The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1928-02-24

BY ELMO SCOTT WATSON

BY ELMO SCOTT WATSON
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N@l HE other day group of
French Royalists gath
IL cred in the Abbey of st.
IL Denis, north of Paris,
where lie the Kings of
III France in their royal
III tombs. The occasion was
IL the one hundred thirty
tS fifth anniversary of the
execution of Louis XVI
which took place during the French
there in memory of the Bourbon
monarch and his Queen, Marie Anton
cite. While they thus honored these
two victims of that historic tragedy,
they were denied the privilege of pay
ing a similar mark of respect to a
third, Louis XVII, the lost Dauphin
of France, for the reason that no one
knows where lie the remains of that
victim of the Reign of Terror. In the
cemetery of the church of st. Mar
garet in the Rue st. Barnard there is
a tomb which bears the words 81.
XVII, 17S5-1795. Attendite ct vioete
81 est dolor sicut dolor meus." Is
this the tomb of the lost Dauphin. as
that inscription would indicate and as
many Parisians believe? Or would
the BOurbonists who wished to honor
the memory Of this King, who never
held the throne which was rightfully
his, be compelled to visit cemetery
in the town Of Hogansburg, New York,
and lay their wreaths upon the grave
stone which bears the name of
Eleazer Williams with the assurance
that they were thus honoring the
little lost Dauphin?
Although the fate Of the lost Dau-
phin is one of the unsolved riddles
of history, certain definite facts in
regard to 1t have been established
by the researches Of a recent French
historian. According to his account,
in August, 1892, the Paris Commune,
after dispute with the legislative
assembly as to where their royal pris-
oners were to be quartered, succeeded
in getting its own way and decreed
that the place of captivity should be
the Temple, the palace Of the Grand
Friar of the Knights Templars. Here
were held King Louis XVI, Queen
Marie Antonette, Princess Elizabeth
(sister of the King), Princess Marie
Therese daughter of the King and
Queen and later the DucheSSe d.
Angouleme), and the Dauphin, Louis
Charles. On January q, 1893, the
king was beheaded; later the Queen
and the Princess Elizabeth were also
sent under the knife, leaving only the
Dauphin and his sister prisoners in
the Temple.
Before the Queen was executed,
however, the Dauphin had been sep
arated from the rest of his family and
held a prisoner by himself in another
part of the building where he was
placed under the care of Antoine
Simon, an ignorant shoemaker, and
his wife. Simon was to be the young
princes tutor with the special OBJ
ject of teaching him the democratic
ideas of the revolution. All that he
taught the boy, however, was to sing
indecent songs and to talk the rough
language of the lower classes. How
ever he was not cruelty treated, as
has so often been charged, and en-
joyed considerable liberty within the
Temple grounds.
On January 10, 1894, Simon sudden
ly ceased to be the Dauphin's guar
dian and that night he and his wife
left the Temple. 1t is from this
moment that the mystery begins.
Heretofore many people had been al
lowed to see the Dauphin, but from
this time on he was kept in close