Part 11

Everything appeared to corroborate this most extraordinary circumstance; it was some time before he could walk without stumbling; he appeared to have no control over his limbs; the attempt to compress his feet into boots caused him great torture, whilst walking drew sighs and groans from him. His eyes, unaccustomed to the light, became inflamed; he had no idea of the relative distances of things, and when he first saw the flame of a candle was so delighted that he put his finger into it. When pretended thrusts were made at him he exhibited no alarm, and did not recoil, and altogether showed such intense ignorance of the operations of the senses that those about him were convinced that he was no impostor, as strangers imagined him to be. The meanwhile, whilst the lad was gradually becoming reconciled to the wonders of the world around him, the strange story of his discovery was spreading rapidly all over Europe. The scientific and the curious flocked to Nuremberg in order to behold this human phenomenon, and presented him with toys and gifts. But he complained that his visitors teased him, and that he had headaches, which he never had when he was in his cell. At this time, the close scrutiny which his story underwent began to excite curious suspicions as to the facts of his parentage. It was argued that a mother desirous of getting her child adopted was not likely to have placed it at the door of a poor labourer already burdened with ten children of his own, and with the hope that he could support it for seventeen years; nor was it within the bounds of probability that a man so situated could have kept the boy all that period without putting him to work. Moreover, what reason could the labourer have had for keeping the boy concealed all that time? The mother might have wished concealment, but certainly not the adopting labourer. It was felt there was some deep mystery behind all this secrecy, and everything about it pointed to a noble origin for Caspar.

These ideas, and the rumours they generated, had tragic consequences for the poor lad. On the 17th October, feeling unwell, he was excused from a mathematical class he attended, and was allowed to stay at home. A little after noon, whilst a woman in the house was sweeping, she noticed blood spots and bloody footmarks, and following them to the cellar, there found Caspar, apparently dead, and with a dreadful wound across his forehead. Medical assistance was procured, and the lad removed to his bed. After a time he recovered from his insensibility, but for a long while was in a state of delirium, during which he frequently murmured, "Man come--don't kill me--I love all men--do no one anything. Man, I love you too. Don't kill--why man kill?"

The poor innocent lad was carefully tended, and as soon as he had regained sufficient strength to be interrogated a judicial inquiry was made into the affair. According to the victim's account, "the man" had entered the house, and as he was softly treading along a passage Caspar noticed that he was masked, but before he could make any further observation he was felled to the ground by the wound in his forehead, and became insensible. He could not explain how he got into the cellar, but fancied he must have crawled there in a half-insensible condition. Nothing resulted from the judicial inquiry beyond the fact that the extraordinary case excited more comment than ever. Among others who became interested in the strange matter was Earl Stanhope, then in Germany. This English nobleman was so pleased with the lad's amiable ways and his misfortunes, that he placed him in the care of an able tutor. After a time Caspar received the appointment of Clerk to the Registrar's Court of Appeal, and performed his duties so well that Lord Stanhope spoke of adopting him and taking him to England. This probably induced his powerful foes to put him out of the way at once. On the evening of the 14th December, 1833, as Caspar was returning home from his official duties, a stranger accosted him, and by a promise of revealing his parentage inveigled him into the palace gardens, where he plunged a dagger into his side, and then instantly disappeared. Caspar just managed to get home and murmur a few words when he became insensible, and before the police arrived he expired.

The police appear to have made great efforts to discover the assassin, but without success. The King of Bavaria caused an inquiry into Caspar Hauser's case to be made, and the well-known jurist, Feuerbach, to whom the inquiry was deputed, reported significantly, "_There are circles of human society into which the arm of justice dares not penetrate._"

Who then was Caspar Hauser, and why include him among pretenders to royal lineage? It was surmised, and still is believed by many, that he was elder son of the Grand Duke Karl of Baden and his much-admired consort, the Grand Duchess Stephanie Tascher, Napoleon's adopted daughter. Their son, born in September 1812, was alleged to have died when a few weeks old, but the popular idea in Baden was, and indeed still is, that this boy was carried off and a dead child substituted in his stead, at the instigation of the Grand Duke Karl's uncle and successor, Ludwig, a man to whom the most disgraceful crimes and cruel outrages are imputed.

THE FALSE DAUPHINS IN FRANCE.

1793-1859.

Had not these pages already proved to what an extent human credulity could go, it would be almost useless to offer the following most extraordinary details as matters of fact. That a dead person might be personated by a living being is quite within the range of probability, but that thirty or more totally different individuals should in this nineteenth century not only deem it, but prove it, possible to dupe numbers of people into believing that they were a prince whose decease had been publicly certified and most zealously investigated into, scarcely seems to come within the range of the possible. In order to better comprehend the various marvellous stories detailed by the impostors about to be referred to, the true story of the little dauphin, styled by the French royalists Louis the Seventeenth, should be told.

