You can read "L XVII 1785-1795, Attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus" (Pay attention and see if there will be any sorrow like my sorrow). Is this the tomb of Louis XVII?
In a recent post I talked about the guillotined Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. They had a son, who for the royalists, on the death of Louis XVI in January 1793, became Louis XVII, at the age of 8, not actually of any real value during these Revolutionary years. The family was then imprisoned in the Temple (see previous posts). A few months after his father’s death the son was separated from his mother, who was going to be guillotined a few months later. A couple of cobblers took care of him for a while, but he was then for some time really imprisoned, alone in a dark room, before being somehow better treated, basically with the aim to convert him to the Revolutionary ideas. He was even forced to make depositions against his mother. He died two years later of scrofulous infection, at the age of 10.
He was buried in a mass grave at the Sainte Marguerite Cemetery. This seems now to be the true story, but there have been many rumours, e.g. that he could have escaped. Some hundred people pretended later to be him; some were taken quite seriously. What one knows is that the young man under the little gravestone is not Louis XVII, but the stone was added later and it seems to be clear that he was just one of the hundreds in the mass grave, whereof some 300 from the nearby guillotines at Bastille and Nation (see previous posts about guillotines). On his death his heart was saved. It changed owners many times, but was recovered a few years ago when it could be DNA tested and proved as his. Since 2004, you can find it in the Saint Denis Basilica (see previous post), where most French royalties were buried.

The Sainte Marguerite Cemetery was closed in 1805 and is now covered with buildings, except for some limited area. The Sainte Marguerite Church is still there. It dates from the first half of the 17th century, with some later additions.
On one of the stained glass windows you can read the Pope Paul VII held a masse here in 1805, a few weeks after he had crowned Napoleon as Emperor (see previous post).

One of the chapels, “La Chapelle des Ames du Purgatoire”, is being restored at present. You can see what it should look like from the picture I found in a little brochure. The architect was the same as the one for the Théatre Français, la Comédie Française – Nicolas Victor-Louis (1731-1802). 








