 Stories survive narrating how he was encouraged to eat and drink to excess and learned the language of the gutter.The foreign secretaries of Britain and Spain also heard accounts from their spies that the boy was raped by prostitutes in order to infect him with venereal diseases to supply the Commune with manufactured "evidence" against the Queen.However, the scenes related by of the physical martyrdom of the child are not supported by any testimony, though he was at this time seen by a great number of people.