Man in the Iron Mask in the mask. It has even been suggested that he was one of the other famous contemporary prisoners being held at Pignerol at the same time as Dauger. Voltaire claimed that the prisoner was a son of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, and therefore an illegitimate half-brother of King Louis XIV. However, the sincerity of this claim is uncertain. In his history essay "Le Masque de fer", French novelist Marcel Pagnol, supporting his theory in particular on the circumstances of King Louis XIV's birth, claims that the Man in the Iron mask was indeed a twin but born second,
Man in the Iron Mask that they had been provoked by the boy, who was drunk, but the fact that the killing took place near a castle where the king was staying meant that this was not a good enough explanation and, as a result, Dauger was forced to resign his commission. Dauger's mother died shortly afterwards. In her will, written a year previously, she passed over her eldest surviving sons, Eustache and Armand, leaving the bulk of the estate to their younger brother Louis. Eustache was restricted in the amount of money to which he had access, having built up considerable debts, and left