For all the growing number of files piling up in the police archives, the fate of the unfortunate prince was still far from resolved.
While claims and counterclaims about the dauphin were emerging throughout France, the heart removed from the orphan of the Temple continued its strange odyssey.
For years, Philippe-Jean Pellatan had assumed that the precious relic in the crystal urn was irretrievably lost. However, one evening a stranger knocked on the door of his house in Paris. He introduced himself as the father-in-law of Pellatan’s former assistant, Jean-Henri Tillos, and explained how Tillos had stolen the heart from Pellatan’s desk in 1810. The unfortunate Tillos had succumbed to tuberculosis at a young age. The theft had evidently preyed on his mind, for when he was close to death, he had repented and revealed his shameful secret to his father-in-law. “I immediately went to see widow Tillos,” wrote Pellatan, “who gave me the heart in a small bag, in the presence of all her family. Naturally, I recognized it, having
seen and touched it a thousand times.” To spare her feelings, he added, “I did not say anything about the treachery of my young pupil.”
Philippe-Jean Pellatan was now able to follow his conscience and return the heart to the royal family. He took a carriage to the Tuileries Palace, where he was advised to speak to the captain of the bodyguard. The doctor explained the whole saga and expressed his wish to return the heart to Louis XVIII. However, it was soon clear that there was a veritable civil service of officials to be encountered: the Grand Master of the Wardrobe, the Premier Doctor to the King, the Grand Chaplain … “I made twelve to fifteen fruitless visits,” said Pellatan, before he was advised that the king “was persuaded that Louis XVII had been poisoned and the autopsy report was a pack of lies!” Louis XVIII declined the relic and Pellatan was dismissed.
He was, however, summoned for a police interview about the matter. The eminent doctor confessed to the prefect of police that he had indeed stolen the boy’s heart during the autopsy and had also given permission for the guard on duty, Damont, to take the child’s hair that was lying on the floor. He confirmed that the child in the Temple had shown signs of tuberculosis and provided details of the autopsy, which he hoped might help the police identify the right body. Pellatan was asked to draft a full statement, confirming all this in writing, which he duly did, adding that he was very perplexed that the king would not accept his nephew’s heart. “There can only be an obscure intrigue which would delay the results of my endeavors,” he wrote suspiciously.
Frustrated by his failure to return the heart to Louis XVIII, Dr. Pellatan felt it was his duty to pass on the memento to the duchesse d’Angoulême herself. This was arranged with the help of her ministers, the Viscounts Montmorency and Chateaubriand. The duchess came to visit the hospital Hôtel Dieu, where Pellatan worked as chief surgeon. “She greeted me kindly,” Pellatan wrote, “and asked me if in reality I had attended her brother and if it was true that I could recognize his body by the section of the skull I had made. I replied in the affirmative and her Royal Highness moved away from me.” The next day, he received a letter inviting him once
more to visit Marie-Thérèse. “Her Royal Highness thanked me for the care I had given her sick brother and inquired into the means I had employed to abstract the heart.” Marie-Thérèse, it seems, was prepared to consider that her brother had indeed died in the Temple as this distinguished doctor claimed. She told Pellatan that she would try to make arrangements for him to see the king. Curiously, this meeting never took place and he heard nothing more from the duchess.
It is possible that her change of mind could have arisen because in the meanwhile, she had also heard from the former commissioner, Damont. He had had a special chest made to store the locks of brown hair that he had taken from the orphan of the Temple. Carefully displayed on white velvet embroidered with gold lilies, the hair, which in life had been so matted and neglected, in death was now truly prized. He sent it as a gift to the Duchesse d’Angoulême.
However, she refused this token of her “brother.” She informed Damont that she well remembered that Louis-Charles’s hair was definitely a much lighter color: these locks could not be from her brother. There was now real doubt in her mind. Who was the child that they had dissected in June 1795 in the room below her in the Great Tower? If it wasn’t her brother, surely there was a real possibility that he was still alive?
