Historic Oddities and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

These three men, the notaries and the doctor, which latter M. Lacroix hints was living when he wrote, were his authorities for what follows. The notaries he does not name, nor the café where they met. His account published in the Siècle at once attracted attention, and M. Lacroix was challenged to produce his witnesses. As for M. Lameyran, the doctor, he had died in 1811; consequently his testimony was not to be had in 1836. The other doctor who had attended Gamain was M. Voisin, who died in 1823, but M. Le Roy asserts positively that in 1813 M. Voisin told him, "Never was Gamain poisoned. Lameyran and I had long attended him for chronic malady of the stomach. This is all we testified to in our certificate, when he applied for a pension. In our certificate we stated that he was in weak health—not a word was in it about poisoning, which existed only in his fancy."

These certificates are no longer in existence. They were not preserved in the archives of the Convention. Even this fact is taken as evidence in favour of the attempt. M. Emile Bonnet, in an article on Gamain in the "Intermédiaire des Chercheurs," declares that they have been substracted since the Restoration of Charles;[8] but there is no trace in the archives of them ever having been there. Moreover, we have M. Le Roy's word that M. Voisin assured him he had not testified to poisoning, and, what is more important, we have Musset's declaration before the Convention that the certificate of the doctors "asserted the ill-health of the claimant." If there had been a word about poison in it, he would assuredly have said so.

M. Lacroix was asked to name his authorities—the two advocates who, as M. Lameyran was dead, were alive and would testify to the fact that they had heard the story from the lips of Gamain. He remained silent. He would not even name the café where they met, and which might lead to the identification. M. Eckard, who wrote the notice on Gamain in the "Biographie Universelle," consulted the family of the locksmith on the case, and was assured by them that the bad health of Gamain was due to no other cause than disappointment at the loss of his fortune, the privations he underwent, and, above all, his terror for his life after his dismissal from the Communal Council.

We will now continue M. Lacroix's account, which he proceeds, not a little disingenuously, to put into the mouth of Gamain himself, so that the accusation may not be charged on the author.

"On May 21, 1792," says Gamain, according to the "Bibliophile Jacob," "whilst I was working in my shop, a horseman drew up at my door and called me out. His disguise as a carter did not prevent me from recognising Durey, the King's forge assistant. I refused. I congratulated myself that evening at having done so, as the rumour spread in Versailles that the Tuileries had been attacked by the mob, but this did not really take place till a month later. Next morning Durey returned and showed me a note in the King's own hand, entreating me to lend my assistance in a difficult job past his unaided powers. My pride was flattered. I embraced my wife and children, without telling them whither I was going, but I promised to return that night. It was not without anxiety that they saw me depart with a stranger for Paris."

We need merely point out that Durey was no stranger to the family: he had been for years associated daily with Gamain.

"Durey conducted me to the Tuileries, where the King was guarded as in a prison. We went at once to the royal workshop, where Durey left me, whilst he went to announce my arrival. Whilst I was alone, I observed an iron door, recently forged, a mortise lock, well executed, and a little iron box with a secret spring which I did not at once discover. Then in came Durey with the King. 'The times are bad,' said Louis XVI., 'and I do not know how matters will end.' Then he showed me the works I had noticed, and said, 'What do you say to my skill? It took me ten days to execute these things. I am your apprentice, Gamain.' I protested my entire devotion. Then the King assured me that he always had confidence in me, and that he did not scruple to trust the fate of himself and his family in my hands. Thereupon he conducted me into the dark passage that led from his room to the chamber of the Dauphin. Durey lit a taper, and removed a panel in the passage, behind which I perceived a round hole, about two feet in diameter, bored in the wall. The King told me he intended to secrete his money in it, and that Durey, who had helped to make it, threw the dust and chips into the river during the night. Then the King told me that he was unable to fit the iron door to the hole unassisted. I went to work immediately. I went over all the parts of the lock, and got them into working order; then I fashioned a key to the lock, then made hinges and fastened them into the wall as firmly as I could, without letting the hammering be heard. The King helped as well as he was able, entreating me every moment to strike with less noise, and to be quicker over my work. The key was put in the little iron casket, and this casket was concealed under a slab of pavement in the corridor."

It will be seen that this story does not agree with the account in the petition made by Gamain to the Convention. In that he said he was summoned to Paris at the beginning of the month of May, and that "Capet ordered him to make a cupboard in the thickness of the wall of his apartment, and to close it with an iron door, the whole of which was not accomplished till the 22nd of the same month." He was three weeks over the job, not a few hours. "I had been working," continues Gamain, or M. Lacroix for him, "for eight consecutive hours. The sweat poured from my brow; I was impatient to repose, and faint with hunger, as I had eaten nothing since I got up."

But, according to his account before the Convention, the elixir made him throw up "all he had eaten and drunk during the day."

"I seated myself a moment in the King's chamber, and he asked me to count for him two thousand double louis and tie them up in four leather bags. Whilst so doing I observed that Durey was carrying some bundles of papers which I conjectured were destined for the secret closet; and, indeed, the money-counting was designed to distract my attention from what Durey was about."