Part Two – Egalité!

"These are the times that try men's souls!"

- Thomas Paine (an article entitled 'The American Crisis', published in a 1776 edition of the 'Pennsylvania Journal')

(A certain university, northern England, April 2004)

Tears had returned to Dr. Peter Barry’s eyes, whilst he again viewed the print of a portrait by Alexandre Kucharski, dated about 1792, of the youngster about whose sufferings he was about to resume writing. The painting still depicted a healthy, very pretty, sensitive but confident-looking boy, approximately 7 years old, who possessed big blue eyes, rosy lips and cheeks and well groomed, shoulder-length, straight, strawberry-blonde hair. However, the transformation in this appearance that the historian was imminently to record was almost too sad to relate and he had to compose himself for a while before he could finally return to his computer screen in order to continue his narrative.

Dr. Barry managed to overcome his distress by fully recognising that, from his appreciation of the boy’s charming character, the youngster himself would now have wanted his story to be told.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, September 1793)

Antoine Simon decided that his boy charge needed to resemble a revolutionary, as well as sound like one, and there was no one now to stop him from doing so, as Cléry had been forced to leave the ‘Temple’ months previously. The 8 year-old was therefore dressed in typical revolutionary attire, comprising red cap, jacket and trousers, whilst the child’s aristocratic, long, reddish-blonde curls were cut off by the commissioner’s wife.

Simon had slowly and skilfully indoctrinated the traumatised and confused boy, with the help of the child’s background learning to be obedient to his elders, as well as strong alcohol and frequent shouting and violence. The commissioner taught the increasingly malleable 8 year-old to sing revolutionary and bawdy songs and curse with obscene language God and aristocrats. The youngster was also encouraged to describe his sister and aunt, accommodated on the floor above, as "common whores", and even once to ask "haven’t those bloody women been guillotined yet?"

Many of these profanities could be heard upstairs, through the floorboards, by the boy’s horrified sister and aunt. Their only comfort was that his mother was not listening.

Simon and the guards considered the boy’s transformation into coarse, infant revolutionary to be highly entertaining. They often laughed, cheered and clapped the relevant antics, which the 8 year-old was taught to repeat regularly. Any hesitation was met with a shout or slap or worse.

The boy was also sometimes badly beaten by Simon for no offence of his own at all. For example, after the commissioner had heard about the defeat of a French army by the Austrians at Condé, the man launched himself at the startled 8 year-old.

As Simon subsequently pummelling the boy, the angry commissioner screamed "Damned wolf-cub. You are half Austrian and therefore you deserve to be half beaten!"

One member of the Committee of Public Safety took particular interest in Simon’s progress in respect of the boy. Jacques-René Hébert was a radical journalist who had been one of the most eager advocates of the execution of the child’s mother, wanting her head "to be shaved by the national razor!"

Hébert was reported as encouraging Simon and other lackeys to teach the boy "filthy language and blasphemy" and to permit the 8 year-old "just the most unspeakable books", whilst "every effort was made to corrupt" the child. During visits, the cruel committeeman could also frighten the youngster even more than the commissioner.

It was reported that "several times Hébert threatened" the boy "with the guillotine and this threat frightened him so horribly that" Simon often saw "the child faint from shock". However, the committeeman was not the only person to play on the youngster’s fears about the implement that had executed his father. The leader of the Paris Commune actually sadistically sent the 8 year-old a model of the device, which was fortunately intercepted by one of the more considerate commissioners and never delivered.

To men such as Simon, Hébert, the leader of the Paris Commune and most of the boy’s gaolers, the 8 year-old was a justifiable subject for abuse, which became increasingly more horrible. Pure sadism, involving, as a later report described the situation, "atrocious cruelty", soon became prevalent.

For example, Simon, who now shared the boy’s quarters, would arouse the 8 year-old from his slumber several times a night and the wakened child would be force to respond "Here I am citizen!" The cruel commissioner would then call the youngster to him "so I might touch you".

As the boy subsequently approached Simon’s bunk, the commissioner would often then kick the child to the floor, frequently by means of a foot in the groin. With a laugh, the man would subsequently order the inevitably sobbing and prone 8 year-old to "Go to bed, wolf-cub!"

A drunken Simon was also once witnessed almost partially blinding the boy. The 8 year-old was, as was now customary, serving the commissioner at the dining table and accidentally dropped some of the food. The furious man swung round and hit the child viciously in the face with his napkin, "almost taking out one of his eyes with the blow".

On another occasion, a doctor, visiting Madame Simon in the boy’s quarters, saw his patient’s husband lose his temper with the 8 year-old, who had declined to sing a particularly obscene song. The enraged commissioner punched the child, who was now looking very ashen and frail, and lifted him "off the ground by the hair of his head". "Damned viper," the sadistic man then screamed, "I have a mind to crush you against the wall!"

