner was allowed the services of a doctor and of a priest, and still the only concern voiced by Louvois was that he should ‘speak to no one'. That the doctor or the priest would see his face was a matter of no significance at all and later, when he was allowed to leave his cell to serve Fouquet and even to walk with him in the citadel, the question of hiding his face was never raised.

What Danger's secret knowledge was we do not know. It was something which the authorities believed Fouquet could be trusted with, but not Lauzun. Louvois writing to Fouquet about the risk of Danger revealing the secret to others declared: ‘you know how important it is that no one has knowledge of what he knows', and according to Bernard Caire the secret was something which Danger had seen. In the letter from Louvois to Fouquet ‘regarding what Eustache may have said of his past life to his colleague', Louvois asked ‘if the man named Eustache, given to you as a servant, has not spoken in front of your other valet of how he was employed before coming to Pignerol.' From an examination of the original first draft of this letter Caire discovered that the minister had first dictated ‘of what he had seen', then changed his mind, had the clerk cross it out and write in its place ‘of how he was employed'. As things are, we know precious little about the secret and even that little is not without its contradictions; for all the concern to stop Lauzun discovering what it was, it was something which apparently he could nevertheless be persuaded not to believe.

In April 1680 the security measures surrounding Danger were changed. La Rivière, suspected of having learned whatever forbidden knowledge it was that had cost Danger his liberty, lost his liberty too. Both became secret prisoners, their names suppressed in all subsequent correspondance, while word was put about in Pignerol that they had been released. The reason for this change was the discovery made by Saint-Mars at the time of Fouquet's death that Lauzun had been visiting Fouqet in secret and so had probably met and talked with Danger. The purpose of the subterfuge was to deceive Lauzun into believing that Danger, like La Rivière, had never been more than an ordinary valet, engaged at Pignerol to serve Fouquet, and that in consequence any revelations he might have made were pure inventions. Presumably the increased security around Danger included the precaution that his face should not be seen, but it was a measure which applied equally to La Rivière. Moreover it was necessary only for so long as Lauzun or anyone capable of informing him was in a position to discover that the two valets had not been set free. In April 1681, Lauzun was released from Pignerol; the following September Saint-Mars left for Exiles with the two secret prisoners, hidden ‘in a litter' by order of Louvois; and in the following November, the crisis over, Louvois informed Saint-Mars that once again he could allow his prisoners the services of a doctor and of a priest. Far away from Lauzun and his friends at Pignerol, the security measures surrounding the prisoners could become the same as they had been for Danger at the time of his arrest and the only concern voiced by the minister thereafter was that they should be ‘unable to speak with anyone not only from outside but even from among the garrison of Exiles.'

Since Danger and La Rivière had been secret prisoners at Pignerol, it was important that they should not be recognized when they left for Exiles and it was for this reason that Louvois ordered Saint-Mars to have them ‘leave the citadel of Pignerol in a litter'. So far as the minister was concerned, the use of a litter was quite sufficient to meet the demands of the situation. This form of conveyance was a box-like structure built on a framework like a stretcher with shafts front and back to which horses or mules were harnessed. Being curtained with leather or oilcloth, it could easily be kept closed from the outside. Moreover, since it was a common means of transport at the time, it was not likely to attract undue attention; and as it happened it appears to have attracted no attention at all. According to Ettore Patria, who contributed a study of the Exiles period to the Cannes Symposium in 1987, no one in the region of Exiles had the least suspicion that Saint-Mars had brought any prisoners with him; and the Savoyard governor of nearby Susa, who kept his superiors in Turin constantly informed on what was happening over the border, of the doings of the French in general and of Saint-Mars in particular, did not at any time realize that there were prisoners in the fort.

In all the time Saint-Mars was governor of Exiles, nothing happened to trouble the security of his two prisoners and the simple directive in force when they arrived, ‘that no one should be able to communicate with them', remained unchanged, reiterated by Louvois in almost identical form from year to year. And yet, though the security status of the two prisoners did not change in the five and a half years they were there, it was during the transfer from Exiles to Saint-Marguerite that the secret prisoner, who we know was ‘only a valet', became the mysterious prisoner known to the world as the Man in the Iron Mask. In January 1687 La Rivière died, in the following month Saint-Mars went to Sainte-Marguerite to make a tour of inspection and in April it was common knowledge in the region of Cannes that a mysterious prisoner of great importance was going to be brought to the island. In May the prisoner arrived in a sedan-chair on the shoulders of four porters who, in relay with four others, had carried him over mountain roads for twelve days, and in September it was reported in Paris that the prisoner in the chair had arrived ‘with a steel mask on his face'. What had happened to transform Danger from being one of the two secret prisoners in a litter who arrived in Exiles unnoticed in September 1681 into being the well-publicized sensation he was on his arrival at Sainte-Marguerite in May 1687 has nothing to do with any order issued by Louvois. The idea of using a sedan chair and a mask of steel was the responsibility solely and simply of his gaoler Saint-Mars and he chose to transport his wretched prisoner in that way not for reasons of state, but for reasons of his own. To understand how Saint-Mars could have become capable of such a thing, a brief recapitulation is necessary.

It was no secret in Pignerol that Saint-Mars had been sent from Paris to take charge of a prison where there was only one prisoner. Pignerol was no ordinary prison. It had been upgraded to a state prison under the command of Saint-Mars for the sole purpose of guarding Fouquet and when after four and a half years Saint-Mars received another prisoner, the assumption was naturally made that the second prisoner was as extraordinary as the first. On 31 August 1669, just one week after Eustache Danger's arrival, Saint-Mars reported to Louvois that ‘many people here believe he is a Marshal of France and others say a President'. Word got out that transformations were being made in the Lower Tower to provide a special high-security cell for this new prisoner and Saint-Mars, finding himself the focus of everyone's interest, enjoyed the attention. On 12 April 1670 he wrote to Louvois: ‘There are sometimes people who are so curious to know about my prisoner and why I am having such fortifications built for his security, that I am obliged to tell them preposterous stories to make fun of them.' Who the secret prisoner was, no one could say, but two and a half years after his arrival the belief that the state prison of Pignerol was reserved for prisoners of only the highest rank and importance seemed confirmed by the arrival of a third prisoner, every bit as exceptional as the first: the King's favourite, Lauzun. Judging by what evidence there was, it seemed reasonable to assume that the mysterious prisoner was someone of birth, position and influence who could count on powerful supporters to attempt his liberation.