The Man Behind the Iron Mask (20 page)

To reach the prison cells today one must pass, as one did three hundred years ago, by way of the adjoining building where Saint-Mars and his family used to live and which serves today as a small marine museum. The museum foyer was formerly the guardroom and access to the prison building can only be made from there. Through a narrow doorway one enters a high-vaulted passageway which leads to the right, a distance of forty feet or so, dimly lit by a single oval-shaped window high up in the arch of the wall on one's left. There are two doors of heavy wood reinforced with iron in the facing wall, and it is the nearest of these doors, so tradition has it, which gives on to the prison of the Iron Mask. In the time of Saint-Mars, the passage, which is narrow, was severely cramped by the presence of two bulky screens built in front of the doors and by a simple altar which stood in front of the end wall on one's right. The screens were of timber braced with iron and had solid doors bolted and padlocked. Under the oval window another larger doorway gives on to a second passageway, longer and less dim, which continues the first and contains the doors of four more cells. These doors too were once enclosed by screens.

The door to the Iron Mask's prison cell is no different from the others. It is of massive wood studded and strapped with iron and has rings for a bolt. It pulls backwards into the passageway, giving access through the thickness of the wall, a depth of three feet, to another door of the same construction which pushes forward into the cell. When this inner door is open at right angles to the jamb, it lies flat against the wall of the cell, allowing an unimpeded view from the doorway of the entire room: twenty feet to the wall facing the door, fifteen feet to the wall on the left. The walls either side curve overhead in a smooth arc like the sides of a tunnel and in the wall at the end, four feet from the ground, is a large barred window, seven feet high by four feet wide. Beyond the window, the prison wall drops sheer, flush with the cliff, to rocks and waves more than a hundred feet below. However, the window affords no view of this; the wall it pierces is six feet thick and the opening is closed by three iron grilles set one behind the other, restricting the view to a narrow section of the distant mainland. On the left of the window is a fireplace and on the right a privy. The wall is roughly plastered and the floor is paved with brick.

Some idea of the security measures which surrounded the life of the masked prisoner in this room is provided by a report addressed to Barbezieux by Saint-Mars on 6 January 1696. Here also, nearly three years before the move to the Bastille, he was referred to as the ‘longtime prisoner':

You ask me to tell you what arrangements are made when I am absent or sick for the day to day visits and precautions regarding the prisoners who are in my charge. My two lieutenants give the meals at set times in the way they have seen me give them and as I still very often do when I am feeling well. This is how it is done. The senior lieutenant takes the keys to the prison of my long-time prisoner with whom we begin. He opens the three doors and enters the room of the prisoner who duly hands him the dishes and plates which he himself has piled together. The lieutenant has only to go out of two doors to give them to one of my sergeants who puts them on a table two steps away , where the other lieutenant inspects everything going in or out of the prison and sees that there is nothing written on the dishes. Once he has been given all that is necessary, an inspection is made inside and under the bed, from there to the bars of the window and to the privy. A complete search of the room is made and very often a body-search as well. Then when he has been asked in a civil fashion if he needs anything else the doors are closed and the same thing is repeated with the other prisoners.

Their table-linen is changed twice a week, along with their shirts and the other linen they use, it being counted and carefully inspected both when it is collected and when it is returned. One can be badly caught out in the coming and going of laundry for the prisoners of consequence, some of whom I know have attempted to bribe the washerwomen. They, however, swore to me that they were unable to do what was asked of them because I had the linen soaked as soon as it came out of the rooms and because when it was clean and half-dry the washerwomen came to my apartment to iron and fold it in the presence of one of my lieutenants, who locked up the laundry baskets in a strong-box until they were to be handed over to the prisoners' valets. One must be on one's guard about the candles too. I have known some which, when broken or employed, were found to have paper in them in place of the wick. I used to send for them to Turin, to shops which were not suspect. Ribbons leaving the prisoners' cells are also dangerous, because they may write on them as they do on their linen, without one realizing it. The late M. Fouquet used to make fine paper and I would let him write on it, then I would go at night and take it from a little plcket which he had sewn into the seat of his breeches and I would send it to your late father.