On the 27th March, 1785, Louis Charles, the second son of Louis the Sixteenth of France, was born at the Chateau de Versailles. The birth of this second son caused great rejoicings in the royal circle, where his earliest years were environed with all the care and adulation bestowed upon princes. His father created the child Duke of Normandy, whilst the death of his elder brother in 1789 brought him next in succession to the throne, raised him to the rank of dauphin, and, if possible, made him a greater idol than before in the eyes of the Court. At four years of age he is described as of slight but well-shaped figure, with a broad, open forehead, finely-arched eyebrows, and large blue eyes; his complexion was fair, and his hair, of a dark chestnut colour, curled naturally, and fell in ringlets over his shoulders. Amid the gaieties of the French Court at Versailles doubtless the little lad's mental faculties were rapidly developed, although it would be idle to place any credence in the authenticity of the sage replies and clever repartees ascribed to him by some Court writers. But his happy childish life was of short duration: the starving and infuriated populace of Paris, driven from one misery to another, deemed if they could only bring the king to the metropolis means would be discovered for overcoming their distress. Under the influence of this infatuation, an enormous crowd, chiefly composed of women, marched from Paris, invaded the regal precincts of Versailles, and deputed a few of their number to see the king. Louis the Sixteenth received the deputation with great kindness, but the power of royal words was over, and the following day he was compelled to return to the capital, accompanied by the Queen and the dauphin. The people, in their destitute condition, could only think of bread, and believing the king could command possession of it, familiarly styled him "The Baker," so that now, seeing the royal family's return, they shouted joyously, "No more poverty; we are bringing back the baker and his wife, and the little shopboy." The poor child so designated could not find anything better to say of the Tuileries, as they entered that place, than, "Everything is very ugly here." His mother endeavoured to console the prince for that by reminding him Louis the Fourteenth had lived there.

It is needless to recapitulate the well-known story of the precarious state to which the royal family were speedily reduced in Paris, and how they made secret preparations for leaving the capital in disguise. On the 20th of June, 1791, the attempted flight was commenced, the dauphin, who had been dressed as a girl, deeming he was being attired to play in a comedy. The flight was, indeed, carried out, but the royal party got no further than Varennes, where they were discovered, and after being allowed to spend the night there were carried back to Paris (although it was wonderful that they reached it alive), and five days after their departure were again installed in the Tuileries. From that time until the 13th of August, 1792, when the royal family were imprisoned in the Temple, the whole of its members had been under close surveillance, and had no fresh opportunity of escaping from the capital. From the date of their incarceration in the Temple their doom was sealed, and nothing but death released any one save the Princess Marie Theresa from captivity. After a while the king was separated from his family, and placed in a portion of the prison called the Great Tower, and there also the dauphin was placed, with his father, until the trial and execution of the latter, when he was returned to his mother's care. On the 3rd of July, 1793, a most terrible trial awaited the hapless boy: on that day, in accordance with a decree of the "Committee of Public Safety," he was removed from the custody of his mother, and consigned to the charge of Simon, formerly a cobbler, but now appointed guardian to the dauphin at a salary of twenty pounds a month, conditionally upon his never leaving his youthful prisoner, and never, upon any pretence, leaving the tower where the child was confined.

The fearful and miserable life which the poor boy endured whilst in charge of the brutal Simon, and his scarcely less brutal wife, is so well known that the saddening details need not be repeated; suffice to recall the fact that by hard work, strong drinks, close confinement, improper food, and even blows, the unfortunate child was brought to the brink of the grave. M. de Beauchesne, to whom the world is chiefly indebted for the harrowing story of Louis the Seventeenth's wretched fate, has, it is to be hoped, overdrawn the terrible picture; but, after making every allowance for royalist exaggeration, enough of horror remains to excite the pity of the hardest hearted. Brutal and debasing as was Simon's regimen, it was not rapid enough in its process to satisfy "the Committee of Public Safety;" they, therefore, dismissed him from his post, and made different arrangements. For the future the poor innocent little victim was confined in one room, into which his coarse food was passed through a wicket, and from which he was never permitted to emerge either for exercise or fresh air. "He had a room to walk in, and a bed to lie upon; he had bread and water, and linen, and clothes, but he had neither fire nor candle." For months this system of solitary confinement was endured by the child, who, reduced to a state of helpless stupidity, no longer attempted to change his linen, or cleanse himself, and was allowed to drift into a condition of utter imbecility. Ultimately an improvement was effected in the little captive's condition, and under the better treatment accorded him he rallied for some time; but the cruelty he had endured had been too certain in its operation to allow of any permanent restoration to health. In the month of May, 1795, his jailers reported to the Government that "little Capet was dangerously ill." A physician was sent to attend on the child, but his prescriptions were no longer of any use. On the 8th of June he told one of his keepers, "I have something to tell you!" but the man waited in vain for the revelation, for whilst he listened the poor child's life had passed away.