THE SHADOW KING
“Your eyes is lookin’ at this very moment on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the Sixteen and Marry Antonette … Yes, Gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin’, exiled, trampledon, and sufferin’ rightful King of France.” … He {the old man} said it often made him feel easier and better for a while if people … got down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him “Your Majesty,” and waited on him first at meals, and didn’t set down in his presence till he asked them … So Jim and me set to majestying him … This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and comfortable.
—MARK TWAIN, ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, 1885
A
fter the death of Mathurin Bruneau in the 1820s, potential “lost dauphins” began to come forward all over France. Louis-Charles’s tragic story had captured the public imagination; sightings and confessions became commonplace. Many a blue-eyed, fair-haired adventurer suddenly found an overwhelming need to unburden himself and admit to his blue-blooded descent. And some dark-eyed swarthier claimants were equally sure of their pedigree; their talents and manifestations of royalty were all equally diverse.
In time, Louis XVIII’s staff at the Tuileries in Paris became expert in dispatching the various “Louis XVIIs” who were bold enough to present themselves at the palace gates requiring to see their “uncle,” the king. They
usually had the required tattoo and just wanted to reassure their uncle that they were not laying claim to the throne; a meal and a bed for the night would suffice. The Paris asylum, too, seemed to have the monopoly of lost dauphins for a while. Once, one of the inmates, bearing the royal banner and not much else, rather dramatically proclaimed his “rights” on the Champs-Élysées. Another, determined on life as a “royal,” was renowned for removing his trousers with great enthusiasm in order to reveal those private parts of his anatomy that bore the appropriate moles. They came from all walks of life; there was a certain army captain with a head wound who miraculously remembered his life as the prince. And so the list went on, with the “dauphin epidemic” spreading to London, where one hopeful Louis XVII bore such a striking resemblance to Artois that his claim was hard to doubt.
The United States became a favored location for many pretenders. One of the most intriguing claims to be Louis XVII came from a man called Eleazer Williams who was a half-caste with a native Indian mother who lived near the Great Lakes in America. This ancestry apparently proved no impediment to the credibility of his tale, which began with Indians adopting him when he had arrived in New York with French refugees after his escape from the Tower. “Indian Williams” caused a sensation in his local community when he announced that he was Louis XVII. “His person was as pleasing as his manners,” enthused one supporter. “His complexion was fair, his hair brown, his eyes hazel, and not a feature betrayed any trace of his Indian lineage.” The doubt about his paternity could perhaps be better understood when it was discovered that Williams received money from a certain French nobleman. As news of his survival spread to France, Eleazer Williams claimed that he agreed to abdicate in favor of the king of France in return for a rich settlement.
Eventually the tragedy of Louis-Charles’s story spread worldwide, and lost dauphins—not necessarily of French origin or even French-speaking—surfaced in all corners of the globe; there was even a “Monsieur Louis” in the Seychelles archipelago who held court beneath the shade of palm trees. From France, England, Denmark, Canada, America, the Republic of Colombia
and the Seychelles: the sons of Louis XVI usually had all the necessary marks from the pope and a history, since their escape from the Tower, which made their “father’s” fate during the revolution pale by comparison. There were, in time, over one hundred dauphins. Not for nothing did Mark Twain’s hero in the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
consider the matter so amusing that he joked about the “little boy the dolphin.”
None of the pretenders’ varied and dubious claims would prosper under the reign of Louis XVIII. Nevertheless, in 1824, Louis XVIII, who had suffered from bad health for years, became seriously ill. His eyesight was failing, his right foot and leg were immensely swollen with gangrene; there was gangrene too in his spine. In great pain, he was visibly decaying before his courtiers; at one stage several toes were so rotten they fell away from his foot. When he finally died on September 16, 1824, since he had no children, Louis XVI’s youngest brother, Artois, became king as Charles X.
