Iron Mask

( The Man in the ). This mysterious man went by the name of Lestang, but who he was is as much in nubibus as the author of the Letters of Junius . The most general opinion is that he was Count Er´colo Antonio Matthioli, a senator of Mantua and private agent of Ferdinand Charles, duke of Mantua; and that his long imprisonment of twenty-four years was for having deceived Louis XIV. in a secret treaty for the purchase of the fortre of Casale. M. Loiseleur utterly denies this solution of the mystery.—See Temple Bar , 182-4, May, 1872. ⁂ The tragedies of Zschokke in German (1795), and Fournier, in French, are based on the supposition that the man in the mask was Marechal Richelieu, a twin-brother of the Grand Monarque , and this is the solution given by the Abbé Soulavie.