When the dauphin died he was ten years and two months old. The members of the Committee of Public Safety having concluded their day's sitting when the news was brought, it was deemed advisable to conceal the event until the morrow. Supper was prepared for the child as usual, and Gomin, his attendant, took it up to the room. Many years afterwards this man stated that when he entered the apartment he went to the bed and gazed upon the corpse of the little dauphin. "His eyes, which while suffering had half-closed," he relates, "were now open, and shone as pure as the blue heaven, and his beautiful fair hair, which had not been cut for two months, fell like a frame round his face." The next morning four medical men came to examine the body, and make their report, which they did in somewhat ambiguous terms, stating that at the Temple on a bed in a room of the second floor of the Tower they had seen "the dead body of a child, apparently about ten years old, which the commissaries declared to be that of the late Louis Capet's son, and which two of our number recognized as that of the child they had been attending for several days." About twenty soldiers, however, who are stated to have known the "little Capet" by sight when at the Tuileries, were also admitted, at their own request, to view the body of the child, and signed an attestation to the effect that they recognized it. The body was finally put into a coffin, and on the 10th of June, 1795, was taken to the cemetery of Sainte Marguerite, by the Rue St. Bernard, and buried in an unknown spot, which to this day no one has been enabled to find out.

THE FALSE DAUPHINS: JEAN MARIE HERVAGAULT.

Although the unfortunate dauphin's death had been officially certified to by so many persons, the secret manner of his burial afforded full scope for the propagators of strange rumours to exercise their talents. The circulation amid provincial cliques of baseless reports of the prince having made good his escape from the Temple, and of another child having been substituted in his place, was not unlikely to meet the ears of those able and willing to avail themselves of the popular myth; it is not, therefore, so phenomenal that some impostors sought to pass themselves off as the deceased dauphin; but the large number of different individuals who made the attempt is, probably, unparalleled in all history. Out of the thirty, according to the computation of M. de Beauchesne, claimants to the name of this luckless scion of royalty, it will be only requisite to furnish accounts of the most notorious. The first of the pretenders, in order of time, was Jean Marie Hervagault, the putative son of a poor Normandy tailor. He was born at St. Lo on the 20th of September, 1781. His mother had been a pretty woman, and scandal had connected her name somewhat closely with that of the Duke de Valentinois. Young Hervagault had a delicate complexion, fair hair curling naturally, an agreeable countenance, and dignified manners that would not have discredited the child of royalty. When he was twelve years of age he set off on his travels, and after having duped several persons by pretending to be a son of different members of the aristocracy, he determined to, or was persuaded to, take upon himself the name of the little prince, "Louis the Seventeenth." According to the story given by his adherents, or accomplices, the dauphin had not died in the Temple as was commonly supposed, but had been carried forth in a basket of soiled linen, and the scrofulous and idiotic child of the tailor Hervagault left in his stead. The pseudo Louis the Seventeenth had not made much progress in his first essay before he was arrested as a vagabond, and sent to Cherbourg. There his father reclaimed him, and he was allowed to go free under parental care. Some few years later he recommenced his imposture, and being again arrested was sentenced at Chalons-sur-Marne to a month's detention. Not deterred by this, he began his old tricks again, and being speedily captured was condemned to two years' imprisonment. Finally, he was caught the next time at Vitry, practising his favourite imposture and living at the expense of his dupes. On this occasion the pretended prince was favoured with four years of detention. These successive rebuffs did not deter Hervagault from pursuing his game upon the next opportunity. When for the last time he presented himself before the judge, his easy assurance and dignified mien greatly impressed the court. The large and influential crowd of his dupes, who were spectators of his trial, remained firm believers in his case, and would not be dissuaded from their belief by the most positive proofs as to the falsity of his tale. Men of exalted position and wealthy persons accorded him their sympathetic aid, and considered themselves well paid for whatever they might do if "the dauphin" condescended to honour them with a bow, or if they were permitted to kiss his royal hand. The imperial police, however, would not stand much nonsense, and shut up the youthful claimant in the asylum of Bicetre, as an incorrigible lunatic. Hervagault now and for henceforth disappeared from public gaze, but the vacant dauphinship was speedily claimed by Jersat, an old soldier; and upon his being disposed of, Fontolive, a mason at Lyons, started as a claimant for the honours. He in his turn vanished from the scene, and then Bruneau aspired to the title.

