Thus it happened that men, who in the midst of anarchy and administrative chaos, held the reins of power, wove, by their audacity and wit, the complicated plot of my rescue and made current the report of my death. Tho it was impossible to remove me bodily from my cell, a simple matter it proved to thrust me into the loft above my bed. A boy who had been smuggled in a basket of clean clothes replaced me. This substitute was a deaf-mute and so the imitation was perfect, for I had during my imprisonment maintained a constant silence. I do not remember how the transition was effected. I had been given a dose of drugged sweetened water. During my stupor I was placed in the loft. As I awoke, the voices of my two deliverers implored me to remain perfectly still. Shivering with cold and almost fainting from hunger, never did I attempt approaching the door. Food was brought me with the greatest irregularity, which I would devour and then huddle into a corner. While I lay in this stifling hole, the rumor of my escape was disseminated; spies were set on the frontier to watch for me by governmental officers not in the plot. Meanwhile, Barras gleefully rubbed his hands and in order to further mystify the public he doubled the guard about my prison, while I groveled, shuddering, in my filthy covert. Barras realized that my mock death and burial would alone complete the strategy; he visited the cell and gave instructions for the replacing of the deaf-mute by a dying boy to be procured at a hospital. This hapless child succumbed in my name and poets sang dirges over him, queens and princesses robed themselves in crepe, priests held aloft thousands of times the sacred host in sacrifice. That boy dead in rags and squalor, Thérèse, is often in my mind as I reflect on the vanity of royalty. Physicians who had never beheld me testified to the Dauphin's demise, after witnessing the death of my substitute,--the death which was the signal for my release. When the autopsy was completed, a surgeon extracted the boy's heart and sent it to you, the Dauphin's sister, Thérèse. You rejected that heart. Why? And now I listen to the culminating horror! The body of that boy was taken from the coffin at night and buried in the tower's garden, whence, years later, the skeleton was exhumed, and that coffin was the sinister vehicle which bore me from my prison. In that coffin I was taken along the road leading to the cemetery. During the journey I was removed and weights placed within. And these weights were found to be the contents when subsequently an attempt was made to recover my body. The coffin was buried with suspicious dispatch after the manner of deeds which fear the light. The public voice clamored that an imposture had been practised, whereupon the Government speedily dispatched a commission which disinterred the coffin, fastened the lid on more securely and placed it in another cemetery. This incident is so well known that I shall call it history. Chapter IV