The story tells how an alleged doctor, one answering to the not common
name of Jenais-Ojardias, some time before the death of the Dauphin had
had made a toy horse of sufficient size to contain the baby king, the
opening to the interior of which was hidden by the saddle-cloth. The
wife of the gaoler Simon, helped in the plot, the carrying out of which
was attempted early in 1794. Another child about the Dauphin’s size,
dying or marked for death by fatal disease, was drugged and hidden
in the interior. When the toy horse was placed in the Dauphin’s cell
the children were exchanged, the little king having also been drugged
for the purpose. It would almost seem that the narrator here either
lost his head or was seized with a violent _cacoethes scribendi_, for
he most unnecessarily again lugs in the episode adapted from Trojan
history. The worthy doctor of the double name had another horse
manufactured, this time of life size. Into the alleged entrails of
this animal, which was harnessed with three real horses as one of a
team of four, the Dauphin, once more drugged, was concealed. He was
borne to refuge in Belgium, where he was placed under the protection
of the Prince de Condé. By this protector he was, according to his
story, sent to General Kléber who took him to Egypt as his nephew under
the name of Monsieur Louis. After the battle of Marengo in 1800, he
returned to France, where he confided his secret to Lucien Bonaparte
and to Fouché (the Minister of Police), who got him introduced to the
Empress Josephine, who recognised him by a scar over his right eye. In
1804 (still according to his story), he embarked for America and got
away to the banks of the Amazon, where amid the burning deserts (as
he put it) he had adventures capable of consuming lesser romancists
with envy. Some of these adventures were amongst a tribe called “the
Mamelucks”--which name was at least reminiscent of his alleged Egyptian
experiences. From the burning deserts on the banks of the Amazon he
found his way to Brazil, where a certain “Don Juan,” late of Portugal
and at that time Regent of Brazil, gave him asylum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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