arret 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 ma