General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1890Original Publisher: Black Subjects: Riviera (France)Riviera (Italy)Travel / Europe / GeneralTravel / Europe / FranceTravel / Europe / Italy Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Man of the Iron Mask. 51 ILES DE LERINS. By steamboat. Time, 1 hr. The steamer makes two trips, so that passengers may laud by the first at Ste. Marguerite, and by the second be carried on to St. Honorat to visit the castle. The island of Ste. Marguerite, 4J m. in circumference and 1J m. from the mainland, is covered entirely with a pine forest, except at Point Croisette, on which stands the fort founded by Richelieu, containing the apartments in which Marshal Bazaine was confined (2d Dec. 1873, and from which he escaped in the following August), and the vaulted cell associated with the name of the Man of the Iron Mask. The present entrance did not exist at that time, and the only communication was by the now walled-up door which led into the house of the governor, M. de St. Mars. From behind the prison a road, bordered by the Eucalyphis globulus, goes right through the pine plantation to the other side of the island. The name of the Man of the Iron Mask was Hercules Anthony Matthioli, a Bolognese of ancient family, born on the 1st December 1640. On the 13th of January 1661 he married Camilla, daughter of Bernard Paleotti, by whom he had two sons, one of whom only had posterity, which has long since been extinct. Early in life Matthioli was public reader in the University of Bologna, which he soon quitted to enter the service of Charles III, duke of Mantua, by whom he was finally made Secretary of State. The successor of