Louis XVIII., he was removed to the prison of Rouen as the son of the Widow Phillipeaux, calling himself Charles de Navarre.  When he entered the jail he was the possessor of a solitary five franc piece, which he spent in wine and tobacco, and he then took to the manufacture of wooden shoes for the other prisoners in order to obtain more.  As he worked he told his story, and his fellow jail-birds were never tired of listening to his romance.  Visitors also heard his tale, and yielded credence to it, and it was not long before everybody in Rouen knew that there was a captive in the town who claimed to be the son of the murdered king.

Among other persons of education and respectability who listened and believed was a Madame Dumont, the wife of a wealthy merchant.  This lady became an ardent partizan of the pretender, and not only visited him, but spent her husband’s gold lavishly to solace him in his captivity.  She supplied him with the richest food and the rarest wines that money could buy.  A Madame Jacquieres, who resided at Gros Caillon, near Paris, who was greatly devoted to the Bourbon family, also came under the influence of Bruneau’s agents, and finally fell a victim to his rascality.  This good lady was an ardent Catholic, and having some lingering doubt as to the honesty of the prisoner of Rouen, in order to its perfect solution she visited many shrines, said many prayers, and personally repaired to the old city in which he was confined, where she caused a nine days’ course of prayer to be said to discover if the captive were really the person he pretended to be.  This last expedient answered admirably.  The Abbe Matouillet, who celebrated the required number of masses before the shrine of the Virgin, was himself a firm believer in Bruneau, and he had no hesitation in assuring the petitioner that loyalty and liberality towards the prince would be no bad investment either in this world or the next.  The Abbe then led his credulous victim into the august presence of the clogmaker, and the poor dupe prostrated herself before him in semi-adoration.  Nor would she leave the presence until his Majesty condescended to accept a humble gift of a valuable gold watch and two costly rings.  His Majesty was graciously pleased to accede to the request of his loyal subject.

Bruneau could neither read nor write, and perhaps it was as well for himself that his education had been thus neglected, for if he had been left to his own devices his imposture would have been very short-lived.  But he contrived to attach two clever rascals to himself, who helped to prolong the fraud and to victimise the public.  They were both convicts, but convicts of a high intellectual type.  One was Larcher, a revolutionary priest, and a man of detestable life; while the other was a forger named Tourly.  These worthies acted as his secretaries.  On the 3d of March 1816, the priest wrote a letter to “Madame de France” in these terms:—­