In speaking of
the remains, they describe them as a corpse 'represented to us as
that of Charles-Louis.' The doctor Pelletan took out the heart, and
preserved it in spirits of wine; which he gave to the deceased's
sister when she had married the Duke d'Angouleme. The rest of the
body was huddled with other corpses into a common grave in the
cemetery of the parish of St Margaret; so that, at the restoration of
the Bourbons in 1815, when Louis XVIII. desired that the remains of
his predecessor should be disentombed, they could not be
distinguished.
The equivocal wording of the medical report, aided by other
suspicions, caused an idea to gain extensive currency that a dead
child had been substituted for the royal infant; and that he had
escaped from his jailers by a well-laid plan, carried out by his
partisans. This notion was so prevalent, that we find, amongst the
records of the Convention, a decree dated June 14, 1795--only six
days after the date fixed as that of the young king's death--ordering
him to be sought for along all the roads of the kingdom.
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