During the reign of Charles X, one man came forward who was to prove far more credible than Hervagault, Bruneau or any of the other claimants. Smooth-talking, knowledgeable and suave, he had first come to the attention of the police in Modena in Italy for claiming that he was “Louis-Charles, duke of Normandy.” He rapidly acquired a large circle of discreet devotees who aided his escape when he was threatened with imprisonment, and from his not-too-lonely exile he assumed the name “Baron de Richemont.”
When the baron returned to France in 1825 he proved himself a master of disguise, adopting a number of aliases to avoid harassment from the authorities. Richemont could relate a compelling tale about life in Versailles or the Tower, embroidering little-known details about the royal family in great detail, and soon acquired considerable financial support. He did everything possible to further his stay in France and legitimize his cause. In the late 1820s, from his apartment in the Rue de Fleurus in Paris, he bombarded everyone who mattered—including the Duchesse d’Angoulême-with petitions, manifestos and endless letters seeking recognition. Never short of ideas, he made direct appeals to the public so that they would understand how he was maligned and the difficulties of his situation.
The baron’s claim for recognition, however, was overtaken by political
events. Unlike his wily brother, the ultraroyalist Charles X created widespread discontent in France by trying to introduce measures that echoed the despised
ancien régime
in giving more power to the king and the Catholic Church. On July 26, 1830, with contemptuous disregard for the gains of the revolution, he dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, which had just been elected, restricted the right to vote and took steps to limit press freedom. Across France the reaction was immediate. People poured into the streets, now festooned with the tricolor flags, and civil war broke out in Paris. For three days—
les trois glorieuses
—revolution gripped France once more; 1,800 people died. Artois was forced to abdicate. The crown went to his more liberal cousin, Louis-Philippe d’Orleans, son of “Philippe Égalité,” who had voted for the death of Louis XVI. Within two weeks, Artois and the Angoulêmes were forced into exile once more and set sail on the Great Britain to England.
Fortunately, in exile they were wealthy. As a precaution, after 1815, Louis XVIII had shrewdly left money in London banks and his younger brother had inherited a few hundred million francs—an attractive magnet for any would-be nephew. It was not long before the Duchesse d’Angoulême was to hear from the Baron de Richemont again. “Everything is over for you,” he wrote, now furious that his “sister” had not replied to any of his communications. “If your hatred is extinct, break your guilty silence; this is your only opportunity; it may not happen again … because fate again has placed you at the mercy of strangers. You would be better to throw yourself into the arms of your poor brother.”
By the early 1830s several versions of the baron’s remarkable life story were published. His own account,
Memoirs of the Duke of Normandy son of Louis XVI,
describes breathtaking feats of adventure, portraying him as a romantic hero who survived against the odds, despite far-flung travels to avoid persecution. After his escape from the Tower he distinguished himself, at the mere age of fourteen, in the Egyptian campaign, and later in Italy. His story dovetailed neatly with that of the widow Simon. When he returned to Paris in 1802 he sought her out in the hospital and found her delighted to see “her little Charles.” With the authorities on his trail for his participation
in royalist conspiracies, he sailed to the Americas where he had yet more flamboyant adventures before returning to Europe. Spurred on by his supporters, the Baron de Richemont soon took an even bolder step. For many royalists, the Orléanist Louis-Philippe had usurped the throne that belonged to the direct descendents of Louis XVI. Consequently, Richemont issued a manifesto challenging the king’s position. “As prince and head of the elder branch of the house of Bourbon, I protest against the election of Louis-Philippe,” he proclaimed.
By 1833, Louis-Philippe I had had enough. “Louis XVII” was arrested and imprisoned—under the suitably distinguished title of “Ethelbert Louis Hector Alfred, Baron de Richemont.” Over the following months the authorities tried to trace his true identity. At one stage they thought he was a certain “Henri Hébert” from Rouen, at another “Claude Perrin” from Lagnieu, or perhaps his brother “Jean,” or even “Colonel Gustave,” “Henri de Trastamare,” or the “Comte de St. Julien” … the list was endless. Yet however skillfully the police interrogated “Louis XVII,” he always managed to outmaneuver them and consequently over a year elapsed before the case came to trial in October 1834.