As a consequence of such treatment, the boy became progressively very wary of other people. The 8 year-old would be frozen to the spot on seeing anyone he did not know and would not say anything to them unless they displayed some affection towards him. Meanwhile, the few who disliked the brutal treatment meted to the child were too afraid of the consequences of complaining, which could involve a personal trip to the guillotine.

Hébert now recognised that the boy was becoming sufficiently malleable for the committeeman to launch his evil plan to ensure that the child’s mother was executed. He had often accused the woman in his published journal, ‘La Père Duchesne’, of being a sexual pervert and he now proposed to prove his charge.

On instructions from Hébert, Simon had begun regularly to order the boy to strip naked, lie on his bed and masturbate. At first, the innocent and shamed 8 year-old had never heard of the practice and so the commissioner himself had been compelled to play with the child’s little, uncut cock in order to show the youngster what to do.

Unfortunately, during one of these early sessions, Simon, in his eagerness to bring the 8 year-old to quick orgasm, caused some damage. It was reported that "in the course of one of these revolting lessons it seems that one of the boy’s testicles was hurt and had to be bandaged".

Despite his later constant embarrassment at being watched whilst he masturbated, the boy eventually became quite proficient the art, encouraged by the delicious feelings that he eventually induced in his groin. The child was subsequently rewarded for his efforts by visits from some buxom female prostitutes, who were often infected with venereal disease.

Another report described how "Hébert himself used to bring him young prostitutes to spend several hours with the child to pervert his heart and ruin his health". "The boy was too young to have intercourse but the prostitute would sap his strength and perhaps infect him with syphilis." The latter appeared to be one of the motives for allowing such depravities to occur.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 6 October 1793)

The boy’s mother had once told a friend that her young son too easily "repeats what he has heard and, often without intending to lie, he embellishes imaginary details". Hébert too had recognised this childish characteristic, which was now even more pronounced after the 8 year-old’s sufferings and indoctrination.

The boy’s steady indoctrination and maltreatment, including Simon’s constant accusations about the boy’s own perverse nature, the child’s shame over his frequent, watched masturbation, his obscene sessions with prostitutes, the disgusting songs he had learnt and the stories he had been told about his mother’s depravities, had all taken their toll. The 8 year-old, whose deeply unhappy and disturbed mind was often additionally befuddled by alcohol, was also now extremely keen to placate his gaolers in order to avoid another of the all too regular thrashings that he received.

The unscrupulous Hébert therefore believed that the time was now ripe to act against the boy’s mother. Consequently, the committeeman invited a group of the most senior revolutionary leaders, including the leader of the Commune and the Mayor of Paris, to interrogate the child. The latter was prepared for the event by appropriate brainwashing, assisted by being forced to consume a substantial quantity, for a mere 8 year-old, of brandy.

Hébert also kindly prepared a confession for the boy to sign. This document confirmed that the child’s mother had participated in anti-revolutionary activities and was also a sexual monster. The section referring to the latter declared "that Simon and Simon’s wife, who were ordered by the Commune to watch over him, several times found him practising self-abuse in bed, and he told them that he had been taught these pernicious habits by his mother and aunt, and that on several occasions they took pleasure in watching him perform these practices in their sight, and that very often this took place when the women made him sleep between them".

The pliable boy confirmed the truth of his confession was during questioning by the delegation of civic dignitaries, and was also cajoled into providing another statement that he had actually had sexual relations with his mother. This was added to the original document prepared by Hébert so that the public would have no doubts about the woman’s perfidy.

The footnote read: "....the child explained himself....that once his mother pulled him close to her, which resulted in copulation and which also resulted in swelling of one of his testicles, observed by Citizen Simon, on which he is still wearing a bandage, and that his mother told him never to tell anyone, and these acts have been reported several times since then."

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 7 October 1793)

At noon on the next day, the boy’s sister was visited by members of the National Convention and taken to her brother’s chamber below. Her aunt was not allowed to accompany her, which scared the 14 year-old girl as "it was the first time I was ever alone with men".

In the boy’s quarters, the girl was confronted with not only the child’s allegations but also the 8 year-old himself. She hastened to hug him. "I kissed him tenderly," she later reported, " but they snatched him from my arms, telling me to pass on into the next room". There, she was interrogated by Hébert and the leader of the Commune.

The men eventually appalled the girl by referring to the allegations of sexual depravity made by her brother against her mother and aunt. "I was so aghast at such horrors and so indignant that, in spite of the fear I felt, I could not keep myself from saying that it was an infamy."

Nevertheless, the girl’s interrogators pursued their questioning relentlessly, covering "a great many vile things of which they accused my mother and aunt", little of which she could comprehend, "but what I did understand was so horrible that I wept with indignation". Her little 8 year-old sibling was eventually brought in to repeat his confession of the previous day and, after 3 hours, his distraught 14 year-old sister finally felt obliged to concede "that it may be possible that her brother had observed things that she had missed".

