Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur OrtonAnonymous
History
Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton
Anonymous
Impostors and imposture -- Biography
When affairs were in this stage the Viscountess Turpin, Bruneau's
first benefactress, arrived in Rouen. M. de Pomeliere, the officer of
the king's guard who had suspected him from the first, had
communicated his suspicions to the viscountess, and she had come to
see him, and, if she could, to expose him. When Bruneau was confronted
with his former patroness, he at once admitted that he had enjoyed
the lady's hospitality, but declared that that fact did not render him
the less the Dauphin of France. The viscountess reproached him, and
endeavoured to ashame him; but the impudent and ungrateful scamp
turned to her with an air of mock majesty and exclaimed, "Madame, I
accept counsel from no one. I give it as I do commands. I am a
sovereign!" The members of his family were next brought from Vezin to
identify him, and had no hesitation in doing so. He denied ever having
seen them before, but frequently betrayed himself by addressing them
by their pet household names, and by contradicting them with regard to
trivial occurrences. The imposture was plain; and Bruneau, his
forger-secretary Tourly, Branzon the author of the "Memoirs," the Abbe
Matouillet, and Madame Dumont, were committed for trial as swindlers,
as the government did not deem them of sufficient importance to charge
them with high treason.
The Abbe contrived to effect his escape from the jail, but the others
were placed in the dock, Bruneau was received with some faint cries of
"Vive Louis XVII.!" but the scamp knew that his game was played out,
and did not care to conceal his knowledge of the fact. He had made no
effort to make himself presentable; but appeared in court ill-dressed,
unshaven, and wearing a cotton night-cap on his head. It was with
difficulty that he could be compelled to respect the forms of the
court, or to preserve ordinary decency. He interrupted the opening
speech of the government prosecutor by noisy ejaculations, oaths,
filthy expletives, and immodest and insulting gestures, and when
rebuked by the judges showered down upon them all the abusive and
abominable epithets of his extensive vocabulary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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