Cormier’s long letter left Lady Atkyns completely in the dark as to what exactly had happened. They had been tricked somehow--that was all she knew. To us, as to her, the names of most of the many participants in this mysterious intrigue remain unknown. Laurent went off to San Domingo in the following year, where he died on August 22, 1807. Gomin, to some extent his accomplice in the matter of the substitution, followed Marie Antoinette’s daughter to Austria, and was careful to keep what he knew to himself. As for our three friends, Cormier, Frotté, and d’Auerweck, we shall learn presently the reasons for their silence. The one person who has tried to clear up the obscurity of these happenings inside the Temple is the wife of the bootmaker, Antoine Simon, the Dauphin’s first warder. Considerations of space prevent us from entering here upon any detailed examination of her evidence, but we must not pass it by without a word. Mme. Simon, after her husband’s death during the Reign of Terror--he was guillotined in Thermidor--withdrew to the asylum for incurables in the Rue de Sèvres, where she was to spend the remainder of her existence. Here she was heard on many occasions to assert that she was convinced the Dauphin was alive, having seen him carried off when she and her husband were leaving the Temple, on the evening of January 19, 1794. If this were true, it would result that that child looked after by Laurent was not the Dauphin at all! This does not fit in with the version that we have put together from Laurent’s own letters and the various other documents which we have been able to examine. But even if it were true, the poignant question would still call for an answer--what became of the young Dauphin after his escape? Into whose hands did he fall? FOOTNOTES: [75] His deposition at the Richemont trial.--PROVINS. CHAPTER VI THE FRIENDS OF LADY ATKYNS What was the Chevalier de Frotté doing all this time? What steps was he taking towards the realization of what he had called so often the goal of his life, and towards the execution of the promises he had made with so much ardour and enthusiasm? Transported with joy on hearing that the British Government at last contemplated listening to his projects and sending him to Normandy, Frotté, when leaving London, betook himself with four comrades-in-arms to Jersey--the great _rendezvous_ at that time for the insurgents engaged in dangerous enterprises on the Continent, and seeking to find landing-places on the French coast.