The aunt, 29 year-old Elisabeth, was subsequently treated to a similar interrogation session, during which her brainwashed nephew was again compelled to repeat his awful confession. The woman responded that "such infamy is too base, and too far beneath me, to permit me to reply". The questioning stopped after an hour because, according to her niece, the men "saw that they could not intimidate her as they expected to do with one my age".

Verifiable historical records suggest that the boy’s sad, untruthful confessions in front of his sister and niece represented the final occasion in which the child would meet members of his family.

(Grande Chambre of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Paris, 14 October 1793)

The huge chamber was packed, as the mother was finally put on trial, accused of many treacherous crimes against the people of France. However, she initially faced her accusers with brave, calm dignity, which was to be shattered when later a sensational, and completely unexpected, charge, involving an alleged heinous violation against her own son, was laid against her. Hébert had timed the shocking revelation perfectly.

Hébert explained that Simon had caught the woman’s son in the act of masturbation. When subsequently questioned, the 8 year-old supposedly admitted that "he owed the familiarity of the habit to his mother and aunt Elisabeth".

Hébert added that the boy had confessed to the leader of the Commune and the Mayor of Paris that his mother and aunt "often made him sleep between them and that acts of the most uncontrolled debauchery were committed there".

"There is no doubt," Hébert then suggested, "from what Capet’s son has said, that an act of incest was committed between mother and son....As a result of the efforts he was forced to make, he suffered a hernia for which a bandage was needed."

(Place de la Révolution, Paris, 16 October 1793)

The operator of the guillotine picked up the severed, bleeding head of the boy’s mother to show the gruesome artefact to the huge, cheering crowd, some of whom dashed forward in an attempt to soak items in the blood of the ‘she-devil’. A loud chant simultaneously arose, declaring "Long live the Republic! Long live liberty! The devil is no more!" Later, a radical publication announced "Frenchman, Republicans, you have purged the earth of a monster who was its abomination!"

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, same time)

Meanwhile, the executed woman’s son, now an orphan but completely oblivious to the fate of his mother, remained imprisoned in the ‘Temple’, where the quality of his life now deteriorated still further. The 8 year-old’s sister later confirmed that "the unhappy child had long been accustomed to none but the worst treatment, for I believe that no researches can show such barbarity to any other child!"

Hébert commented somewhat differently. "Let this little serpent," he suggested, "and his sister be cast on a desert island. I do not know of any reasonable means of getting rid of them, and yet we must rid ourselves of them at any price!"

(Luxembourg Prison, Paris, 28 December 1793)

A 56 year-old English radical, exiled supporter of the French revolution and the suppressed Girondist political faction, arrived in the sinister Luxembourg Prison. He had been one of only two foreigners who were members of the National Convention. However, he had now been expelled from the assembly and feared for his life.

The Englishman’s moderate opinions had not matched those of the currently prevalent extremists, led by the likes of Robespierre and Danton, who had been particularly angered by his speech and vote in the assembly against the execution of the "little serpent’s father".

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, early January 1794)

Simon woke up in the middle of the night to discover the boy kneeling by his bed to pray. The furious commissioner poured a jug over water over the child’s head and then kicked the suddenly damp and shivering 8 year-old in the face with "his hobnailed shoe". However, the man was not now destined to stay in his job for long.

Perversely, Simon’s removal would make the boy’s existence even more terrible.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 19 January 1794)

Simon and his wife left the ‘Temple’, pressured into doing so by other members of the Commune for obscure reasons. On the next day, the boy was put into secure solitary confinement, in a second-floor dining room, about 13 by 11 feet in size and specially converted for the purpose.

The light and ventilation allowed inside from the window in the boy’s cell, already poor because of the 9-feet thick walls, was further lessened because the opening was shuttered, except for three missing lattices at the bottom. However, this still did not permit any outside view, as there was also an external grille.

During the daytime, the boy’s room sometimes needed a lantern to aid illumination of his desperate, tiny, immensely lonely world. However, this comfort was taken away every evening so that the child had to spend his nights in utter darkness, which petrified him.

The door into the anteroom, where the boy once played with Cléry and which was now equipped with a stove, was locked and reinforced with iron bars. The intervening partition between the two chambers was also fitted with a grilled opening, just above the heater.

The aperture was created so that the boy could receive his meals, as well as a little warmth, without the need for anyone to enter his tiny prison. In fact, the most the child now generally saw of other humans were the hands of the people who passed him his daily ration of two bowls of soup and associated lumps of bread and the distorted faces of guards peering at him through the grill. The latter would shout each evening for the 8 year-old to reveal himself so that they could reassure themselves that he was still alive.

