King of France was little Louis in title, but the most lonely, most
frightened of all children in the land. For two days and two nights he
refused food and held out his arms to his so-called tutor, constantly
pleading to be taken back to his mother and sister. And who was his
"tutor"? No other than Simon, the cobbler, he whose brawny arms had
once stopped the Dauphin's way in the garden of the Tuileries. Simon
and his wife had been chosen to guard and care for the little King of
France, because they were staunch revolutionists who could be relied on
to protect the interests of their party. Historians differ in their
accounts of the treatment of the young King by this rough couple, but
it seems pretty sure now that during their stay in the Temple they were
not altogether cruel to little Louis. He was allowed to play both in
his rooms and in the garden, had a billiard table, and a case of
mechanical birds for his amusement, and when he grieved for his
sister's companionship, another little companion of his own age was
found to play with him, and it is also known that during his two
sicknesses, Simon and his wife cared for him with as much devotion as
if he had been their own child. Whether this was because of the fine
salary attached to the position, or from some native kindness
underneath his coarse rough exterior, we do not know, but be this as it
may, Simon evidently gave only such measure of cruelty to his charge as
was insisted on by those who employed him, and it was doubtless, they
who forced Simon to do what he did to destroy the child's mental and
bodily faculties. Louis was made to share their political opinions, to
imitate their coarse manners and even to sing their revolutionary
songs, while in place of the mourning he had worn for his father, he
now wore the coarsest garments and the red cap of the Jacobins, and was
often made to drink and eat far more than was good for him, until at
last he was in a condition of body and mind such as his tormentors
desired, when he could be made a tool to suit their own ends, because
of his weakened and abnormal condition.
No page of history is written in so black an ink nor with so many blots
as that on which is recorded the imprisonment and torture of little
Louis Seventeenth, the King who never reigned, and no page of history
offers a more bewildering puzzle for solution, from the moment of his
being taken from his mother's care--a puzzle to which there have been
more answers, and about which as much mystery hangs, as about any other
incident on the pages of history, and no page has been oftener read and
re-read than this which offers for solution the problem of the ending
of this little King who never reigned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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