MDDM23: Madame la Marquise de Pompadour

[Dave Monroe]

   "What I told then (Armand continues), remains even
today high treason to reveal,-- this was bigger than
the Man in the Iron Mask,-- Kingdoms, Empires indeed,
had begun to sway, since the fateful moment when one
of Vaucanson's Servants enter'd the Atelier, to find
the Duck hovering a few feet above a Table-top,
flapping its Wings.  There was no need to scream, tho'
both of them did, anyway.  The Secret was out.  Within
an hour, the Duck was well flown.
   "''Twas not of M. Vaucanson's Device, then?'
   "'Ha, ha ha, what a droll remark, I must tell
Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, next time we 'faisons
le Dejeuner,' she will be so amus'd....  No, ingenuous
one,-- the 'Design' was of quite a different order,
and entirely new Bodily Function in fact, and no one,
including the great engineer himself, knows what
happen'd....'" (M&D, Ch. 37, p. 373)


The Man in the Iron Mask

   "The author of the 'Siecle de Louis XIV' is the
first to speak of the man in the iron mask in an
authenticated history. The reason is that he was very
well informed about the anecdote which astonishes the
present century, which will astonish posterity, and
which is only too true....
   "He was imprisoned first of all at Pignerol before
being so on St. Margaret's Islands, and later in the
Bastille; always under the same man's guard,
Saint-Mars, who saw him die....  
   "The man in the iron mask is a riddle to which
everyone wishes to guess the answer. Some say that he
was the Due de Beaufort: but the Duc de Beaufort was
killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669;
and the man in the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662.
Besides, how would one have arrested the Duke de
Beaufort surrounded by his army? How would one have
transferred him to France without anybody knowing
anything about it? And why slould he have been put in
prison, and why this mask? 
   "Others have considered the Comte de Vermandois,
natural son of Louis XIV., who died publicly of the
small-pox in 1683, with the army, and was buried in
the town of Arras. 
   "Later it was thought that the Duke of Monmouth,
whose head King James II had cut off publicly in
London in 1685, was the man in the iron mask. It would
have been necessary for him to be resuscitated, and
then for him to change the order of the times, for him
to put the year 1662 in place of 1685; for King James
who never pardoned anyone, and who on that account
deserved all his misfortunes, to have pardoned the
Duke of Monmouth, and to have caused the death, in his
place, of a man exactly like him. It would have been
necessary to find this double who would have been so
kind as to have his neck cut off in public in order to
save the Duke of Monmouth. It would have been
necessary for the whole of England to have been under
a misapprehension; for James then to have sent his
earnest entreaties to Louis XIV. to be so good as to
serve as his constable and gaoler. Then Louis XIV.
having done King James this little favour, would not
have failed to have the same consideration for King
William and for Queen Anne, with whom he was at war;
and he would carefully have preserved in these two
monarchs' consideration his dignity of gaoler, with
which King James had honoured him. 
   "All these illusions being dissipated, it remains
to be learned who was this prisoner who was always
masked, the age at which he died, and under what name
he was buried. It is clear that if he was not allowed
to pass into the courtyard of the Bastille, if he was
not allowed to speak to his doctor, unless covered by
a mask, it was for fear that in his features might be
recognized some too striking resemblance. He might
show his tongue, and never his face. As regards his
age, he himself said to the Bastille apothecary, a few
days before his death, that lie thought he was about
sixty; and Master Marsolan, surgeon to the Marechal de
Richelieu, and later to the Duc d'Orleans, regent,
son-in-law of this apothecary, has repeated it to me
more than once. 
   "Finally, why give him an Italian name? he was
always called Marchiali! He who writes this article
knows more about it ... and will not say more."

http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volmask.htm

http://www.royalty.nu/legends/IronMask.html

http://www.uip.com/ironmask/theman.htm

Alexandre Dumas, L'Homme au Masque de Fer (1839-41)
...

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=2759

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext01/emask10.txt

http://www.classicreader.com/booktoc.php/sid.1/bookid.410/

http://www.online-literature.com/dumas/man_in_the_iron_mask/

von Keler, Theodore M.R.
   The Mystery of the Iron Mask.
   Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1923.

http://www.cadytech.com/dumas/related/the_mystery_of_the_iron_mask.asp

Noone, John.  The Man Behind the Iron Mask.
   New York: Palgrave, 1998.

http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalogue/catalogue.asp?Title_Id=0-312-12345-0

http://www.billybragg.co.uk/releases/albums/life_riot_spy/life5.html


Madame la Marquise de Pompadour

"Après nous le déluge."

http://www.bartleby.com/66/20/44820.html

http://www.kings.edu/womens_history/pompadou.html

http://www.visitvoltaire.com/v_pompadour.htm

http://www.axonais.com/saintquentin/musee_lecuyer/pompadour.html

http://www.histoire.org/lsv/MR/Pompadour/Pompadour.htm

http://maitressesroyales.free.fr/pompadour.htm

http://www.chateauversailles.fr/en/230.asp

http://www.the-wallace-collection.org.uk/c/w_a/p_w_d/f/p/p418.htm

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/d/drouais/mme_pomp.html

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/b/boucher/2/pompado2.html

Mitford, Nancy.  Madame de Pompadour.
   New York: NYRB Books, 2001.

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=25

Goodman, Elise.  The Portraits of Madame de
   Pompadour: Celebrating the Femme Savante.
   Berkeley: U of California P, 2000.

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8377.html


"faisons le Dejeuner" = "do lunch" ...


"'... no one, including the great engineer himself,
knows what happen'd....'"

"If our world survives, the next great challenge to
watch out for will come - you heard it here first -
when the curves of research and development in
artificial intelligence, molecular biology and
robotics all converge. Oboy. It will be amazing and
unpredictable, and even the biggest of brass, let us
devoutly hope, are going to be caught flat-footed."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

But why is "'Twas not of M. Vaucanson's Device, then?"
a "droll remark"?  "Ingenuous," or is M. Allegre being
facetious here?  And just who is the "ingenuous one"
allegedly remarking with such drollery in the first
place here?  Let me know ...

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