This procedure was occasionally repeated several times overnight, with the boy invariably returned to his bed with insults, such as "she-devil’s son" ringing in his ears. However, the 8 year-old was actually to welcome the rare, periodic inspection by a commissioner. This man was the only person allowed into the child’s cell to break the torture of his cruel, lonely incarceration, during which he was allowed no diversions, such as books, toys or games, or even fresh attire, bedclothes or access to a toilet. The youngster was forced to urinate and defecate in his own room.

The 8 year-old was now effectively entombed alive.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 27 March 1794)

The sad, sickly, disorientated boy passed his 9^th birthday on the 27^th of March 1794, although he was not aware of the fact, as he continued his abject life in appalling squalor. However, the child was no longer alone in his chamber, as fleas, bugs and vermin had invaded his tiny world, revelling in the dirt and smelly defecation. As one witness described the scene, "everything is alive in the room!" Sometimes this situation encouraged the youngster to refuse his food so as not to disturb the creatures.

The unwashed boy, now covered in bloody bites and sores, spent his days in complete misery, mainly curled up on his bed, as his natural energy and resistance to infection dissipated away.

One witness was shocked by "the face of the victim, formerly so smiling, which showed well the imprint of a deep melancholy. His fresh and rosy complexion had become mat and yellow. The pure lines of his features were altered and his back was beginning to stoop insensibly, as if bent under the heavy weight of the time."

The boy was probably only now kept alive because the people in power in France believed that he might sometime prove useful, possibly when negotiating with national enemies. However, these leaders no longer included Hébert, who had provoked Robespierre’s hostility and paid for such lack of wisdom, 3 days before the incarcerated child’s 9^th birthday, with his head. Danton and the leader of the Commune quickly followed him to the scaffold.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 9 May 1794)

Despite the political upheavals, there were still people intent on destroying the remaining ‘Capets’ and it was Elisabeth’s turn next. 6 days after her own 30^th birthday, she was taken away from the little prison in the ‘Temple’ she had shared with her niece. The latter, noe alone in the tower for the first time and without her "second mother", was petrified.

On the next day, after a quick, mass show trial, involving 24 other prisoners, Elisabeth was guillotined in the Place de la Révolution, which has since been ironically renamed the Place de la Concorde.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 11 May 1794)

A surprise visitor arrived at the ‘Temple’ to see the two ‘Capet’ children. Because neither the boy nor girl were now allowed external exercise, and consequently they had not been seen in public for a while, rumours once more abounded that they had escaped. Maximilien Robespierre decided to check the situation for himself.

Robespierre visited first the now 15 year-old girl, who bravely protested about the conditions in which her younger brother was being confined but was rewarded only by amused silence from her visitor. The revolutionary leader, who had been responsible for Simon’s original appointment to the ‘Temple’, subsequently peered at the boy through the grille of the child’s tiny prison. He ordered nothing that would help to reduce the 9 year-old’s obvious suffering, which was now becoming acute.

The boy’s limbs appeared to be growing disproportionately, and his once perfect skin was covered in swellings, pustules and scabs, which made movement awkward and pained him constantly.

(Luxembourg Prison, Paris, 24 July 1794)

The public prosecutor had added the incarcerated Englishman’s name to the list of prisoners who were to be delivered to the guillotine. However, his guards mistakenly overlooked him when gathering the victims.

(Place de la Révolution, Paris, 28 July 1794)

The volume of executions taking place in Paris rose alarmingly at Robespierre’s manic behest. There were 258 in April, 345 in May and almost 700 in June. Few people felt safe during this ‘Great Terror’, which was a phenomenon that finally stimulated the National Convention into remedial action.

Further political ferment then led to yet more beheadings and, on this July day, one of the 23 heads to be decapitated by the guillotine in the Place de la Révolution was that of Maximilien Robespierre. An official record of the occasion also listed the 13^th victim, one of the deposed revolutionary leader’s allies, as "Antoine Simon, shoemaker, aged 58 years, a native of Troyes, department of Aube, residing at Paris, number 32 Rue Marat".

Over subsequent days, another 300 of Robespierre’s supporters followed their leader to the guillotine.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 29 July 1794)

General Paul Barras had been charged by the National Convention, of which he was a member, to arrest Robespierre and his followers. He was also now appointed commander of the army, with a responsibility to ensure the continued secure confinement of the orphaned ‘Capet’ children in the ‘Temple’.

Consequently, Barras visited the ‘Temple’ to check on the security. The general was appalled by the conditions in which the boy had been kept.