THE FALSE DAUPHINS: MATHURIN BRUNEAU.

Mathurin Bruneau was the son of a maker of wooden shoes, and was born at Vezin, in the department of the Marne-et-Loire. By his eleventh year the precocious rogue had already endeavoured to palm himself off as a nobleman's son, and encouraged, apparently, by the facility with which his claims were acknowledged, he determined to fly at a higher game, ultimately giving forth that he was the Duke of Normandy. Although this impostor never was anything but a vulgar peasant, devoid of education and good manners, he acquired a large following, and really became a source of danger to the Government. In 1817, that is to say, in the early days of the Bourbon restoration, when the throne was in a very precarious condition, this claimant, taking advantage of a famine and the general discontent, had placards posted on the walls and public places of Rouen, denouncing the reigning monarch, Louis the Eighteenth, claiming the crown for himself as the legitimate son of Louis the Sixteenth, and promising, if placed on the throne, to reduce the price of bread to three sous per pound. The long wars of the empire had exhausted France, and reduced the provinces to such a condition of misery that any inflammatory leader was likely to obtain a large retinue of discontented followers, so that even so mean and insignificant a personage as Bruneau was, was dangerous.

Bruneau, according to the minute and circumstantial investigation which Monsieur Verdiere made into the past events of his life, had undergone a series of adventures as surprising as those of Gil Blas, and had perpetrated a variety of deceptions of a most extraordinary nature, culminating in his grand assumption of the _role_ of the dauphin, the titular "Louis the Seventeenth." When this ridiculous pretender, who had already undergone imprisonment as a rogue and an _imbecile_, first attempted to take upon himself the royal title, he was attired, says his historian, in nothing but a nankin vest, linen trousers, and a cotton cap, stockingless and moneyless,--not even a claimant was ever in worse condition. According to the best account, this absurd impostor was first prompted to assume the dauphin's name at the suggestion of an eating-house keeper of Pont-de-Ce, who had formerly been cook to Louis the Sixteenth.

Orders were issued for the arrest of the audacious pretender, but he did not wait for them to be put into execution. He decamped, and was traced to St. Malo, and arrested there. He was so illiterate that he could neither read nor write; but for all that he caused a letter to be written to the King, Louis the Eighteenth, in which, under the title of the Dauphin, he reclaimed his paternal heritage. Sent to Bicetre, in January 1816, Bruneau did not suffer himself to be cast down. In his leisure hours he employed himself at his juvenile occupation of making wooden shoes; but with an eye to future opportunities he endeavoured to make proselytes to his regal pretensions. Among his companions in misery he discovered some very useful converts or accomplices, including Larcher, a pretended priest; Tourly, a forger; the Abbe Matouillet; Branzon, condemned for robbery; and other equally respectable associates. The rumour was speedily noised abroad that "Louis the Seventeenth" was at Bicetre, and visitors continually came to see "the unfortunate prince," and leave him substantial proofs of their devotion and sympathy. They raised a civil list for him, overwhelmed him with unsolicited gifts, wrote the "Memoires du Prince," and eventually made so great a stir in the city that the judicial authorities were compelled to interfere, and on the 10th of February, 1818, had Bruneau up before the Police Tribunal. The accused presented himself in his invariable cotton cap; and mean, illiterate, and miserable as was his appearance, was saluted by a few faint cries of "_Vive Louis the Seventeenth!_" What the man wanted in dignity he made up for with assurance; and although Monsieur Dossier, the Procureur du Roi, with pitiless severity disclosed the whole of the impostor's past career, the insolent vagabond contested to the end of his cross-examination that he was the veritable Duke of Normandy. His vulgarity, his contradictions, and his whole demeanour were so palpable, it is wonderful that a single person could have been duped. And yet numerous people, many of them holding respectable positions in society, permitted themselves to be fooled, and even subscribed large sums of money for the pretender's support. The money which had been subscribed for this _soi disant_ "Louis the Seventeenth" had been chiefly deposited at the Bank of France--a fact of which the prosecution was, of course, aware,--and therefore the judges did not content themselves with condemning Bruneau to five years' imprisonment for his imposture, and a further term of two years, to commence at the expiration of the five, for his insolent behaviour during his trial, but they also sentenced him to a fine of three thousand francs, to be paid to the Government, and to defray three-quarters of the cost of his prosecution, to meet which penalties the moneys standing to his credit at the bank were confiscated. It was also ordered that at the expiration of his term of imprisonment Bruneau should remain at the disposal of the Government, to determine what was thought fit as to his future. Bruneau's accomplice in the fraud was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and the payment of one-fourth of the cost of the prosecution. Bruneau died in prison.

THE FALSE DAUPHINS: HEBERT.