THE EMPTY COFFIN
Thérèse, do you remember how we were taken to the Assembly, there to pass the day within a grated tribunal and led thence to prison? How from that prison we were afterwards transferred to another more gloomy still? O the tower, the tower! The impressions of sorrow are deeper than those of happiness. Tell me, Thérèse, my companion in that captivity, has greater suffering ever been endured than in that tower? If those walls, so soon after demolished, (for all traces of my history have been obliterated), if those stones that once were walls had a voice, that voice would be a sob. If they might writhe, they would wring out tears. Even their name is a wail. There is no elegy so sad as the towers.
The agonies of our family,—you know them as well as I, for they are your own. But what you do not know are mine,—a child torn from his mother's arms as she was led to the guillotine. And though you seek to drive them from your knowledge, you shall hear them.
Let me describe this prison to you, that you may realize 'tis your brother who speaks. What detail could I forget of that damp tower flanked by four smaller ones of arched roofs? The roof of the first was sustained in the centre by a heavy pillar and its doors were of strong boards fastened together by nails and guarded by heavy bolts; the interior door was of cast iron; the walls were grey and black, in imitation of a tomb; the white border was garnished with the tricolor on which were traced the words: RIGHTS OF MAN. This was the only decoration of the filthy apartment wherein vulgar and malevolent people constantly watched us.
On first entering the tower, I believed myself to be dreaming and that soon I should be rescued from the nightmare, as my mother had snatched me from the wolves. This conviction was doubtless due to the contrast between my past and present condition. My childhood had glided by so sweetly and placidly; my senses had been stimulated by such great beauty and elegance; the epoch upon which my mother stamped her refinement was so poetic and artistic; the gardens in which I had played were so beautiful; my material wants anticipated with so much adulation, that I had grown to comprehend only smiles and beauty. It was considered an honor to touch me, to be near me. No wonder, then, that the transition from palace to prison affected my nervous system to the extent of causing the obsession to possess me that I was two persons in one.
I might describe our incarceration to the minutest particular; I might tell you the exact position of your bed and mine and the armchair of white-painted wood in which our father dozed before dinner. Only listen to me, Thérèse, and you will open your arms.
You will remember that I was taken away from our father and mother after their condemnation to death, and delivered to two creatures who scarcely seemed to pertain to the human species,—a pair of brutes who had doubtless received instructions to render me idiotic through vile treatment. But I must tell the truth. My guardians were indeed cruel, but not to the extent which is usually believed. The inhumanity of that cobbler and his wife has been greatly exaggerated, possibly with the object of establishing my supposed death. Were the account true which has obtained currency, I should not have survived. No child could have withstood an unremitting martyrdom of hunger, blows, nakedness, and deprivation of sleep. These hardships, indeed, I endured, but with intervals of respite. Husband and wife were not equally brutal; he was crafty and cruel, she gross and stupid, but possessing a heart of some tenderness. Unhappy woman! I caused her ruin among that of many others. For maintaining that I was not dead, she was declared insane and placed in confinement. In her clumsy manner, she had protected me and often smuggled into my couch candy and cheap toys.
On being taken from the custody of this couple, I was placed in the cell in which our father's valet had been imprisoned. Here my condition was worse than ever before. The windows, always closed, shut out light and air. The doors opened only to those who, in silence, brought me food. The furniture consisted of a table, a jug of water and the bed,—shelf, rather,—on which I slept. Noxious odors slowly poisoned my blood.
While I here languished, the Revolution continued to rage fiercely, though the period of delirium had passed and a species of authority obtained. You and I, the hapless remnants of an ill-starred dynasty, seemed relegated to oblivion, but there were some who thought of us with pity. The friends who had futilely sought to save our parents' lives formed plans for rescuing me. She who was my most zealous champion and spent much money in my behalf was the charming creole, native of the island of Martinique, and wife of a Revolutionary general. Of this lady a negress in her native land had predicted that she should be Empress and experience glory and sorrow without limit. She was at heart a legitimist. Anarchy prevailed in all departments of governments, skeptics had succeeded fanatics and the public voice denounced the Directory. The first indication which reached me of the termination of this era of tigers and hyenas was the receiving of clean clothes, the entry of fresh air through the windows which were opened at last, and the replacing of my daily mess of lentils by decent food.