At this point the report has been so badly torn that the next five lines are impossible to read, but from what few legible words remain it seems that Saint-Mars is explaining how he ensures that the prisoners are unable to speak or shout to anyone. He then concludes:

As a final precaution, the prisoners are given surprise visits from time to time at irregular hours of the day and night and it is frequently discovered then that they have been writing messages on their dirty laundry. No one else could possibly read what they write, however, as you known from the pieces I have sent you.

One of the lieutenants referred to by Saint-Mars was no doubt Palteau's father Corbé; and to bring the scene to life, one has only to remember Renneville's description of him: crooked and unkempt, sly and malevolent. Saint-Mars had arrived on Sainte-Marguerite with two other lieutenants, Laprade and Boisjoly, but the former had been transferred in May 1692 and the latter had been retired in December 1693. Corbé replaced Boisjoly, receiving his promotion in January 1694. Among the sergeants referred to in the report, one was certainly the drunken Rosarges, brutal and slovenly with his bloated purple face, and another was possibly the huge hump-backed L'Ecuyer. One might add here that though Lamotte-Guérin succeeded Saint-Mars in the functions of governor and so became responsible for the state-prisoners on the island, he did not until that time have any duties connected with them. He came to the island in 1692 but not as a member of the prison-staff. The charge he performed, in the time the Iron Mask was there, was that of King's Lieutenant, an administrative post in the fort.

Voltaire's story of the silver plate found by the fisherman and Papon's story of the shirt found by the barber come to mind when one reads that Saint-Mars was afraid his prisoners might try to get messages past the guard by writing on their plates and their linen. As it is, however, no actual report of these stories survives as proof. All that does exist is a mention, made earlier by Saint-Mars, that another prisoner, a Protestant minister named Pierre Salves, had been writing on his dishes, made of pewter not silver, and on his dirty laundry, but so far as one can make out he never threw any of these things out of the window. His intention was to communicate with the other prisoners if he could, and with the outside world, but only by means of the washerwomen. Saint-Mars had reason to be on his guard but not, so far as we know, because of anything attempted by his ‘longtime prisoner'.

In a letter to Saint-Mars on 13 August 1691, Barbezieux, who at that time had just succeeded to the Ministry of War following the death of his father, Louvois, gave instructions which clearly concern the same ‘longtime prisoner': ‘Whenever you have something to tell me about the prisoner who has been in your charge for twenty years, I beg you to employ the same precautions that you used when you wrote to M. de Louvois.' In 1691 Saint-Mars had been governor of Sainte-Marguerite for four years; before that he had been governor of Exiles for six years; and before that he had been at Pignerol for sixteen years. Barbezieux may have used the number twenty as a round figure to cover anything from eighteen to twenty-two years, but whatever year it was that the prisoner first came into the custody of Saint-Mars, the minister's statement is in perfect accord with Du Junca's note that the masked prisoner had been with Saint-Mars ever since Pignerol. Moreover, since Saint-Mars brought only one prisoner with him when he arrived from Exiles to take up his post at Sainte-Marguerite, the prisoner he brought was evidently that same ‘longtime prisoner'.

News of his appointment to Sainte-Marguerite reached Saint-Mars in the remote snow-covered mountains of Exiles in January 1687. In the six years that he had been there he had sought every possible opportunity to get away from the place, asking the minister for leave of absence to visit Turin or to take the waters at Aix-en-Savoie, and begging for a change of post. His prisoner and prison staff were to go with him to the island and all were no doubt as relieved as he was to know that it was the last winter they would have to spend in those bleak and desolate mountains. When Louvois wrote to tell Saint-Mars of his new appointment he wanted to be sure that the prisoner would be transported safely and that there would be a secure prison waiting for him on the island when he got there. He decided that before Saint-Mars moved his prisoner he should go to the island and make arrangements for his reception, but he was also concerned that proper precautions should be taken for the safeguard of the prisoner while Saint-Mars was away.

