The Mystery of the Dauphin

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 38, 7 May 1927, Page 19 (Supplement)

The Mystery of the Dauphin

What Became of Marie Antoinette's 111-Fated Son

What became of that child Dauphin of France—Louis Charles, son of Louis XVI.? His story is not only a tragic one, but it is so involved in nystery that his latest historian, Mr. I. 0. Lockhart, who has gone thoroughly into the matter, Is baf&ed, like all the rest of us. What is the tragic story of this little Prince of France? We agree with the author when he says that it is as though some malevolent genius had wen at work, destroying the facts, ending us on false scents, obliteratjf* ‘he trial. Yet, adds Mr. Lockw, it leaves us always just a fragent of hope that “somehow, at some (k „ true Btor y will emerge from • belter of lies, forgeries and im Daii v S ” W^c ‘ l l* av e surrounded the

DiPd 500 r c hH<l was the chattel of "evolution, and the Revolution no more truthfully or poignantly , ?r escribed than in the story of his of i"so e . see him in the summer y Playing in the gardens of that l 6S ’ devo ‘ et l to his father and moth m ° St sorr °wful of queens, his dinJf r ’ ar * e Antoinette. Then the on i, ar ,, of tde Paris faubourgs falls he vi S * “! e c °t, and the next thing Ue h° WS ' s tk at h' 3 father is carry s aietv lm away ‘° another room for

Tuiiort 11 ’ atter °ne terrible day, the Damn, 6a was a ßain threatened, the day„,. m aske| l, “Mama, isn’t yester forbad 61 ” '•''hen, after Louis had his A , 8 Swiss Guards to fire on stand ° P v, e ' t * le could not under leave y t * ]e P°yal Family should •he v Tu 'leries and take refuge in •Nations Assembly, ket sen’ Aktoinette herself went to . ®oas bedside to wake him. wa 3 . , mania '” he asked when he th» °‘ ‘he move, “why should Poor rJT papa? He is so kind!” da*; aia , was indeed too kind that ‘keriaet I<IS Gnavds, first defending ordered k S asain . st ‘he crowd, then *ere ? tPe Hing to cease firing, ridors , , C J lered like sheep in the cor Mean^K-, Sardens of ‘he palace. Cr « e the eao'ers of the Royal Pari 3 a “eeanie the Commune of tian tv, ® uc * 1 more extreme bodv and -hit. Assembly, and the parents lid were taken to the Temple There u* and Torture tam e nr no myster y of what be mother rh 6 Hauphin’s father and but the „v!,F ommulle saw to that—there was S - futur ‘ life. what little 4 figornno ° f lt ' seems to have been Worst of ,P ersecu ‘i°n of cruelty, and houaana ‘ or turous kindness. Fifty the exnoe! Vrea were voted to defray hold. 38a °? the King’s house'fudesmen T'.T 6 was besieged by tur niture ei ‘° utln S for orders, and *ble odda °‘has, books and innumerPoured InteTe ends of every sort Among t° h the llttle Tower. ‘ or toys e.S accoun ts we find entries 1 balloons dered f°r the Dauphin. • a whipping top, a set of

ninepins, two pairs of rackets, twelve kites, draughts and dominoes.” What was the object of this Machia vellian plot borne by the King and Queen with such dignity and patience ? On one occasion, it is true, they were stirred from their usual calm, when the head of the Queen’s greatest friend, the Princess de Lamballe, was paraded before the windows of the Tower on the point of a pike and ex posed to their horrified gaze. More than once the officers came on duty drunk

And we learn that after Louis had been deposed and a Republic declared the insults multiplied. Then came the execution of the King and Queen and the child was an orphan in the Temple. He was committed to the care of a cobbler. Simon, a drunkard who “meant to make the little whelp lose the recollection of his royalty,’ and who taught him tags from Rous seau and the “Rights of Man” and the stock phrases of the Jacobin orators Prompted by Simon, the Dauphin repeated before his examiners of the Commune a farrago of obscene lies against his mother. To this statement he set a signa ture so badly formed by comparison with the writing in his exercise books that it has been suggested that the child had been made drunk before his examination. “Young Capet” Henceforward “young Capet” be came the Dauphin; his guardian Simon, having died on the guillotine, we find his story very difficult to follow. He was left neglected and then officials began to visit the Temple. The first of these was Robespierre next went Barras. ordering the son of Louis XVI. to be shown to him. This is what Barras says in his “Mem oirs”:

“I was in the Temple and found the young prince in a cradle-shaped bed. ... I asked him how was, and why he did not sleep in the big bed. He

replied, ‘My knees are swollen and pain me at times when I am standing. The little crade suits me better.’ ” What a picture of child torture! There is a portrait of tEiis little prisoner of the Temple with his toys about him, building a castle of cards. Doctors visited him, but all of no avail, and the little prince of France died in the arms of his guardian. Lasne. Pelletan seems to have been the most sensible and humane of all these doctors. Next the sinister Lasne looms Into the story. He contrived the locking up of the turnkey, Gourlet and also Dr. Pelletan, and by the time that sur geons and others had finished theii work the body was almost unrecognis able. But, of course, it had meanwhile been “officially” identified as that of the Dauphin; and as such It was buried in a common grave in the cemetery of Saint Marguerite. The Pretenders Then came platoons of liars and pretenders to baffle us in a story full of inconsistencies and puzzles, aud one of these was a claimant from England—Augustus Meves. His “reputed” father lived in Bloomsbury Square, and must have been of an obliging disposition; for on learning that his son Augustus bore a striking resemblance to the Dau phin, he took the boy over to Paris aud smuggled him into, and the Dauphin out of, the Temple. Subsequently Mrs. Meves . . . journeyed to Paris and made a second substitution, the victim this time being the deaf and dumb child of St. Martin’s, called Maria Dodd. Mr. Lockhart in his admirable study holds out no hope that we shall find the true story of the Dauphin. “Could the stone of the Temple,” he asks, ‘have told us the secret? Or must we seek it from a little tragic ghost playing under the whispering trees of the great garden of Versailles?”