The boy’s sister, secretly informed about her sibling’s plight, later recorded "They had the cruelty to leave my brother alone; unheard of barbarity which has surely no other example....abandoning a poor child, only 8 years old, already ill, and keeping him locked and bolted in, with no succour....He lay in a bed, which had not been made for more than 6 months and he now had no strength to make it. Fleas and bugs covered him, his linen and person were full of them. His shirt and stockings had not been changed for more than a year. His excrements remained in the room, no one had removed them during all that time. His window, the bars of which were secured by a padlock, was never opened. It was impossible to stay in the chamber because of the foul odour. It is true that my brother neglected himself. He might have taken rather more care of his person. He could at least have washed himself, because they gave him a pitcher of water but the unhappy child was half-dead from fear, so much had Simon and the others terrorised him. He spent the day in doing nothing. They gave him no light. This condition did much to harm him morally as it did physically. It is not surprising that he lapsed into a fearful marasmus!"

Barras actually entered the boy’s dark, foul room, where he found the motionless child, amongst the stinking excrement, attired in filthy, tattered attire and curled up on a self-made cot, comprising only a small mattress. The general initially believed that the 9 year-old was asleep until he approached and noticed that the youngster’s eyes were observing him.

Barras asked the boy why he was lying where he was and not on his bed. The child, whilst remaining perfectly still, replied that here he was in less pain. The general then enquired of the 9 year-old where he hurt. The youngster, without talking or otherwise moving, pointed to his head and knees.

Barras requested the boy to stand but the child just remained motionless. The general therefore ordered some guards to help the 9 year-old gently to his feet but, once this had finally been achieved, the clearly anguished youngster collapsed onto his cot again.

Another more successful attempt was made and the boy was then asked by Barras to attempt to walk. However, it quickly became apparent that any attempt to do so would induce great pain and so the general allowed the child to sit instead.

Noticing that the boy had outgrown his dirty, dishevelled clothing, Barras subsequently ordered the child’s tight trousers to be split open. The general immediately saw that the 9 year-old’s knees were "terribly swollen and a ghastly colour", which matched the blue and yellow sores on his ankles and hands, whilst the youngster’s "face was puffed and pale". The guards also reported to him that the young prisoner "neither slept nor ate".

After later seeing the 9 year-old’s sister, Barras departed the ‘Temple’. He later claimed that, before he left, in respect of the boy’s accommodation, "I gave orders to the commissioners and scolded them for the neglected state of the room". Complaints were also allegedly aired at the Committee of Public Safety and a doctor was supposedly summoned to examine the child. However, nothing was immediately done to improve the conditions in which the youngster was held and there was no confirmation in the prison ledger that a physician ever came. The only noticeable result of the general’s visit was a further tightening of security, with the number of guards doubled, until one day a young, educated Creole from Martinique arrived. His name was Jean-Jacques Laurent.

The trusted Laurent had been appointed by Barras to be the boy’s guardian, more to prevent the potentially very politically damaging escape of the child than to improve his dreadful situation.

(American Mission, Paris, August 1794)

A 36 year-old Virginian, who had been a Senator for his home state until the previous May, when George Washington had given him another post, finally arrived in revolutionary Paris.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 1 September 1794)

The boy’s tiny prison was finally cleaned at the insistence of Laurent, 8 months after the child had entered the 13 by 11 feet room. More daylight was allowed in by removing some of the window shutters and the grille in the partition between his cell and the antechamber was taken down.

Laurent himself stripped the boy of his "sordid garments, swarming all over with vermin" and cleansed the child’s sores and body. The 9 year-old’s finger and toe nails, which had become "as long as the claws of a wild animal", were trimmed and his filthy, matted hair washed and cut. A doctor arrived to dress the youngster’s many wounds and a spare clean bed for the young prisoner to sleep on was taken from the sister’s room.

As well as patching the boy up and improving his conditions, Laurent also began to treat the child politely, referring to him as "Monsieur Charles". The guardian also encouraged the 9 year-old’s gaolers to do the same. However, the youngster, probably only naturally after what he had been through, became suspicious of this kind attention and asked "Why are you taking care of me? I thought you didn’t like me!"

Despite these welcome improvements, the boy was still subjected to severe restrictions. Laurent was only allowed into the child’s presence at mealtimes, and then he had to be accompanied by a guard. Consequently, the 9 year-old was still kept in isolation for most of the time.

Such a continued lonely existence eventually appeared to cause the boy to withdraw mentally from the world around him, and a consequence of this was that he became frightened of speaking. The child who was once so happy, pleasant and gregarious "had become almost silent". The 9 year-old’s large blue eyes also maintained a deeply sorrowful and disinterested look, whilst "solitude was completing the work that ill usage had begun".

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, October 1794)

Rumours were once more rife that attempts would be made to rescue the ‘Capet’ orphans, who were now guarded by over 500 soldiers. In the circumstances, in order to improve security further, Laurent was granted his wish of having an assistant. The appointee was Jean-Baptiste Gomin, the son of an upholsterer.

Gomin was subsequently instrumental in further improving the conditions under which the boy was detained, including trips to the garden. The child quickly realised that the man meant only good and so the 9 year-old rapidly attached himself emotionally to the adult, who according to the youngster’s sister, "took extreme care of my brother".

