THE EMPTY COFFIN
Thérèse, do you remember how we were taken to the Assembly, there to
pass the day within a grated tribunal and led thence to prison? How from
that prison we were afterwards transferred to another more gloomy still?
O the tower, the tower! The impressions of sorrow are deeper than those
of happiness. Tell me, Thérèse, my companion in that captivity, has
greater suffering ever been endured than in that tower? If those walls,
so soon after demolished, (for all traces of my history have been
obliterated), if those stones that once were walls had a voice, that
voice would be a sob. If they might writhe, they would wring out tears.
Even their name is a wail. There is no elegy so sad as the towers.
The agonies of our family,--you know them as well as I, for they are
your own. But what you do _not_ know are mine,--a child torn from his
mother's arms as she was led to the guillotine. And though you seek to
drive them from your knowledge, you _shall_ hear them.
Let me describe this prison to you, that you may realize 'tis your
brother who speaks. What detail could I forget of that damp tower
flanked by four smaller ones of arched roofs? The roof of the first was
sustained in the centre by a heavy pillar and its doors were of strong
boards fastened together by nails and guarded by heavy bolts; the
interior door was of cast iron; the walls were grey and black, in
imitation of a tomb; the white border was garnished with the tricolor on
which were traced the words: RIGHTS OF MAN. This was the only decoration
of the filthy apartment wherein vulgar and malevolent people constantly
watched us.
On first entering the tower, I believed myself to be dreaming and that
soon I should be rescued from the nightmare, as my mother had snatched
me from the wolves. This conviction was doubtless due to the contrast
between my past and present condition. My childhood had glided by so
sweetly and placidly; my senses had been stimulated by such great beauty
and elegance; the epoch upon which my mother stamped her refinement was
so poetic and artistic; the gardens in which I had played were so
beautiful; my material wants anticipated with so much adulation, that I
had grown to comprehend only smiles and beauty. It was considered an
honor to touch me, to be near me. No wonder, then, that the transition
from palace to prison affected my nervous system to the extent of
causing the obsession to possess me that I was two persons in one.
I might describe our incarceration to the minutest particular; I might
tell you the exact position of your bed and mine and the armchair of
white-painted wood in which our father dozed before dinner. Only listen
to me, Thérèse, and you will open your arms.
You will remember that I was taken away from our father and mother after
their condemnation to death, and delivered to two creatures who scarcely
seemed to pertain to the human species,--a pair of brutes who had
doubtless received instructions to render me idiotic through vile
treatment. But I must tell the truth. My guardians were indeed cruel,
but not to the extent which is usually believed. The inhumanity of that
cobbler and his wife has been greatly exaggerated, possibly with the
object of establishing my supposed death. Were the account true which
has obtained currency, I should not have survived. No child could have
withstood an unremitting martyrdom of hunger, blows, nakedness, and
deprivation of sleep. These hardships, indeed, I endured, but with
intervals of respite. Husband and wife were not equally brutal; he was
crafty and cruel, she gross and stupid, but possessing a heart of some
tenderness. Unhappy woman! I caused her ruin among that of many others.
For maintaining that I was not dead, she was declared insane and placed
in confinement. In her clumsy manner, she had protected me and often
smuggled into my couch candy and cheap toys.
On being taken from the custody of this couple, I was placed in the cell
in which our father's valet had been imprisoned. Here my condition was
worse than ever before. The windows, always closed, shut out light and
air. The doors opened only to those who, in silence, brought me food.
The furniture consisted of a table, a jug of water and the bed,--shelf,
rather,--on which I slept. Noxious odors slowly poisoned my blood.
While I here languished, the Revolution continued to rage fiercely,
though the period of delirium had passed and a species of authority
obtained. You and I, the hapless remnants of an ill-starred dynasty,
seemed relegated to oblivion, but there were some who thought of us with
pity. The friends who had futilely sought to save our parents' lives
formed plans for rescuing me. She who was my most zealous champion and
spent much money in my behalf was the charming creole, native of the
island of Martinique, and wife of a Revolutionary general. Of this lady
a negress in her native land had predicted that she should be Empress
and experience glory and sorrow without limit. She was at heart a
legitimist. Anarchy prevailed in all departments of governments,
skeptics had succeeded fanatics and the public voice denounced the
Directory. The first indication which reached me of the termination of
this era of tigers and hyenas was the receiving of clean clothes, the
entry of fresh air through the windows which were opened at last, and
the replacing of my daily mess of lentils by decent food.
