THE LAST DAUPHIN OF FRANCE.

BY JOSIAH MARPLES.

ON a memorable day, notable in history as that on which occurred the greatest calamity of modern times-the Earthquake of Lisbon-was born a child who was destined to attain in her youth the height of human rank, and then, before middle age, to drain to the dregs the cup of bitterness and sorrow, and finally to expiate with her life the wrong-doing of generations of the ancestors of him to whom she was united in marriage. Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI., and the mother of the last Dauphin of France, had two sons. About the elder one, born in 1781, there is some mystery, which, however, we need not follow, as he died. young, and his brother, Louis Charles, Duke of Normandy, succeeded to the Dauphinate, and it is to him that we propose to devote a few minutes this evening.

This Prince was born at Versailles, on March 27th, 1785, and there is a singular omen recorded concerning the event, for it is stated that at the moment when his birth was announced, a crown, which surmounted the canopy of the Queen's bedstead, fell suddenly from its place, and was shattered to pieces. The young Prince grew up a marked contrast to his elder brother, who was a weakly, delicate child, and his appearance gave every promise of a fine and noble maturity, while the recorded anecdotes of his infancy exhibit tokens of a wit and sprightliness above the average. When he was but four years old his brother died, and on the 15th June, 1789, the day following the fall of the Bastille, he was presented to the people in the balcony of the courtyard of Versailles as their future king.

It is not necessary for us to do more than recall the story of the French Revolution, which was far advanced even at the time just referred to; how the King and Queen, with the King's sister, the young Dauphin and his sister, were arrested when trying to escape, and were imprisoned in the Temple, from which only one or two of them were to emerge, except to mount the scaffold to meet a violent death.

This imprisonment we pass over; its details are sufficiently well known to render it unnecessary for us to pain ourselves with their recital, and we come to the month of June, 1793, when matters were in the following position :-The King had been executed on the 21st January, Marie Antoinette and her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, with the Princess, were imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, and the unfortunate young Dauphin was confined in solitude in a turret, and on another floor. Here he was occasionally permitted, at first, to take some exercise in a kind of outer gallery, surrounded by battlemented walls, the spaces of which were, however, completely filled up with wood-work, so as entirely to screen him from all observation from without. His health was giving way under his confinement, but the poor lad, for whose sufferings one's heart bleeds, was kept a solitary half-starved prisoner.

After the disgraceful tragedy of October 16th, 1793, when his mother was murdered, even the small amount of exercise hitherto allowed him was prohibited, and his gaolers, who dared not bring to trial so young a prisoner, seem to have determined that solitude, bad and insufficient food, and neglect should do the work from which they shrank. He was placed in the charge of one Simon, a drunken cobbler, whom the effervescence of the time had thrown like scum to the surface, and whose coarse brutal nature rendered him an eminently fit weapon for the work of the Committee of Public Safety, whose instructions were, that they did not

want the Prince to be carried away, nor killed, nor poisoned, but he was to be "got rid of." The work was commenced, and the boy's health was undermined by neglect, by unfit feeding, by causing him to drink to intoxication, and then by blows making him utter all kinds of blasphemy and disgraceful language. The following description of his state at this time was given by his sister after her escape :-" The poor child lay wallowing in his infected cell, amidst filth and rags. It was swept out only once a month. His sense of feeling was obliterated; he had a horror of the place, and lived in it like an unclean reptile in a common sewer. Nobody came near except at the time they brought him his food-bread, lentils, and a morsel of dry meat in an earthen pot, but no fruit or wine. Such was the food of the child in

his lonely cell." When a more lucrative post was offered to Simon, and he had to resign his unfinished task, he made his adieus in a characteristic manner; he called the child to him, and then felled him to the ground with a blow of his fist, and left him senseless. The Prince, up to this time, doubtless owed his life to Simon's wife, who, though in many respects quite worthy of her spouse, was still a woman, and a childless one, and had some germs of feeling left, which induced her occasionally to soften the brutalities of her husband.

On the removal of Simon it was determined that the poor Dauphin should suffer still further, and even a keeper, or a tutor as Simon had been designated, was refused him. It was decided to try what absolute solitude would effect. He was removed to a smaller room, lighted only by one little window, set in a deep recess and darkened by thick bars. For upwards of six months he remained in this dismal cell; his food was supplied through a revolving aperture, and an occasional voice ordering him to go to bed was all he heard to remind him of the outside world. His room remained with

* Lamartine, History of the Restoration, Book 11, sec. xvi.

out any attempt at cleansing for this period, and here, in loneliness, filth and darkness, devoured by vermin, fighting with rats for his food, all mental consciousness ceased, and his life became a simple animal existence, devoid of hope and memory.

A change was at hand, however, and on July 27th, 1794, Robespierre and his satellite, Simon the cobbler, fell under the axe which they had plied so freely, and a better feeling prevailed. Laurent was appointed keeper of the Temple, and his first duty was naturally to visit the different rooms in the prison, and see to the condition of their inhabitants.

When the lanthorn was applied to the grating of the door, and the child summoned to show himself, there was no response but a feeble moan, which spoke of life in its lowest ebb. The door had to be broken open, for no keys could be found for it, and Laurent made his way as best he could to the Prince's resting-place; we spare details which cannot be calmly dwelt on, but for our information cull the following passages from his report. "He had the look, not of a fool, but of an idiot," "His knees and his elbows were covered with tumours, the result of long confinement, bad usage and depression of spirits." Laurent seems to have acted kindly to his charge, but did not succeed in lighting up the torch of reason, for it appears from reports that he made, that he still remained in an idiotic condition, and could not be induced to utter a word, either by coaxing, or the offer of toys, &c. Laurent retired from his post on March 29th, 1795. Previously to this time some efforts at reconciliation between the Republican leaders and the representatives of the Royal family had been made, and a treaty had been signed on the 17th January by Charette, the leader of the Vendéans, in which it was stipulated that the Prince and his sister should be delivered into the hands of their friends on the 13th June, 1795.