ptive king
upon the throne now occupied by a dying usurper, the liberated and
grateful sovereign would, in return, immediately fix the price of
bread at three sous per pound. Meantime, the generous offerer was
regaling himself on the fat of the land, and holding his petty court
within the walls of Rouen jail. But this last move led to energetic
action on the part of the authorities. The attempted rising was
crushed, the careless jailers were dismissed, the prisoner was placed
in solitary and comfortless confinement, and the keeper of the seals
commenced serious proceedings in order to bring him to trial.

The chief object to be accomplished was to prove his birth, for there
were many who jumped to the conclusion that he must be the son of
Louis XVI., since he was not the son of the Widow Phillipeaux. Seeing
that his time had come, and that the government was determined to
punish him with severity, Bruneau became alarmed, and offered his new
jailers ten thousand francs to set him at liberty. The offer was
refused and reported, the prisoner was more narrowly guarded, and his
preliminary examinations were hastened. The stories which he told were
so absurd and so wildly contradictory, as to leave no doubt of the
hollowness of his pretensions; but still the difficulty remained of
proving who he really was.

When affairs were in this stage the Viscountess Turpin, Bruneau's
first benefactress, arrived in Rouen. M. de Pomeliere, the officer of
the king's guard who had suspected him from the first, had
communicated his suspicions to the viscountess, and she had come to
see him, and, if she could, to expose him. When Bruneau was confronted
with his former patroness, he at once admitted that he had enjoyed
the lady's hospitality, but declared that that fact did not render him
the less the Dauphin of France. The viscountess reproached him, and
endeavoured to ashame him; but the impudent and ungrateful scamp
turned to her with an air of mock majesty and exclaimed, "Madame, I
accept counsel from no one. I give it as I do commands. I am a
sovereign!" The members of his family were next brought from Vezin to
identify him, and had no hesitation in doing so. He denied ever having
seen them before, but frequently betrayed himself by addressing them
by their pet household names, and by contradicting them with regard to
trivial occurrences. The imposture was plain; and Bruneau, his
forger-secretary Tourly, Branzon the author of the "Memoi