KING OF FRANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 55, 2 September 1926, Page 17

KING OF FRANCE

» • AN OLD "WOMAN" DID THE DAUPHIN DIE IN THE TEMPLE PRISON? AN EPISODE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. In the year 1853 there livod at Versailles a little old woman who lodged, as lonely as a hermit, in a pair of shabby rooms. On the rare occasions when she sallied forth to buy a pat of butter or scrap of bacon, her old lopsided figure in a snuffy dress and old poke-bonnet;made the passers stare and smile. Could they have known the truth about her, she would have struck them with as great a wonder as a phoenix. For this old woman was the King of France! At least, although the statement takes the breath away, there is strong evidence for so believing, says "John o' London's Weekly.!" This evidence shall now be laid before the reader, so that he may weigh it for himself. The name of this old woman was Jenny Savale'tte. She claimed—and the claim had never been disputed—to be the natural daughter of Comte Charles Savalette de Langes, who had been the baker of the Court, and who, under the Reign of Terror, had narrowly escaped the guillotine. At the Restoration, having lost her father, she received a pension from the Crown, on which she lived, at first as a lady ".boarder in a convent,, and later by. the bounty of the King in apartments 'in-the Palace of Versailles. Here she :mirigled in the best society; dukes, duchesses, and marshals were among her friends, and as she made a plea of being poor, these rich companions often came to her assistance. She was noted for some curious whims. Thus, she never paid a visit to a dressmaker, and the gifts she valued most were dresses,' new or old, which she shaped 'with her own hand to suit her figure. She.had grown up to be a pretty and attractive person, with whom a man fell easily in love. But Bhe was fickle to_ the very core. Suitor after suitor laid his heart before her, was accepted, and then, at the last moment, was sent packing. In one case, that of an officer named Lazeverne, the bands had actually been "called before she threw him over. Another lover she kept dangling on a string so long that when at last she jilted him he blew his brains out. When in course of time the palace was turned into a museum, she retired into apartments of her own. As the years went by she withdrew by degrees into a strange seclusion, becoming more and more a hermit and a miser, until at last, forgotten by the world, she sank, as we have seen, into the little old scarecrow of Versailles. THE REVELATION. One morning, in May, 1858, she was found dead in bed. And then, on the arrival of a doctor, a most astounding fact was brought to light. Jenny was not a woman, but a man! This revelation shed a light on two enigmas. It explained the dread of the deceased to use the service of a dress fitter, who would be little likely to mistake his bony figure tmt the contours of a girl. As for the br Uea marriages, they were doubtless «i,-.^ to the instinct of the miser that was. always in his blood. He had duped his victims for the gifts they brought him, and, having squeezed the orange, threw away tho peel. To cover the expenses of the funeral the police drew lip a list of tho effects for sale. This catalogue is still existing, and a curious document it is. The rooms were packed with articles of ralue, fast sinking into ruin and delay. Tho curtain was a broidered coun;erpa*ein tatters; costly chairs were rough with wisps of rich brocade; a larved and gilded sofa was without a back; a crystal clock had shed its hands; an inlaid table reeled upon three legs. Scattered over these at random were more than thirty dresses, some of the richest silk and velvet, ialf-eaten by the moth and worm. Mingled _ with these mildewed riches were articles of common use—cracked plates with scraps of broken victuals, Sat irons, frying pans, and ribless parasols. Strange to say, there is no menbion of a razor. One article of priceless value had been preserved from damage in a chest —a bed quilt which had once belonged to Louis XIV., emblazoned with the crests, the .bearings, and the dolphins of the ancient Kings of France. This treasure trove was purchased by the State, and is now displayed upon the bed of the Grand Monarch in the showrooms of -the Palace of Versailles. In a certain coffer was a packet of love letters! In another was concealed, in bonds, notes, and coin, a sum amounting to 200,000 francs. The inmate of this den of squalor, who h#d been taken for a poor old woman, was in reality a rich old man. As to the reason of hia woman 'a dress no trace whatever was discovered. And this brings ns to the climax of the story. CLIMAX OF THE STORY. Upon the catalogue an unknown hand has written in red pencil the revealing words: Louis the Seventeenth. Let us, like another Sherlock Holmes, follow up this clue and see whither it will lead us. Who was Louis the Seventeenth? He was the Dauphin, the boy-prince, the son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, who, whpn his parents perished by the guillotine, became by right of birth the King of France. He was then a captive in the Temple prison, where, two years later, at the age of ten, he died. Such-at.least was the report of the officials. But there is another story. His first keepers were a cobbler of the name of Simon, and his wife, a kindly s<*u], who cared for the little prisoner as if he were her son. At tho end of six months, for no reason that appeared, the Simons suddenly threw up their post,- and upon a certain evening black with fog, piled all their goods and chattels on a hand cart and disappeared into the night. Now the story that in after years the woman used to whisper to her cronies was as follows: She had smuggled out the Dauphin in / basket of old clothes, and had left in place of him a deaf-and-dumb child, dressed in the prince's garments and stupefied with drugs. When the guards discovered the next morning tho trick that had been played they were in terror of their lives. It is known that at this period they screwed up the dungeon, door, cutting a hole for the supply of food, and so left the prisoner, without light or fire, to perish in slow misery among the rats and beetles of the cell. Such was Mme. Simon's story, which she repeated.all her life and which she breathed in her confessor's ear upon her death bod. i All investigations have served only to confirm it, and the best judges now accept it as the truth. But what of the boy-prince? More than a thousand books and pamphlets have been devoted to the problem, but it remains a problem still. He vanished so completely that no authentic trace of him has over been discovered. Unless Unless the clue, of the red pencil is the truo one. If so it is, then the lonflost Dauphin is before us—lie is Jenny Savalette! The theory seems a wild one. But the surest test of ,any theory is to «). ply it—to see how it explains thingshow it works. If this theory works then two* of the darkest problems in all

history, that of tho boy-prince and that of the man-woman, como forth into the light. The theory shows us why the iauphin, freed from prison and handed over to the Royalists, was brought up in a girl's disguise as the daughter of the banker of the Court, why he was supplied with pensions, money in abundance, apartments in the palace, and with articles of regal value, even to the bed quilt of the grandest of his sires. That he never came into his own, as king, is not surprising. The powers that set his uncle on the throne would have regarded Jenny as a figure of burlesque. What King, the butt of every jester, would be his Majesty the Jilt! Such is the evidence that tends to show that the little old woman of Versailles was by right of birth the King of France. And now—what is the verdict? .