Unlike Bruneau, Richemont put on a dazzling display of quick-witted charm in court, which unnerved the authorities. One witness identified the prisoner as Hervagault, a man who had been dead for thirty years according to the police; another decided he was Bruneau; several more-perhaps his associates—insisted he really was the dauphin and with great deference made a series of deep elaborate bows, plumed hats held in a low wide sweep. The prosecution was utterly at a loss when Lasne, the dauphin’s former guard in the Temple, arrived in the courtroom. Now a very old man, he recounted simply and with vivid detail how he had witnessed with what agony the
real
prince had died: this prisoner had to be an impostor.
However, all these witnesses were eclipsed as the proceedings were dramatically interrupted. According to the
Gazette des Tribunaux,
a well-dressed man, around fifty-five years of age, rose and demanded the attention of the court “in the name of justice.” The president, evidently annoyed at the interruption, asked his name. “I am Morel de Saint-Didier,” replied the
gentleman, “and I am the bearer of a letter for the gentlemen of the jury written by the
real
Charles-Louis de Bourbon, the son of Louis XVI.”
This caused a sensation. The attorney general demanded that the gentleman be arrested. Others wanted to hear the letter. The court retired to deliberate. Finally it was determined that “Monsieur de Saint-Didier shall be heard … and that there are no grounds for ordering his arrest.” Bowing before the court, Saint-Didier duly submitted the letter and the president broke the seal.
Gentlemen,
If I am rightly informed, the prosecution of Baron de Richemont has been undertaken solely with the view of casting ridicule upon any future pretension to the title of
Dauphin of the Temple,
a title which the real son of Louis XVI will not cease to claim to the last moment of his existence.
The unknown claimant went on to explain that he had all the documents necessary to prove his birth. However, “on every occasion when the royal orphan made an effort to be recognized by his family, a new Louis XVII was put forward, an impostor, like the Baron de Richemont … and thus public opinion was misled and the voice of the real son of Louis XVI was stifled.” After elaborating this predicament, he continued emphatically:
Gentlemen of the jury and all you Frenchmen in whose hearts reign sentiments of honor and justice, learn that the son of your unfortunate king, Louis XVI, is still living … . Yes, Frenchmen, Louis XVII still lives and is relying upon the lively interest which the nation has never ceased to feel for the innocent son of the most unhappy of her kings …
Charles-Louis
Duke of Normandy
Paris Oct 28th 1834
The letter caused a great stir. The boldness and confidence of the move put its author in quite a different category to the other claimants. One gentleman,
evidently much moved, stood up and declared, “We go from miracle to miracle! If the author is the legitimate heir he
must
have justice.” The president brought the court to order and turned to the prisoner, asking if he had any comment to make. Richemont did not waver for a second. “When a citizen lays claim to a name he should at least know it,” he replied. “The son of Louis XVI is called
Louis-Charles
and not
Charles-Louis.
” There was complete uproar and confusion in court. Which was the impostor? Were they both impostors? How could justice be proved?
Richemont continued to speak eloquently in his own defense. “You have been told that I cannot be the son of Louis XVI. But have you been told who I am? It was not only the right, but also the duty of this court and of all the courts of the Kingdom to tell you who I am … but they keep silence. You gentlemen will appreciate the significance of their silence. It is not due to malice, but to
fear.
”
However, despite his persuasive defense, Richemont was found guilty of swindling. In November 1834, he was taken to the
Conciergerie
to start his twelve-year sentence. In less than a year, after being transferred to Sainte-Pelagie, he escaped from jail. Hidden by his followers—some drawn from the ranks of the nobility—he remained an elusive figure, occasionally sighted in various towns of France. His anger toward his “sister” for not recognizing him never abated. “Ah, my sister, my sister!—Be gone! You are the cause of all the misfortunes of our family,” he railed and began to consider legal proceedings against her, demanding his inheritance.