“Then we went on to discuss the particulars of the fable. The governor of the isle of Ste. Marguerite at the time, so it was said, the man to whose care the Iron Mask was confided, was called M. de Bonpart, a very remarkable fact. This man had a daughter. The young people saw each other and loved. The Governor thereupon communicated with the Court; and it was there decided that no great inconvenience could arise if the unfortunate man were suffered to find in love some alleviation of his misfortunes. Accordingly M. de Bonpart had them married.
“He who related this turned red when the facts were disputed. He said that the marriage could be verified by inspection of the register of a certain parish in Marseilles, which he named. He added that the children born of this marriage were clandestinely removed to Corsica, where the difference of language, or deliberate purpose, caused the name Bonpart to be rendered Bonaparte, or Buonaparte.”
Whether it was proposed to Napoleon at one time to circulate this fable is uncertain. What is certain is, that, when he was emperor, he took pains to have the registers of Ajaccio falsified or destroyed, either in preparation for the publication of this fiction, or because they revealed some unpleasant truths, which he was interested in suppressing. The crucial difficulty in the way of formulating this fable was that Saint Mars, and not any M. Bonpart, had been governor of Ste. Marguerite whilst the Iron Mask was there.
The last celebrated prisoner at Ste. Marguerite was Marshal Bazaine, who escaped with the assistance of his wife, it can hardly be doubted with the connivance of the governor. Marshal François Achille Bazaine was born at Versailles in 1811, and was destined to be a tradesman by his very bourgeois parents. But as he did not relish the shop, he entered the army as a private soldier in 1831, and served in Algiers, where he sufficiently distinguished himself to be promoted to a lieutenancy, and then become captain of the Foreign Legion in the service of Queen Christina against the Carlists. In 1841 he again served in Algiers, became colonel, and next general of brigade. He was in the Crimean War, and returned from it as general of division. Later he attended the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian to Mexico, when he was raised to the rank of marshal. There he married a rich Creole. His conduct in Mexico was not glorious. He left the emperor in the most menaced position; but whether this desertion was due to himself or to orders received from Napoleon is not known. After that, for some time nothing was heard of him, but on the breaking out of the war with Prussia and Germany he was appointed to the command of the Third Army Corps. How he surrendered Metz, with 150,000 men, on October 23rd, 1870, is well known.