Historic Oddities and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

The Queen heard of Gamain's Jacobinism, and warned the King, who, however, could not believe that Gamain would betray him. Marie Antoinette insisted on the most important papers being removed from the iron chest, and they were confided to Mme. de Campan.

When the trial of the King was begun, on November 20, Gamain went to Roland, Minister of the Interior, and told him the secret of the iron chest. Roland, alarmed at the consequences of such a discovery, hastened to consult his wife, who was in reality more minister than himself.

From August 10, a commission had been appointed to collect all the papers found in the Tuileries; this commission, therefore, ought to be made acquainted with the discovery; but here lay the danger. Mme. Roland, as an instrument of the Girondins, feared that among the papers in the chest might be discovered some which would show in what close relations the Girondins stood to the Court. She decided that her husband should go to the Tuileries, accompanied by Gamain, an architect, and a servant. The chest was opened by the locksmith, Roland removed all the papers, tied them up in a napkin, and took them home. They were taken the same day to the Convention; and the commission charged the minister with having abstracted such papers as would have been inconvenient to him to deliver up.

When Roland surrendered the papers he declared, without naming Gamain, that they had been discovered in a hole in the wall closed by an iron door, behind a wainscot panel, in so secret a place "that they could not have been found had not the secret been disclosed by the workman who had himself made the place of concealment."

On December 24 following, Gamain was summoned to Paris by the Convention to give his evidence to prove that a key discovered in the desk of Thierry de Ville-d'Avray fitted the iron chest.

After the execution of the King, on January 21, 1793, the Convention sent deputies into all the departments "to stimulate the authorities to act with the energy requisite under the circumstances." Crassous was sent into the department of Seine-et-Oise; and not finding the municipality of Versailles, of which Gamain was a member, "up to the requisite pitch," he discharged them from office; and by a law of September 17, all such discharged functionaries were declared to be "suspected persons," who were liable to be brought before the revolutionary tribunal on that charge alone.

Thus, in spite of all the proofs he had given of his fidelity to the principles of the Revolution, Gamain was at any moment liable to arrest, and to being brought before that terrible tribunal from which the only exit was to the guillotine. Moreover, Gamain had lost his place and emoluments as Court locksmith; he had fallen into great poverty, was without work, and without health.

On April 27, 1794, he presented a petition to the Convention which was supported by Musset, the deputy and constitutional curé. "It was not enough," said Musset from the tribune, "that the last of our tyrants should have delivered over thousands of citizens to be slain by the sword of the enemy. You will see by the petition I am about to read that he was familiarised with the most refined cruelty, and that he himself administered poison to the father of a family, in the hopes thereby of destroying evidence of his perfidy. You will see that his ferocious mind had adopted the maxim that to a king everything is permissible."

After this preamble Musset read the petition of Gamain, which is as follows: "François Gamain, locksmith to the cabinets and to the laboratory of the late King, and for three years member of the Council General of the Commune of Versailles, declares that at the beginning of May 1792 he was ordered to go to Paris. On reaching it, Capet required him to make a cupboard in the thickness of one of the walls of his room, and to fasten it with an iron door; and he further states that he was thus engaged up to the 22nd of the said month, and that he worked in the King's presence. When the chest was completed, Capet himself offered citizen Gamain a large tumbler of wine, and asked him to drink it, as he, the said Gamain, was very hot.

"A few hours later he was attacked by a violent colic, which did not abate till he had taken two spoonfuls of elixir, which made him vomit all he had eaten and drunk that day. This was the prelude to a terrible illness, which lasted fourteen months, during which he lost the use of his limbs, and which has left him at present without hope of recovering his full health, and of working so as to provide for the necessities of his family."