Meanwhile his "Royal Highness" was carefully sought for in Belgium and
Holland, although he was all the time concealed in Paris. He managed
during this epoch to pick up a number of anecdotes and incidents
appertaining to the captivity of the royal family in the Temple, and by
displaying the ever useful cicatrice over his right eye, and the traces
on his knees and wrists of the malady contracted during his slavery
under Simon, was enabled to gather together a faithful band of
believers, who assisted him to the full length of their purses. Among
other items of testimony, he declared that he had visited Madame Simon
on her death-bed at the Hospital of Incurables, where she did really
die on the 10th June, 1819, and that she instantly recognized him and
wept tears of pity. What, however, he pointed to as the strongest
proof of his royalty was the fact, he alleged, that every one who could
have testified to his identity had been suddenly put out of the way.
He carefully, in fact, utilized the names of such persons as he had
been acquainted with during his life, and whose decease had been in any
way sudden, or not fully explained. As, for instance, beginning with
the famous surgeon Desault, to whose care the dauphin had been
entrusted, and who had expired suddenly on the 4th of June, 1795, he
intimated that he had been poisoned, because he imprudently declined to
accept the substituted dumb child as the veritable Duke of Normandy.
In a similar way he accounted for the deaths of several well-known
personages whose lives he asserted had been sacrificed on his behalf.
He even went to the extent of asserting that Louis the Eighteenth knew
well that he was the veritable dauphin, and that when warmly
expostulated with by his nephew, the Duke de Berry, for concealing the
fact from the world, had not only excused himself by saying, "Do you
not comprehend that this recognition has become impossible, as it would
render all existing treaties invalid and imperil the general peace?"
but had even added significantly, "Take care of yourself, Berry!" And
within a fortnight De Berry fell beneath the attack of Louvel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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