he seems to have been brought into the world without brains.’  Upon this the party wisely determined to keep the ‘prince’s’ presence in Paris as quiet as possible.  Another of his adherents, M. de Forbin Janson, the fiery bishop of Nancy, suggested that, as the illustrious stranger’s chance of the throne was somewhat remote, he should enter the church, in which the highest dignities awaited him.  This was also found to be impracticable when Neuendorf (the name by which the ‘prince’ now declared he had hitherto been known) revealed that he was a married man, and the father of six children.

The more sceptical part of his adherents very naturally wished to know—­supposing his story to be true—­how in his early years he escaped from the Temple; and when the stranger had sufficiently mastered the French language—­which he took but a short time to acquire—­he gave a most circumstantial and plausible account of his early adventures.  His narrative was carefully noted down at the time, and, translated, consists in substance as follows:  ’I cannot be said to have escaped from my jailers,’ he began, ’for I left the prison in the most natural manner possible.  Some time before the day of my supposed death, a royalist committee was formed for the purpose of saving me.  One of these was M. Frotte, who, as the pupil of my physician Dessault, was allowed free ingress and egress to the Temple.  One day he entered my cell, motioned me to be silent, seized me, and dragged me to a cabinet under the spire of the tower.  A sick child who had been given over by the faculty was substituted in my place, and he, dying two days after (8th June 1795), was buried as Louis XVII.  At my supposed death, there being no more prisoners in the Temple, all the keepers and guards were withdrawn, and I was conducted outside the walls without meeting a single official.  The ruse, however, got wind, and the decree of the 14th of June was the consequence.  To frustrate this, the royalist committee caused several children to personate me, imparting to the impostors several circumstances connected with my family.  One they sent to Bordeaux, another to La Vendee, a third to Germany, and so on.  These are the children who, when they became men, tried to keep up the character which they had been previously taught to play.  This explains the incredible number of false dauphins who have appeared.’  He ended by declaring that when, in 1814, the Congress of Vienna ceded the crown of France to Louis XVIII., they knew perfectly well of his existence; but the obligations the allies were under to ‘his uncle,’ overwhelmed the scruples they felt at investing that prince with a sovereignty to which he had no title.

One thing appeared improbable—­how the assumed prince should have forgotten his native language.  He was ten years of age at the period of his leaving France, and spoke French as cleverly as any other boy, if not more so.  How, then, did he lose this faculty?  A residence in Germany, even for so great a length of time as thirty-seven years, could hardly have obliterated the French language from his mind.  This does not appear to have teen explained, and, with some other circumstances, it served to check the credulity of parties half inclined to believe the representations of M. Neuendorf.