Madame Charlotte Atkyns. Some of them went so far as to accuse me of having invented this character for the purpose of my piece. Lady Atkyns, certainly, has left but few traces of her existence; she was a Drury Lane actress, pretty, witty, impressionable, and goodβit seems there were many such among the English actresses of the time.
Married we shall see presently how it came about to a peer, who gave her wealth at least, if not happiness, and who does not appear to have counted for much in her life, Lady Atkyns became a passionate admirer of Marie-Antoinette; she was presented to the Queen at Versailles, and when the latter was taken to the Temple, [Pg vi] the responsive Englishwoman made every effort to find her way into the prison.
She succeeded by the use of guineas, which, in spite of the hatred professed for Pitt and Coburg, were more to the taste of certain patriots than the paper-money of the Republic. Lady Atkyns suggested that the Queen should escape dressed in her costume, but the Royal prisoner would not forsake her children. It was a letter, dated May, , and addressed to the Minister by the director of the penitential establishment of Gaillon. She [Pg vii] seemed even to be bent upon supplying him with the means of making his escape.
I drew from this the obvious conclusion that if in , Lady Atkyns could bring herself to believe in the possibility of Mathurin Bruneau being the son of Louis XVI. If after such investigations, and in spite of the official records and of the announcement of his death on June 9, , she could still believe twenty-six years later that the prince might be alive, it can only be because she was satisfied that the dead youth was not the Dauphin.
Had she herself got the Dauphin out of prison? Or had she merely had a hand in the rescue? By what process of reasoning had she been able to persuade herself that an adventurer such as this Bruneau, whose [Pg viii] imposture was manifest, could be the Dauphin? Why, if she believed that the Prince had been carried away from the Temple, had she kept silence so long?
