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"Now and then, especially when coincidence
is more than usually stressed, sober reason comes to the
reader's aid and assures him that this couldn't have happened.
But sober reason will not preserve him from the hypnotic spell
of a novel which for sheer suspense, deserves to be ranked with
Sabatini's best."Margaret Wallace, New York Times,
September 5, 1937
The Lost King
The mystery of the lost Dauphin of France, Louis XVII, is the
subject of this romance. The author assumes that Louis escaped
from prison and lived to maturity in Switzerland. He made one
abortive attempt to regain the throne, but on the news of
Napoleon's escape from Elba, he returned to Switzerland, and
resigned all thoughts of reigning over France.
published by The Riverside Press Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1937
- The Lost King is in copyright.
- Reprints are widely available, and reading copies can be found
on most used book and auction sites.
- The text of The Lost King
- is not available online.
The Lost King tells the story of Louis-Charles de Bourbonthe
ill-fated Louis XVII of Francewhose death from neglect, in
prison, at the age of ten, was only confirmed in April 2000
in newspaper reports of DNA tests performed on the dried and
preserved heart of the prisoner(1). For generations, rumors
persisted that the boy had been rescued and replaced by a
double who died. Many pretenders came forward to fuel the
rumors: the Duchesse d'Angouleme, the "Orphan of the Tower,"
the last surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette,
stated that 27 men had claimed to be her brother.
(2) Herein we meet the twenty-eighth.
Part 1 of the novel depicts the origin and development of
the plot to free Louis-Charles. At the center of the action
is the celebrated spy-master, Jean de Batz, who recruits as
his field agent a young art student, Florence de La Salle. La
Salle pretends to arch-republicanism while working to effect
the restoration of a monarchy that he hopes will restore to
him the lands that should have been his by inheritance. And,
in truth, Florence is a better agent than he is a painter: he
is able to create likenesses of "remarkable fidelity," but,
as his master, Jacques-Louis David, never tires of pointing
out, La Salle lacks the "deeper vision that makes an
artist."
La Salle himself interprets this failing as a mechanical
defect"a lack of touch." But as Sabatini will show,
almost playfully, later on, the problem exists on another
level entirely. La Salle's consciousness of his own cleverness
often blinds him to the more subtle communications of those
around him.
La Salle's daring extraction of the boy king from Temple Tower
follows accounts offered in the early nineteenth century by
novelists and some of the more notable royal pretenders, but
Sabatini refines upon those narratives, stripping away fanciful
details to demonstrate how such a rescue might actually have
occurred. Tragically, the king is drowned in attempting to reach
the safety of the Prussian court, and La Salle's "embryonic"
hopes of king-making appear to be dashed permanently.
Years pass, and part 2 finds La Salle living precariously
in Brandenburg, running an illegal gaming house and nursing
a grievance. In France, a new Bourbon king has succeeded in
alienating both the closet Bonapartists and that segment of
the old French nobility who risked danger or endured hardship
at home in the royalist cause (La Salle among them), only to
be shouldered aside by returning Èmigrès after the
Restoration.
The artist slumbering within La Salle is startled awake when
he meets and befriends a young clockmaker, Charles Perrin Deslys,
and discerns in the young man's arched brows, slightly hare-like
teeth, and dimpled chin a surprising resemblance to Marie
Antoinetteand to the drowned child whose likeness he
had sketched repeatedly, under the supervision of David,
during the boy's lonely captivity. Gradually, an idea forms
in La Salle's mind, and with increasing confidence he sets
out to recruit Deslys: "You don't know it, Charles, but
in your face you have a fortune which I think I could shape
for you soundly and surely."
La Salle interprets Deslys' initial reserve about assuming
the king's identity as a lack of courage, and patiently,
forcefully, reasons away all the objections raised by the
younger man. Eventually, Charles agrees to participate in
the imposture. But Sabatini has a fine joke to play on La
Salle in part 3.
Although largely preoccupied with politics, the book is not
wholly without a love story. Sabatini disposes of La Salle's
romance thusly: "he had been at the point of death from smallpox,
and ... he owed his life to the unrelenting care of a woman
who had loved him, and who, taking the contagion, had died of
nursing him." Deslys, however, has two women in his life: his
supposed cousin, Justine Perrin, the only child of the well-to-do
peasant family among whom he reached adulthood, is contrasted
with Pauline de Castillon-Fouquières, a young aristocrat who
is the first to acknowledge Charles as king upon his introduction
to French society. Justine makes thewellthe penultimate
sacrifice for a woman, in a vain attempt to save her "dear
Charlot" from being led by La Salle into wicked mischief;
Pauline, on the other hand, professes passionate love for
the man, Charles Deslys, and urges marriage&150;until the
moment it appears that he may actually be an imposter.
Typically for Charles, he cannot make up his mind. He
vacillates between the two women, weighing his real
affection for (and broken promise to) Justine against what
he conceives to be an obligation of kingship: the need to
provide France with a proper queen.
The Lost King was published in 1937, the year following
the short and turbulent reign of England's King Edward VIII,
known after his abdication as the Duke of Windsor. Can it
have been chance that led Sabatini at this time to write
a book, at least in part, about kingship?
It is interesting to speculate about how his readers might
have reactednot only to the titlebut to remarks
like the following, made by a sullen Louis-Charles, upon being
denied free rein in the selection of his councilors: "You
profess yourselves my servants, but you take the tone of
masters. You coerce and constrain me. You deny me all initiative.
You treat my wishes with contempt, and impose your own upon
me."
The novel's 3-part structure allowed Sabatini to avoid
potentially awkward gaps in time, while selecting, combining,
and deploying historical and fictional material with economy
and grace; however, it also gives the text a slightly
"fractured" quality (evidence of hasty composition?).
Individual chapters sparkle with the acute commentary and
clever dialogue we expect from Rafael Sabatini, but readers
may occasionally sense a lack of continuity in the tale. There
is no straight shot to a breathtaking climax here, or a hero
in the mold of Andre-Louis Moreau or Peter Blood. Yet this
is a book as much about characterand as deeply revealing
of itas are the author's more conventional novels.
(1) See, e.g., Suzanne Daley, "DNA solves mystery of Marie
Antoinette's son," Chicago Tribune, 20 April 2000, sec. 1, p. 9.
(2) Eric Rede Buckley, Monsieur Charles: The Tragedy of
the True Dauphin (Louis XVII of France) (London: H. F. &
G. Witherby, 1927), 196. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.,
s.v. Louis XVII) notes 40 such claimants.
Claudia
Rex
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