While that worthy was labouring at his vocation in the backwoods, a Prussian Pole, named Charles William Naundorff, weary of clockmaking, was getting into trouble by calling himself Louis XVII., for which piece of presumption a Prussian tribunal sent him to prison for three years. This was in 1822. At the expiration of a year, Naundorff was set at liberty, conditionally upon taking up his residence in the town of Crossen. In 1833, however, he appeared in Paris, and applied to the Civil Tribunal of the Seine to be recognised as Louis XVII.; an application resulting in his speedy expulsion from France, and subsequent retirement to Holland, in which country he died, on the 10th of August 1845. The official certificate of his death described him as, ‘Charles Louis Bourbon, Duke of Normandy (Louis XVII.), known under the name of Charles William Naundorff, born at the château of Versailles, in France, March 27, 1785, and consequently more than sixty years old; son of his late Majesty Louis XVI., king of France, and of her Imperial and Royal Highness Marie-Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria, queen of France, who both died at Paris; husband of Jane Einert of this town.’ Those responsible for his burial inscribed on his tomb: ‘Charles Louis, Duke of Normandy, son of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette of Austria.’
Naundorff left behind him a son, Albert, born in England, and four other children; on whose behalf, his widow, Jane Einert, in 1851, brought an action before the Tribunal of the Seine; but despite the advocacy of Jules Favre, failed in prevailing upon that court to recognise their claims.
In 1863 Albert, the English-born Naundorff, was naturalised as a Dutchman by a vote of the Dutch Chamber; and in 1874 he appealed against the adverse decision of the Tribunal of the Seine, in a suit against the Count de Chambord, demanding that he, Captain Albert de Bourbon, of the Dutch army, should be declared the rightful representative of the royal Bourbon family. M. Favre again upheld his pretensions. He contended that the son of Louis XVI. had not died in the Temple. Inspired and paid by the Count de Montmorin and Josephine de Beauharnais, certain devoted royalists had drugged the Dauphin, placed him in a basket, and carried him into an upper room, leaving a lay-figure in his bed. Discovering that their prisoner had been spirited away, the government substituted a deaf-and-dumb child in his place, and employed a doctor to poison him; but the apothecary administering an antidote, and so frustrating the plan, a sickly lad was obtained from a hospital, and soon dying, was duly coffined. ‘The coffin was taken up-stairs, where the Dauphin had passed eight or ten months; the dead body was taken out and placed in a basket, and the living Louis XVII. put in the coffin. On the way to the cemetery, the Dauphin was slipped out of the coffin, and some bundles of paper slipped in.’ The hero of this series of substitutions was then confided to the care of some trusty friends, and all the European courts notified of his escape; of which Barras, Hoche, Pichegru, and several other public men were also advised.
By way of supporting this extraordinary story, M. Favre made some strange assertions; namely, that shortly after Bonaparte’s marriage with Josephine, the Dauphin’s coffin was opened in the presence of Fouché and Savary, and found to be empty; that Josephine told the secret to the Emperor of Russia in 1814, although the Count de Provence—that is to say, Louis XVIII.—tried to buy her silence with a marshal’s baton for her son Eugène; that in the secret treaty of Paris the high contracting powers stated that there was no proof of the death of Louis XVII.; and lastly, that Louis XVIII. when dying, directed M. Tronchet to examine the contents of a certain chest, which proved of such a nature that, but for the obstinacy of one member of the Council, the ministers would have proclaimed the Duke of Normandy, king of France. Of course, the Duke of Normandy was the elder Naundorff, whose life had been twice attempted, once at Prague, and once in London; and, said the advocate, ‘people do not assassinate impostors, but they do assassinate kings.’
Causes are not to be won by bare assertions and smart sayings. The court pronounced the story of the twofold substitution too fantastic to be entertained; the simultaneous residence within the Temple of the child that did die, the child that would not die, and the hidden Dauphin, too unlikely to be believed; while the evidence before it placed the death of that prince beyond all doubt. The documents produced by the appellant could have been easily forged by any one conversant with the events they sought to distort; and as for the elder Naundorff’s claims being admitted by many people, that went for nothing, since no sham Dauphin had ever wanted adherents. It is needless to say that Captain Albert de Bourbon was dissatisfied; but he held his peace until the death of the Count de Chambord, when he publicly protested against the succession of the Count de Paris, and once more proclaimed himself king of France. Two months afterwards, he died at Breda.
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
CHAPTER III.
A pleasant and novel feature of the Palatine Hotel is its wing or annexe, which consists of a long, low, semi-detached building, in which are comprised a dozen or more commodious private sitting-rooms. Each of these rooms opens by means of a French-window on to a spacious veranda, from which two steps lead down to the lawn and the shrubberies beyond. A glass-covered passage lined with shrubs and flowering plants leads from the annexe to the hotel proper. One of the largest of these private sitting-rooms had been engaged by our worthy vicar for himself and party.
Not many minutes had elapsed after the departure of Mr Richard Dulcimer, otherwise Mr Golightly, in search of a quiet nook where he could smoke his pipe without being observed, when Madame De Vigne stepped out through the open window on to the veranda, and sat down on a low wicker chair opposite a tiny work-table. She had rung the bell a moment before leaving the room, and Jules, the waiter, now appeared in answer to the summons.
‘Madame rang?’