My friends did not find it a simple task to accomplish my rescue. A new wave of public ferocity seemed imminent. To bribe my custodians, themselves under unceasing surveillance, was most difficult. The Municipal Council had agents stationed at the entrance and exit of the tower. Had it been a question of heroic sacrifice only, there would have lacked not noble partisans of our House to dash themselves against even invincible obstacles.
Would that I had died within those walls, permeated with the atmosphere of our immolated mother. I should have perished, as you have expressed my supposed fate, 'like a blighted flower.' For my greater sorrow, generous abnegation and political malevolence combined to remove me from this living tomb. The account of my flight is an incoherent one. I myself can scarcely co-ordinate its episodes, for I was too feeble to comprehend them clearly. My true history will never be historically known, for an oligarchy, such as once existed in Venice, suppressed what suited its purpose. No corroborating documents exist to verify even my fragmentary recital.
The Revolution smouldered and the fall of the government was predicted. Astute ambitions of various kinds combined to effect my freedom. Unbridled lust for power grew rank. Our uncle, your present protector, Thérèse, rallied around him, by employing my name as a summons, the elements of the Restoration, meanwhile secretly paralyzing the efforts directed toward my liberation. This he accomplished by procrastination and discouragement. He was trusting to my prison life to attain the desired consummation. But notwithstanding his efforts to double-bar my cell, and even tho he would have thrown the weight of his body against the door to insure its security, he was thwarted by a man who had temporarily seized the reins of authority,—a voluptuary, destitute of genuine energy—who realized that the possession of my person would constitute an imposing arm. He planned to place me in concealment from which to produce me when it should suit him to declare me among the living. By this subtlety he might dominate even our uncle with whom he maintained (as did other revolutionists who were deemed incorruptible) a secret intercourse, avowedly with the end of establishing a moderate Restoration,—which should concede what had been already acquired by the Revolution. I, kept in hiding, would be a double-edged sword, a menace to the arrogance of my uncle in his claim to the regency and a guarantee to the loyal troops who were giving battle in the far East. Behold the stratagem forced by the ingenious and base-born Barras. As instruments, he selected the charming creole (wife of the adventurer who later subjugated Europe) and two military men attached to the royal cause.
Thus it happened that men, who in the midst of anarchy and administrative chaos, held the reins of power, wove, by their audacity and wit, the complicated plot of my rescue and made current the report of my death. Tho it was impossible to remove me bodily from my cell, a simple matter it proved to thrust me into the loft above my bed. A boy who had been smuggled in a basket of clean clothes replaced me. This substitute was a deaf-mute and so the imitation was perfect, for I had during my imprisonment maintained a constant silence.
I do not remember how the transition was effected. I had been given a dose of drugged sweetened water. During my stupor I was placed in the loft. As I awoke, the voices of my two deliverers implored me to remain perfectly still. Shivering with cold and almost fainting from hunger, never did I attempt approaching the door. Food was brought me with the greatest irregularity, which I would devour and then huddle into a corner. While I lay in this stifling hole, the rumor of my escape was disseminated; spies were set on the frontier to watch for me by governmental officers not in the plot.
Meanwhile, Barras gleefully rubbed his hands and in order to further mystify the public he doubled the guard about my prison, while I groveled, shuddering, in my filthy covert.
Barras realized that my mock death and burial would alone complete the strategy; he visited the cell and gave instructions for the replacing of the deaf-mute by a dying boy to be procured at a hospital. This hapless child succumbed in my name and poets sang dirges over him, queens and princesses robed themselves in crepe, priests held aloft thousands of times the sacred host in sacrifice. That boy dead in rags and squalor, Thérèse, is often in my mind as I reflect on the vanity of royalty.
Physicians who had never beheld me testified to the Dauphin's demise, after witnessing the death of my substitute,—the death which was the signal for my release. When the autopsy was completed, a surgeon extracted the boy's heart and sent it to you, the Dauphin's sister, Thérèse. You rejected that heart. Why?
And now I listen to the culminating horror! The body of that boy was taken from the coffin at night and buried in the tower's garden, whence, years later, the skeleton was exhumed, and that coffin was the sinister vehicle which bore me from my prison. In that coffin I was taken along the road leading to the cemetery. During the journey I was removed and weights placed within. And these weights were found to be the contents when subsequently an attempt was made to recover my body. The coffin was buried with suspicious dispatch after the manner of deeds which fear the light. The public voice clamored that an imposture had been practised, whereupon the Government speedily dispatched a commission which disinterred the coffin, fastened the lid on more securely and placed it in another cemetery. This incident is so well known that I shall call it history.