My friends did not find it a simple task to accomplish my rescue. A new
wave of public ferocity seemed imminent. To bribe my custodians,
themselves under unceasing surveillance, was most difficult. The
Municipal Council had agents stationed at the entrance and exit of the
tower. Had it been a question of heroic sacrifice only, there would have
lacked not noble partisans of our House to dash themselves against even
invincible obstacles.
Would that I had died within those walls, permeated with the atmosphere
of our immolated mother. I should have perished, as you have expressed
my supposed fate, 'like a blighted flower.' For my greater sorrow,
generous abnegation and political malevolence combined to remove me from
this living tomb. The account of my flight is an incoherent one. I
myself can scarcely co-ordinate its episodes, for I was too feeble to
comprehend them clearly. My true history will never be historically
known, for an oligarchy, such as once existed in Venice, suppressed what
suited its purpose. No corroborating documents exist to verify even my
fragmentary recital.
The Revolution smouldered and the fall of the government was predicted.
Astute ambitions of various kinds combined to effect my freedom.
Unbridled lust for power grew rank. Our uncle, your present protector,
Thérèse, rallied around him, by employing my name as a summons, the
elements of the Restoration, meanwhile secretly paralyzing the efforts
directed toward my liberation. This he accomplished by procrastination
and discouragement. He was trusting to my prison life to attain the
desired consummation. But notwithstanding his efforts to double-bar my
cell, and even tho he would have thrown the weight of his body against
the door to insure its security, he was thwarted by a man who had
temporarily seized the reins of authority,--a voluptuary, destitute of
genuine energy--who realized that the possession of my person would
constitute an imposing arm. He planned to place me in concealment from
which to produce me when it should suit him to declare me among the
living. By this subtlety he might dominate even our uncle with whom he
maintained (as did other revolutionists who were deemed incorruptible) a
secret intercourse, avowedly with the end of establishing a moderate
Restoration,--which should concede what had been already acquired by the
Revolution. I, kept in hiding, would be a double-edged sword, a menace
to the arrogance of my uncle in his claim to the regency and a guarantee
to the loyal troops who were giving battle in the far East. Behold the
stratagem forced by the ingenious and base-born Barras. As instruments,
he selected the charming creole (wife of the adventurer who later
subjugated Europe) and two military men attached to the royal cause.
Thus it happened that men, who in the midst of anarchy and
administrative chaos, held the reins of power, wove, by their audacity
and wit, the complicated plot of my rescue and made current the report
of my death. Tho it was impossible to remove me bodily from my cell, a
simple matter it proved to thrust me into the loft above my bed. A boy
who had been smuggled in a basket of clean clothes replaced me. This
substitute was a deaf-mute and so the imitation was perfect, for I had
during my imprisonment maintained a constant silence.
I do not remember how the transition was effected. I had been given a
dose of drugged sweetened water. During my stupor I was placed in the
loft. As I awoke, the voices of my two deliverers implored me to remain
perfectly still. Shivering with cold and almost fainting from hunger,
never did I attempt approaching the door. Food was brought me with the
greatest irregularity, which I would devour and then huddle into a
corner. While I lay in this stifling hole, the rumor of my escape was
disseminated; spies were set on the frontier to watch for me by
governmental officers not in the plot.
Meanwhile, Barras gleefully rubbed his hands and in order to further
mystify the public he doubled the guard about my prison, while I
groveled, shuddering, in my filthy covert.
Barras realized that my mock death and burial would alone complete the
strategy; he visited the cell and gave instructions for the replacing of
the deaf-mute by a dying boy to be procured at a hospital. This hapless
child succumbed in my name and poets sang dirges over him, queens and
princesses robed themselves in crepe, priests held aloft thousands of
times the sacred host in sacrifice. That boy dead in rags and squalor,
Thérèse, is often in my mind as I reflect on the vanity of royalty.
Physicians who had never beheld me testified to the Dauphin's demise,
after witnessing the death of my substitute,--the death which was the
signal for my release. When the autopsy was completed, a surgeon
extracted the boy's heart and sent it to you, the Dauphin's sister,
Thérèse. You rejected that heart. Why?
And now I listen to the culminating horror! The body of that boy was
taken from the coffin at night and buried in the tower's garden, whence,
years later, the skeleton was exhumed, and that coffin was the sinister
vehicle which bore me from my prison. In that coffin I was taken along
the road leading to the cemetery. During the journey I was removed and
weights placed within. And these weights were found to be the contents
when subsequently an attempt was made to recover my body. The coffin was
buried with suspicious dispatch after the manner of deeds which fear the
light. The public voice clamored that an imposture had been practised,
whereupon the Government speedily dispatched a commission which
disinterred the coffin, fastened the lid on more securely and placed it
in another cemetery. This incident is so well known that I shall call it
history.