Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographical and printing errors havebeen corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been normalized; otherspelling inconsistencies have been retained.
The publisher’s inconsistent application of small caps has beenretained.
Pages 86 and 88 are blank pages in the original publication.
The cover image has been produced by the submitterfor the e-reader editions of this e-text. It is released into the public domain.
Additional notes and details of the corrections can be found at theend of this e-text.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY, DORSET STREET.
I was led to undertake the following Narrativeby the perusal of a work, lately published at Paris,entitled “Histoire de L’Homme au Masque de Fer,par J. Delort;” in which the name of that stateprisoner is most clearly and satisfactorily ascertained,by means of authentic documents.
Under these circumstances, it may be askedwhy I was not contented to leave the question, thusset at rest, in the hands of M. Delort, who hadthe original merit of the discovery:—to this Iwould answer, that M. Delort’s part of the bookstruck me as peculiarly ill arranged and confused;besides being unnecessarily filled with the most fulsomeflattery of Lewis the Fourteenth, never, certainly,more inappropriately bestowed, than whilein the act of recording one of the most cruel andoppressive acts of that Sovereign’s cruel and oppressivereign.
I have also thought, that the subject was one ofsufficient historical curiosity to interest the Englishpublic.
For these reasons, I have been induced to throwtogether the following chain of evidence upon thesubject, making use of the same documents as M.Delort, to which I have added some others previouslypublished, and printing the whole seriesin an Appendix.
G. A. E.
April, 1826.