-Caveat Lector- Wandering heart may hold answer to 204-year-old French Royal mystery By CLAR NI CHONGHAILE PARIS (December 18, 1999 1:43 a.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - More than two centuries ago, a young boy, his body ravaged by scabies and sprouting ugly tumors, died in a Paris prison. Some mourned the death of the French king, others said the child was just another common victim of the French Revolution. This lonely death was only the beginning of a tale of intrigue revolving around the mysterious fate of Louis XVII, heir to the throne. Now a French historian hopes a DNA study of the preserved heart of the boy who died in the prison can resolve one of France's most enduring mysteries. Louis XVII's parents, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, were guillotined in 1793 during the French Revolution. He was imprisoned with his teenage sister in the Temple, a fortified monastery in Paris, where he died at age 10 of tuberculosis in 1795. Or did he? Even before Louis XVII's alleged death, rumors were rife that he had been spirited away from the prison and that another child had been substituted in his place. "What interests me above all is the idea of a tragic fate. Also, it is a great historical enigma which raises deep feelings in the collective consciousness," said the historian, Philippe Delorme said. The study organized by Delorme will compare the heart's DNA with that of hair cut from Marie-Antoinette when she was a young girl in Austria. "If we find the same DNA signature in the heart and in the hair of Marie-Antoinette, then we will have resolved the issue," Delorme said. But that is a big "if." Delorme, who in 1995 published a book called "The Affair of Louis XVII", admits one cannot even be sure the heart belongs to the boy who died in the Temple. Overcome by royalist fervor, the doctor who performed the autopsy in 1795 stole the heart and pickled it in alcohol for eight to ten years. One of his student's subsequently stole it, but on his deathbed, he asked his wife to return it. After the restoration of France's monarchy in 1814, the heart was offered to various members of the royal family but they were reluctant to accept a relic of such dubious provenance. It finally found its way to the Spanish branch of the Bourbon family. They returned it to Paris in 1975 and it was placed in the royal crypt. Apart from issues of authenticity, there are also scientific challenges. "We are not certain of getting a result. It is possible that there will be no DNA or that it will have been damaged," Delorme said. This week, draped in purple veil, the crystal vase containing the heart was carried in a stately procession from the royal crypt in Paris' St. Denis basilica and taken to a laboratory where samples were extracted and placed in sealed envelopes under the watchful eye of law officers. Delorme explained that the scientists needed a very sharp knife to cut the heart. "It was really hard, like a stone or a bone." Another historian, Philippe Boiry, was skeptical the heart would resolve the mystery. "This heart has lived through a lot. It has been lost, stolen, found, broken from its reliquary. Also, what can remain in a heart that has been in alcohol for years?" he said. >From the time of Louis XVII's alleged death there have been tales that the boy had survived. Some claimed Louis XVII had been drugged with opium and a dead boy substituted for the living one in the coffin. One guard at the time said he had seen many bathtubs being carried out of the prison and when those carrying one stumbled, he heard a child's cry from within, Boiry says in his book on the mystery. Enter the royal wanabees. Some 100 people came forward after the restoration claiming to be Louis XVII, some in less-than-likely locations such as the Seychelles and Canada, Delorme said. One of the most plausible characters, according to Boiry, was Charles-Guillaume Naundorff, who popped up mysteriously in Berlin in 1810 with no birth certificate and no known parents. DNA tests by Louvain University last year reportedly proved Naundorff could not have been Louis XVII, but Boiry says the results of the study were "premature." Naundorff died in Holland and his death certificate names him as "Louis-Charles of Bourbon, Duke of Normandy, Louis XVII (who was known under the name Charles-Guillaume Naundorff)." So which death certificate tells the truth - the one written in 1795 in Paris or the one signed in 1845 in Holland? Beauffremont hopes the heart turns out to be that of the unfortunate Louis XVII, but he can see some advantage in a negative result. "If the DNA doesn't match," he said, "the riddle remains incomplete and people can continue to dream." DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. 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