sition for
his benefit also, and in it he lay ensconced while devoted friends
were carrying him away from the Temple, and from the rascally Simon,
who was still in authority. Like Meves, he asserted that Madame Simon
aided the plot, and in the course of his trial placed a certain M.
Remusat in the witness-box, who stated that while he was in the
hospital at Parma a woman called Semas complained bitterly of the
treatment to which she was subjected, and declared loudly that if her
children knew it they would soon come to her relief. Remusat thereupon
asked her if she had any children, when she responded, "My children,
sir, are the children of France! I was their _gouvernante_!" There was
no mistaking the allusion, and her astonished hearer replied, "But the
dauphin is dead." "Not so," was the answer; "he lives; and, if I
mistake not, was removed from the Temple in a basket of linen."
"Then," added the witness, "I asked the woman who she was, and she
told me that she was the wife of a man called Simon, the former
guardian-keeper. Then I understood her assertion, 'I was their
_gouvernante_!'"

This extraordinary piece of evidence was entirely uncorroborated, and
in reality the accused had no case. But if he was deficient in proof
of his assertions, he had abundance of audacity. At first he declined
to answer the interrogatories of the judge, and permitted that
functionary to lay bare his past life, without any attempt to dispute
his assertions; but when the witnesses were brought against him, he
broke his silence, and finally became irrepressibly talkative. The
authorities had traced his career with some care, and showed that his
real name was d'Hebert, and that he always used that name in legal
documents, such as transfers of property to himself, being shrewd
enough to know that a conveyance would be invalid if executed in a
false name. In his proclamations, however, he invariably appeared as
"Charles de Bourbon, Duke of Normandy." In private life his favourite
title was Baron Richemont, although sometimes he condescended to be
addressed as Colonel Gustave; and when imperative occasion demanded,
passed under the vulgar cognomen of Bernard.

The agents of police tracked him under all these disguises with the
greatest facility, by means of a clue which he himself provided.
Having been a man of method, he was in the habit of keeping a
memorandum-book or diary, in which he recorded, in cypher, all his
proceedings. This inte