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Louis Seventeenth of France, in his ninth year, was imprisoned by the revolutionists and subjected to every kind of torture that a human being could be made to suffer. As a result of that treatment, and of loneliness and cruelty, did he pine and sicken and die a natural death as some accounts say?

Did he, as some say, deliberately resist all the attempts made by his persecutors to enter into conversation with him, by maintaining a complete silence of fifteen months; or had a dumb child been put in his place by friends who had secretly rescued the real little king from his prison, and hidden him in a garret room of the Temple until they could safely liberate him? Then finding the dumb child too healthy to suit their plans, did they, as it is said, replace him by a very sick child, who died in the room where the little king was supposed to be imprisoned, and announce his death to the French nation as that of Louis Seventeenth, the royal prisoner? While the poor little substitute was lying in what was supposedly the coffin of little Louis, had the real King been given a strong dose of opium, and hurriedly placed in the coffin, instead of the substitute, as has been said?

Was the dead substitute carried hastily to the room in the Tower where the little King had been hidden, while Louis himself, alive and well, was being carried in the coffin to the cemetery? It has been said that the carriage in which the coffin was carried had been especially arranged for this scheme, and that while being driven to the cemetery, Louis was taken from the coffin, and placed in a box under the seat of the carriage, while the coffin was filled with papers that it might not seem too light when the bearers carried it to its final resting-place.

Is it true, do you think, that when the young King awoke from the effects of the drug he had been given, he found himself in a strange place, in a bed in a clear bright room, alone with a faithful woman who knew and loved him? And the plot to rescue him having been immediately discovered, was he hastily sent out of Paris in disguise, while to put his enemies on the wrong trail, another little boy was sent with his parents under the name of Louis, in another direction?

And in spite of the terrible sickness he had, as the consequence of all he had endured, did Louis Seventeenth of France, actually live and escape, to grow up a free citizen in a free country where were neither kings, queens nor tyranny, but liberty, equality and fraternity, not in word but in truth? Who can say positively when so much has been affirmed on all sides of the much argued question?

Difficult, indeed, it is to decide whether little Louis Seventeenth, the Dauphin of France, the king who never reigned, died in the Temple, a victim of the Reign of Terror, or escaped to new lands and a new life.

As we turn the pages of history and read the thrilling story, let each decide for himself the fate of the courageous, charming little sovereign. Each must study out the mystery, and solve the riddle if he can. And whatever one may read or decide, there in the church of the Madeleine in Paris, may be found this memorial to the little King who never reigned.

IN MEMORY

of

LOUIS XVII

WHO

AFTER HAVING BEHELD HIS ILLUSTRIOUS

PARENTS

SWEPT AWAY BY A DEATH

WHICH SORROW REFUSES TO RECOUNT

AND AFTER HAVING DRAINED TO THE

VERY  DREGS

THE CUP OF ADVERSITY

WAS, WHILE STILL YOUNG

AND ALMOST ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD

CUT DOWN BY THE SCYTHE OF DEATH

HE DIED JUNE VIII--M. DCC. LXXXXV.

HE LIVED X YEARS, II MONTHS & XII DAYS