Word: naundorff
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Angry Rabbit. When at last he arrived in Paris, Naundorff was a down-at-heel beggar. But he found an important champion. The lost Dauphin's old governess had come to scoff at the beggar's claims, but when she saw his prominent front teeth, the triangular vaccination on his arm and the pigeon-shaped mole of Louis Bourbon on Naundorff's thigh, she became convinced that he was the Dauphin. Naundorff even had a scar on his upper lip like that which the imprisoned Dauphin had got from the bite of an angry rabbit; the Dauphin...
With the governess' help, Naundorff enlisted Louis XVI's last Minister of Justice and a former Lord Chamberlain on his side. Then one night in a Paris street, Naundorff was attacked and left bleeding from six knife wounds...
...Bourbon Bomb. The government confiscated 202 documents he was hoarding as evidence of his claim and banished him from France. Naundorff fled to England, sired a son who was registered on the books as Prince of France, and settled down to write his memoirs. While in London the pretender was shot at three times...
Three years later Naundorff was run out of England. He settled in The Netherlands and wangled huge sums of money from the Dutch War Ministry to finance a new explosive, "the Bourbon bomb," on which he was working. In Delft in August 1845, Naundorff fell mysteriously ill. The Dutch King's personal physician attended him, but to no avail. A few days later he died. The death certificate bore the name Charles Louis de Bourbon...
Last week a company of still loyal believers who call themselves the Survivantists gathered around an open grave in a Delft cemetery to exhume the old bones which may or may not be those of an heir to the throne of France. A new examination of Naundorff's remains did nothing to dispel the mystery, but the Survivantists were not discouraged. Next year in the Vatican, on the 100th anniversary of her death, the secret will of Maria Therese, Duchess of Angouleme, is to be opened and read. Perhaps, hope the Survivantists, it will contain the final proof that...