No one had yet bothered to inform the boy, who was still kept away from his older sister, that his mother had been executed a year previously. One day, whilst walking outside on the tower roof with Gomin, the child picked some yellow flowers growing on the walls.

Later, walking down the stairwell to his own little prison and passing the door that once represented the entrance to his beloved mother’s quarters, the boy left the floral gift immediately outside.

(Luxembourg Prison, Paris, 6 November 1794)

After over 10 months’ incarceration, the now 57 year-old Englishman, looking pale and drawn but carrying an important manuscript with him, was finally released. His liberty had been secured by a new, influential arrival in a foreign Mission, who had claimed that the prisoner was a citizen of the new country called the United States of America.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 26 February 1795)

Laurent and Gomin had continued to try to try to do the best for the boy incarcerated in the ‘Temple’. However, their lack of medical qualifications and influence meant that there were limits to the help that they could provide.

Laurent therefore submitted a secret report about the boy to the renamed Committee of General Safety, advising the members that there was an "imminent danger that the prisoner’s life was slipping away". The committeemen were told that the 9 year-old still had swellings in all his joints and "that it was impossible to extract a word from him". Unfortunately, few people expressed any sympathy. Gomin later reported that a guard, who had seen the sickly youngster covered in tumours and incapable of much movement, had suggested "there are plenty of children worth as much as he who are more ill, and many die who are far more useful!"

Nevertheless, despite such callous attitudes, the Committee sent three people to examine the boy and report on his health. They found a mute child, who now declined exercise and whose mind appeared completely indifferent to happenings round him. Not even promises of the gift of "a horse, a dog, some birds, playthings of any kind, one or more companions of your own age...." could encourage the 9 year-old to respond to questions in any way, either by word or gesture.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 27 March 1795)

The sad, silent, solitary boy, now lost in his own world, unknowingly passed his 10^th birthday.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 6 May 1795)

Despite the boy’s obvious dire physical and mental condition, another 3 months passed before another doctor was allowed to see him. 49 year-old Dr. Pierre Joseph Desault, principal surgeon of the Hôpital d’Humanité, reported back without hesitation that he had "encountered a child who is mad, dying, a victim of the most abject misery and of the greatest abandonment, a being who has been brutalised by the cruellest of treatments and whom it is impossible for me to bring back to life....What a crime!"

Desault tried to relieve the boy’s suffering by ordering salves to be applied to the child’s tumours, especially those on the 10 year-old’s wrists and knees. The caring doctor also recommended to the civic authorities the youngster’s "immediate removal to the country in the hope that the healthy air might succeed in prolonging his life". However, his suggestion was not acted upon.

Desault subsequently arrived at the ‘Temple’ every morning to see his young patient and ensure that his orders were being fulfilled. The doctor then made sure that the child was at least carried out onto the roof of his prison to acquire some fresh air and sunshine.

On such occasions, Desault often asked the boy if "he wished to breathe, to see a garden, birds or flowers, to possess a few toys". However, the child in response usually just "looked at me sadly and bent his head without answering". Nevertheless, the doctor’s obviously enthusiastic regard for the 10 year-old’s welfare gradually elicited a response and the youngster eventually placed "his entire confidence in him". Although the young patient still rarely spoke, "the kind treatment restored his speech....he found the words to express his thanks".

The doctor was aware of the boy’s gratitude for his compassion and company and tried to prolong his stays. Whenever the guards later announced that it was finally time for the physician to leave, the child, still quiet but desperate to extend the presence of a man exhibiting real consideration, usually then "held back Monsieur Desault by the skirt of his coat".

"Twice when he had left the ‘Temple’, the good and learned Desault was obliged to retire to his own house, so much was he hurt by the affecting sight of the deserted child, whom he could not tend, whom he could not cure, and yet who seemed, as it were, crying to him for his help!"

After one visit, a guard bluntly asked Desault whether the boy was dying. "I’m afraid so," the doctor answered, "but perhaps there are people in this world who hope so!"

(National Convention, Paris, 29 May 1795)

Desault had presented his initial report on the condition of the boy incarcerated in the ‘Temple’, with his recommendations. The doctor was then invited to a state dinner by the National Convention, after which he suddenly became very sick, enduring terrible stomach pains and vomiting.

Desault’s condition subsequently deteriorated and, after 3 days of excruciation, he died. Many suspected that the doctor had been poisoned. Some rumours suggested that he had been killed because he had discovered a cover-up, involving the fact that his young patient incarcerated in the ‘Temple’ was a substitute for someone who had escaped. Others believed that he might simply have been too outspoken about the child’s treatment.

