forgive you.'"--[THIERS]

The change in the young Prince's mode of life, and the cruelties and
caprices to which he was subjected, soon made him fall ill, says his
sister. "Simon forced him to eat to excess, and to drink large quantities
of wine, which he detested . . . . He grew extremely fat without
increasing in height or strength." His aunt and sister, deprived of the
pleasure of tending him, had the pain of hearing his childish voice raised
in the abominable songs his gaolers taught him. The brutality of Simon
"depraved at once the body and soul of his pupil. He called him the young
wolf of the Temple. He treated him as the young of wild animals are
treated when taken from the mother and reduced to captivity,--at once
intimidated by blows and enervated by taming. He punished for
sensibility; he rewarded meanness; he encouraged vice; he made the child
wait on him at table, sometimes striking him on the face with a knotted
towel, sometimes raising the poker and threatening to strike him with it."

[Simon left the Temple to become a municipal officer. He was involved in
the overthrow of Robespierre, and guillotined the day after him, 29th
July, 1794.]

Yet when Simon was removed the poor young Prince's condition became even
worse. His horrible loneliness induced an apathetic stupor to which any
suffering would have been preferable. "He passed his days without any
kind of occupation; they did not allow him light in the evening. His
keepers never approached him but to give him food;" and on the rare
occasions when they took him to the platform of the Tower, he was unable
or unwilling to move about. When, in November, 1794, a commissary named
Gomin arrived at the Temple, disposed to treat the little prisoner with
kindness, it was too late. "He took extreme care of my brother," says
Madame Royale. "For a long time the unhappy child had been shut up in
darkness, and he was dying of fright. He was very grateful for the
attentions of Gomin, and became much attached to him." But his physical
condition was alarming, and, owing to Gomin's representations, a
commission was instituted to examine him. "The commissioners appointed
were Harmond, Mathieu, and Reverchon, who visited 'Louis Charles,' as he
was now called, in the month of February, 1795. They found the young
Prince seated at a square deal table, at which he was playing with some
dirty cards, making card houses and the like,--the materials having b