NAUeNDORFF—­SOI-DISANT LOUIS XVII.  OF FRANCE.

One evening, while Napoleon I. was still reigning at the Tuileries and guiding the destinies of France, a stranger appeared in the market-place of Brandenburg, in Prussia.  He had travelled far, was very tired, and sat him down to rest.  But the Prussian police had then, and have still, a deep dislike to weary tramps; and the poor wayfarer had not been long seated when he was accosted, by the guardians of the peace, who demanded his papers.  The stranger told them he had none, that he was very weary, that he liked the town, and that he had resolved to take up his abode in it.  The police were astounded by his coolness, and continued to ply him with questions.  They asked what his station in life was, when he seemed a little confused; but ultimately said he was a watchmaker.  They demanded his name, and he said it was Nauendorff, but whence he had come he refused to tell; and his sole worldly possession was a seal, which, he said, had belonged to Louis XVI. of France.  The police kept the seal, and, finding that they could elicit no further information from the mysterious being who had thrust himself so unceremoniously into their dull town, permitted him to settle down quietly in Brandenburg.

Without tools, without money, without friends, he found life hard enough at first; but an old soldier and his sister took pity upon him, and took him into their house.  To them he first declared himself to be Louis XVII., and narrated the manner of his escape from the Temple.  He told them all about Simon and his cruelty, and described the dungeon in which he was confined, the iron wicket, and the loathsomeness of the place.  He said he recollected some persons attending him who, he thought, were doctors; but he was afraid of them, and would not answer their questions.  As the result of their visit, however, he was cleaned, his room was put in order, and the wicket was torn down.

About this time, he said, his friends determined to rescue him; but they found the guard at the Temple too numerous and too vigilant to allow them to carry out their plans, or to remove him from the place.  Accordingly they hit upon a strange device, and resolved to conceal him in the building.  They determined to take him from the second floor which he occupied, and hide him in the fourth storey of the Temple.  Sometime in June, 1795, an opiate was administered to him, and he fell into a drowsy condition.  In this state he saw a child, which they had substituted for him in his bed, and was himself laid in a basket in which this child had been concealed under the bed.  He perceived as in a dream that the effigy was only a wooden doll, the face of which had been carved and painted to imitate his own.  The change was effected while the guard was relieved, and the new guard who came on duty was content to perceive an apparently sleeping figure beneath the bedclothes, without investigating too closely whether it were the dauphin or not.  Meantime the opiate did its work, and not even his curiosity could prevent him from dropping off into insensibility.