Shortly afterwards, Desault’s principal assistants, men named Choppart and Doublet, also mysteriously died suddenly.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 2 June 1795)

Unaware of Desault’s untimely, premature and suspicious demise, the boy in the ‘Temple’ waited patiently but eagerly each morning for his kind doctor, who unfortunately never arrived. On the second occasion that this happened, "the little invalid was much distressed by it".

Eventually, on the 2^nd of June, the boy was horrified to be informed "You must not expect to see him anymore. He died yesterday."

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 6 June 1795)

5 days passed, during which the dying boy received no further medical treatment. The new, principal surgeon of the Hôpital d’Humanité, Philippe-Jean Pelletan was then informed that his attendance at the ‘Temple’ "was urgently needed".

Pelletan went immediately to the ‘Temple’ to discover a boy who was covered in sores and scabs, suffering acute diarrhoea and extremely sensitive to sound. The child’s head was permanently drooping and his whole body was skeletal, apart from his stomach, which was swollen.

Like a few others before him, Pelletan was appalled by the boy’s state and tried as much as he could to remedy the situation, even ordering that the noise of locks and bolts being applied, which always caused the child to shudder painfully, should be muffled. The doctor also criticised the lack of light in the 10 year-old’s prison chamber and ultimately remedied this by having the youngster moved to a lodge overlooking the outside garden.

For the first time in a very long time, the boy was now accommodated in a well-ventilated room, with a window devoid of bars and "decorated with large white curtains beyond which he could see the sun and sky". The child reacted instantly to the provision of these sudden, unanticipated luxuries and began to seem "a little better". However, Pelletan was to report later that "unfortunately, all assistance was too late....no hope was to be entertained".

Laurent had been posted elsewhere several weeks previously and Gomin, assisted by a man named Etienne Lasne, had assumed daily responsibility for the boy. Both were genuinely distressed about the child’s continued suffering, as the "always grave and sad" and pitiable 10 year-old apparently neared his end. They attempted their best to entertain the failing youngster, for example by playing cards with him.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 6 June 1795)

Pelletan attended the boy again and discovered "the child’s weakness was excessive and he had had a fainting fit". The doctor was subsequently summoned back to the ‘Temple’ in the evening, as the 10 year-old’s condition had worsened. However, he could not visit immediately and instead returned a message indicating that the youngster should be given some medicine.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 7 June 1795)

Pelletan finally managed to reach the ‘Temple’, where he discovered, according to a report submitted to the Committee of General Safety, "Capet’s son with a weak pulse, and an abdomen distended and painful. During the night and again in the morning, he had several green and bilious evacuations." The doctor added that the boy’s condition appeared to be very serious and requested a female nurse.

Later that evening, Gomin found the boy crying and "asked him kindly what was the matter?" The child allegedly answered that he was "always alone" and that "his mother was not there to help him". The 10 year-old had not yet been told that the woman had been dead for 20 months. The sobbing youngster had instead believed that she was still imprisoned with him in the ‘Temple’ and could not understand why she did not come to his aid.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 8 June 1795)

The very sick boy spent another night in solitude. Then, during the course of the next afternoon, the child, sweat copiously, lapsed into unconsciousness. His breathing also became noisy and awkward.

At 3 p.m., Lasne attempted to ease the boy’s breathing by lifting him up and raising the child’s fragile arms round his neck. However, the man was rewarded for his action by the unnerving sound of a deep, lengthy sigh, after which the 10 year-old’s weak, emaciated body went completely limp.

The boy, entombed alive in the dreadful ‘Temple’, apparently now needed no more assistance in this world from anyone.

(The ‘Temple’, eastern Paris, 9 June 1795)

The news of the boy’s demise was kept secret, with activity in the ‘Temple’ continuing as if nothing had happened. Supplies of soup and medicine were even maintained.

Nevertheless, at 11 a.m. on the day after the poor boy had breathed his last, Pellatan, with three fellow surgeons, conducted an autopsy to establish the reason for death. Stretched out for them on a table was a naked, tumour-infested child who had been so cruelly treated in life. The doctors spent 5 hours over their subsequent anatomical investigations, discovering several gruesome findings.

Pellatan later wrote a report summarising the surgeons’ conclusions. "We found....," the narrative began cautiously, "the dead body of a child who appeared to us to be about 10, which the commissioners told us was that of the deceased Capet and which two of us have recognised as being the child they had been taking care of for a few days".

Pellatan’s caution arose from the fact that, like virtually everyone else, apart from the boy’s sister, who was still imprisoned in the ‘Great Tower’ and not allowed to see her younger brother, even in death, no one knew the child from his previous existence. However, everyone had heard wild rumours, such as the one that suggested that the 10 year-old imprisoned in the ‘Temple’ was actually an impostor, substituted for political reasons to hide the fact that the original captive had escaped. The doctor did not want to apply a definitive name to someone whom he had not personally really known.