Eager to reassure the minister that he appreciated the importance of his prisoner's security, Saint-Mars wrote back on 20 January:

The orders I will give for the surveillance of my prisoner will be strict even to the point of preventing as always any communication with my lieutenant, whom I have forbidden ever to speak to him and who obeys me to the letter, so I can answer to you, sir, for his complete surety. I think the most secure mode of transport for conducting him to the islands would be a sedan-chair covered in oil-cloth so that he will have sufficient air without anyone being able to see him or speak to him during the journey, not even the soldiers whom I will pick to be close to the sedan. It will be less troublesome than a litter which can often get broken.

Saint-Mars set off to make his tour of inspection at the end of January, and by the beginning of March had sent his report and recommendations to Louvois. There was only one prison cell in the island-fortress and for security reasons it was inadequate. A new prison had to be built and Saint-Mars proposed two separate cells sealed off from the rest of the fortress by an access through his own home. The other four cells were a later addition, commenced only after the original plan for two had been completed. On 16 March Louvois told him to go ahead: ‘Along with your letter of the 2nd of this month I received the enclosed memo and plan of what needs to be done to build the prison and lodging you require to ensure the security of your prisoner on the island of Sainte-Marguerite, amounting to 5,024 livres.
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I have instructed this to be paid to you from emergency funds so you can construct this building yourself in the way you want it done.' The cost, which actually reached 6,926 livres before it was finished, might be thought considerable if undertaken solely for the accommodation of one prisoner and the fact that there were two cells, not one, may have led to the later assumption by Papon's story of the woman from Mougins, that the prisoner had a servant living in the prison with him.

Saint-Mars put the builders to work and on 26 March set off back to Exiles, his only anxiety being that he would not be allowed to make the transfer to the island until the new prison building was finished. He had, however, assured the minister that he could manage to make the existing prison secure enough to accommodate the prisoner temporarily and soon after his return to Exiles he received the necessary authorisation for this. The existing prison cell was in fact occupied by a young delinquent who had tried to take money from his own father at pistol-point, but he was of no consequence to anyone except his family and Louvois said he could be moved out to make room for the prisoner from Exiles. On 18 April Saint-Mars set out for the island with his prisoner and on 3 May he wrote to Louvois to report his arrival:

I arrived here on 30th of last month having spent only twelve days on the road because my prisoner was ill, due he claimed to not having as much air as he would have wished. I can assure you, my lord, that no one in the world saw him and that the way in which I guarded and conducted him throughout the journey left everyone guessing as to who my prisoner could be … The prisoner's bed was so old and delapidated, as was everything he had, the table-linen as much as the furniture, that it was not worth the trouble of bringing it here … and I got only thirteen écus
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for the lot … I was charged two hundred and three livres for eight porters to bring a sedan-chair from Turin and carry my prisoner here in it, the cost including the price of the chair, and I have paid.

The arrival of Saint-Mars and his mysterious prisoner caused quite a stir in the region. Rumours that a prisoner of great importance was to be brought to the island had been circulating for some time. A letter written on 3 May by a certain Abbé Mauvans to a certain M. de Seguiran in Aix-en-Provence gives some idea of the local talk. Mauvans' letter is an account of a voyage he had made with some friends along the coast to Genoa. On 18 April, four days out from Saint Tropez, they had made a stop-over at Sainte-Marguerite:

In the afternoon the wind was not favourable and that decided us to put in at the islands which we had intended to see only on the voyage back. We made a landing on Sainte-Marguerite at five o'clock and M. de Mazauges and I climbed to the fortress to get permission to enter the Tower of Saint-Honorat. We obtained that from the first captain and then we made a tour of the island. They intend to make new fortifications there: we saw the preparations: work will begin as soon as M. de Saint-Marc (sic) arrives. He had left some time before to go and get that unknown prisoner who is being transported with such great precaution, and who has been made to understand that when he is sick of living he has only to speak out his name, because the order is to give him a pistol-ball in the head if he does that. We were told that the lodging to be built for this prisoner would be connected to the governor's lodging, that only the governor would see him, that he would serve his meals and be almost his only gaoler and guard … I've just this minute learned from the military commissioner, himself newly arrived on the islands, that the state prisoner got there three days ago … Before I close my letter, I could give you particulars of the journey of this man and the guise under which he was seen in Grasse, but it is time to rejoin the company and continue our journey.