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Updated: June 19, 2025
But the world had forgotten that the children of Edward IV. were resuscitated; that the son of Louis XVI., whose poor little dead body had been handled by the Commissary of the Republic, had returned to earth in the shape of five or six perfectly distinct individuals, Bruneau, Hervagault, Naundorff, whatever else their names; that King Arthur is still living in the kingdom of Morgan le Fay; and Barbarossa still asleep on the stone table, waiting till the rooks which circle round the Kiefhäuser hill shall tell him to arise; and the world had, therefore, to learn that a Stuart still existed.
This miserable child, who had thus paid the death penalty for his king was none other, the pretender said, than the son of a rascally tailor, named Hervagault, who lived at St. Lo! He further stated that, while the royalist cause was wavering, instructions arrived from some mysterious source to send him to England to secure his safety, and that thither he was despatched.
He admitted that when he was examined before the authorities he had acknowledged Hervagault as his father; but he declared that he had done so simply to escape from the rage of his enemies, who were anxious to destroy him; and he considered that the tailor, who had accepted royalist gold in exchange for a son, was both bound to protect and recognise him. There was no doubting.
Maturin Bruneau, the next pretender to the honours of the deceased son of Louis XVI., was quite as great a rascal as Hervagault, but he lacked his cleverness. Bruneau was the son of a maker of wooden shoes, who resided at the little village of Vezin, in the department of the Maine and Loire.
At Soissons, as at Vitry, Châlons, and Rheims, crowds flocked to pay homage to the pretender, until at last Bonaparte, disgusted with the attention which was given to this impudent impostor, caused him to be removed to the Bicêtre, then a prison for vagabonds and suspects. The place was thronged with the offscourings of Paris, and Hervagault found himself in congenial quarters.
The conviction of Hervagault was affirmed; and, moreover, the acquittal of Madame Seignes was quashed, and she was sentenced to six months' imprisonment as the accomplice of a man who had been found guilty of using names which did not belong to him, and of extorting money under false pretences.
But again the dread Fouché interposed; and although Bonaparte, then consul, would not allow the sham dauphin to be treated as a political offender, the chief of police had him put upon trial as a common impostor. Madame Seignes was at the same time indicted as an accomplice, she having been the first who publicly acknowledged her conviction that Hervagault was the dauphin of the Temple.
When Hervagault arrived at the Rue des Ecrivains, where the Jewess lodged, she was not at home; but a pastry-cook and his wife, who had a shop close by, invited the dejected caller to rest in their parlour until his friend returned.
But in a land such as France, it is not remarkable that the utmost should have been made of the mystery which surrounded the fate of the youthful dauphin, or that pretenders should have endeavoured to personate the son of Louis XVI. The first of these was a lad called Jean Marie Hervagault, a young scamp, who was a native of St.
But the prisoner's deep affection for the Princess Benedictine for a time threatened to spoil this part of the plan, until, sacrificing his own feelings, he consented to yield to considerations of state, and placed himself unreservedly in the hands of his reverend adviser, who at once set out for Dauphiné, and made formal proposals on behalf of Hervagault on the 25th of August, 1802, the anniversary of the festival of St.
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