Pellatan’s caution also encouraged him to exclude from his report the fact that he had secretly, out of sight of his colleagues, extracted and retained the boy’s heart. The doctor had wrapped the organ in a handkerchief and concealed it in his pocket.

Pallatan later preserved the heart in a jar of alcohol and placed the container on a bookcase in his home, where the preservative eventually evaporated, allowing the organ to go dry.

(Cemetery of Sainte Marguerite, Paris, 10 June 1795)

After almost 3 years of incarceration and suffering in the ‘Temple’, and as darkness fell on this June evening, the boy finally left his prison, in a child’s 5 feet-long, cheap, pinewood coffin. The latter was carried by four bearers and attended by a few officials, including Gomin and Lasne, plus a small military escort. On arrival in the cemetery of Sainte Marguerite, without any ceremonial or even a prayer, the 10 year-old’s body was laid to rest in a pauper’s grave.

Despite extensive searches over the subsequent two centuries, the boy’s burial place was never found. The search had become important because, during the next 50 or so years, over 100 people stepped forward to claim the child’s identity.

(Paris, 19 April 2000)

In front of a large assembly of reporters, photographers and television crews from around the world, two eminent science professors confirmed their findings regarding the boy’s ossified heart, upon which they had been conducting DNA tests.

(Saint Denis, near Paris, 1816)

The bodies of the boy’s parents had been found and reburied in a crypt, with their ancestors, in the great Gothic abbey church of Saint Denis, near Paris. A tomb was also designed for their son, for which the following inscription was composed:-

"TO THE MEMORY

OF

LOUIS XVII

WHO,

AFTER HAVING SEEN HIS BELOVED PARENTS
REMOVED BY A DEATH
WHICH SORROW SHRINKS FROM RECALLING,
AND HAVING DRAINED TO THE DREGS
THE CUP OF SUFFERING,

WAS, WHILE STILL YOUNG,

AND BUT ON THE THRESHOLD OF LIFE,

CUT DOWN BY DEATH.

HE DIED ON VIII JUNE MDCCLXXXXV,

AGED X YEARS II MONTHS AND XII DAYS."

The boy’s parents were, of course, Louis XVI, Bourbon King of France and his Austrian Habsburg Queen, Marie-Antoinette, and his sister had been their daughter, Princess Marie-Thérèse. Fortunately, the girl had eventually been exchanged for French prisoners of war, held by the Austrians, and sent to the homeland of her mother.

(Paris, 19 April 2000)

The eminent French historian, Philippe Delorme, concluded the press conference. "This is the end," he declared, "of 200 years of uncertainty....It puts to an end a mystery that has absorbed so many of us. The DNA analysis shows that the child’s heart is from a member of the Habsburg family. The historical research shows that this heart came from the orphan of the ‘Temple’. Since, apart from Marie-Thérèse who survived, the only other relative of Marie-Antoinette in the ‘Temple’ in 1795 was Louis-Charles, now we have an answer. It was Louis XVII, the little King of France without a crown, who had died in the ‘Temple’ prison. It’s definitive!"

Despite Delorme’s confidence, a fellow historian, an Englishman who witnessed the press conference, muttered to himself "Bullshit!"

(A certain university, northern England, April 2004)

"How can you be so sure that poor Louis XVII did not die in the ‘Temple’?" Dr. Peter Barry, who specialised in classical history, asked of his colleague, who was an expert on the United States of America. The man was the same person who had declared Delorme’s findings to be ‘bullshit’.

After reading a certain book, Dr. Barry had become rather upset. He had therefore asked his colleague, whom he knew had an interest in the subject, to provide his own informal thesis on the issue.

"Because of these," Dr. Barry’s colleague eventually replied to Dr. Barry’s question, after going to his office to collect some papers, which he handed to his fellow academic. The latter inspected the documents, which appeared, judging from the inscribed dates, to be photocopies of early 19^th century letters, hand-written in French.

"You should learn living languages instead of being expert on dead ones," Dr. Barry’s colleague then commented with a mischievous smile, as he subsequently observed the continued perplexity of his fellow academic, who was fluent in ancient Greek and Latin but hopeless at French. "Sorry," the classicist replied without embarrassment but with a reciprocated grin, "but someone has to be able to do the more difficult work!"

In response to Dr. Barry’s unasked but nevertheless obviously intended question, the Professor of American Studies then revealed "In my opinion the letters prove that little Louis XVII not only survived his terrible ordeal in the ‘Temple’ but also went on to prosper in life!"

Dr. Barry’s colleague then proceeded to relate his interesting theory, after which the classical historian viewed Alexandre Kucharski’s portrait of the boy, who possessed big blue eyes, rosy lips and cheeks and well groomed, shoulder-length, straight, strawberry-blonde hair, in an entirely fresh and much happier light.

(To be concluded in part 3 – ‘Fraternité!’)