Chapter II: Part 2

In the midst of this scene, Jerome came by on horseback. He could not stop; but he called out that the band had been heard already, and pointed to the place where the boys should go and take their stand. They did not now care anything about the procession, or the coach with six horses, or the handsome ladies, or the noble gentlemen that Jerome had promised they should see. Their mother wished that they should not miss such a sight: but they did not move as she said so. When, however, Marie turned her face towards them, and said, "Go, dears: pray do," they took their caps, and walked away; they thought it so kind of Marie to care for their pleasure at such a time.

Jerome passed again, after they had gone a few yards, and nodded and beckoned. They ran and kept up with his horse, till he stopped opposite the post-house. He told them hastily that he was to be stationed here; and he was glad of it, as it was expected that the party would halt at the post-house. He desired the boys to keep close behind, at his horse's tail, where nobody would meddle with them. They must not notice him till spoken to, and must take care of his horse's tread: all the rest they might leave to him. There was presently an opportunity for him to speak a few words more to them; and he could not help saying how sorry he was to see how they had been crying since he had left their cottage. Of course, this brought out the story of Charles, and the new misfortune threatened to the family. Jerome was not the only one who heard the tale. His smoking comrade was by his side: and it was exactly the kind of story to which his ears were most open. The two soldiers conversed together in a low voice for a minute or two, and then sat bolt upright and silent, as if they had been made of stone, and had not each carried a pitying heart under his stiff uniform and steady countenance. When the military music was heard coming nearer and nearer, and distant cheers were borne on the breeze, the commanding officer rode by, and saw nothing in the demeanour of these two soldiers to distinguish them from all the rest of the line, who were thinking only of themselves or the Dauphiness.

She came, preceded by so many attendants on horseback, and inferior carriages, which passed without taking any notice of the post-house, that Robin and Marc heard the people about them lamenting that there would be no halt, and that they should barely see the Princess after all. They were mistaken, however. It was one of the plans of the journey that the royal carriage should stop for a few moments at every post-house, whether fresh horses were wanted or not, in order that the loyal feeling of the people should be cherished by a sight of her who was to be their queen, and whose appearance was indeed likely to captivate all eyes and hearts.

The six bay horses were checked precisely at the right spot: and all which preceded the royal carriage halted at the same moment. The air was rent by a cheer, such a cheer as convinced the Count and his family how faint in comparison their welcome had been, when they had appeared from the by-road to the chateau half an hour before. When his train had taken their station at the entrance of Saint Menehould, there had been a few cries of "Long live the Count our lord!" but they were a mere whisper compared with the acclamation which greeted the Dauphiness.

The royal carriage was open almost all round, so that the Princess was conspicuously visible. She was full as beautiful as any of the gazers had expected. Her complexion was fresh and fair, her countenance smiling, and her blue eyes full of spirit and feeling; and though she looked no more than fifteen (her actual age), all thought, as she moved her stately head in answer to their greeting, that they had never seen so dignified a lady.

In about two minutes from the halting of her carriage, Jerome turned his head round with a hasty smile to the boys; and before they knew what it meant, his and his comrade's horses began scrambling and sliding. Jerome's opened a way for the boys to escape into the road from the danger of a kick; and as soon as they were safe there, the horses began to prance, and make yet more confusion. The Dauphiness looked that way, as Jerome intended that she should; and when her attention was fairly fixed, he called to the boys to come back to their places.

As Jerome had hoped, their doleful faces, all swollen with crying, attracted the notice of the Princess, who had hitherto met only smiling countenances wherever she turned, since she had entered her new country. These traces of tears carried back her thoughts to her own weeping, some days before, on leaving Vienna; and she suddenly beckoned to the children. In a moment a hundred voices bade them go forward to the carriage; a hundred hands pointed and pushed, so that they were presently within hearing of the kind questions of the young Princess.

She asked what made them so unhappy on this day, when every one else looked pleased and joyful. They could scarcely help crying again at the question; but they were old enough to know that everything might depend on their behaviour at this moment; and they strove to speak, and to speak plainly. Had they been ill? The Princess asked, observing to her ladies that they looked sadly thin. No, they had not been ill, they replied; they were only very unhappy to-day.

The bailiff, who was in attendance on the Count's family, now put himself forward to explain, not to the Dauphiness herself (that would have been too bold), but to one of her ladies, on the other side of the carriage, about his having taken away the boys' rabbits and pigeons according to law.

"'Tis not that," cried Marc, indignantly, as he heard this. "We left off crying about the rabbits and pigeons long ago: did not we, Robin? It is about Charles and Marie."

"Tell me about Charles and Marie," said the Princess, in broken French, "and then all about your pigeons."

"Charles and our sister were just going to be married, and we had begun a house in the wood for them; and we have had to pull it to pieces again; and this morning the Count says Charles must go for a soldier for three years; and Marie is crying at home so--"

Marc could not go on for his own tears.

The Count's sons had, by this time, made their way through the closing crowd, to hear what was going on.

"Casimir," said his brother, "your bad work of this morning must be undone, you see. Do your part with a good grace. Bring my father to receive the commands of the Dauphiness."

Casimir yielded. While he was gone, his brother explained to the Princess the rights which the Count had over this family, as over the other peasants of the neighbourhood. He ventured to answer for his father, that he would see the hardship of this particular case, and would permit some arrangement to be made, by which Charles might be spared the threatened misfortune, and restored to his hopes of a speedy marriage.

"Where is this Charles?" asked the Princess. "I will not ask to see the tearful Marie before so many eyes."

Robin had seen Charles, just before, near the spot; for Charles was desperate, and would neither hide nor attempt to escape. He roamed about, half-mad with the suffering of his mind, among the holiday groups of Saint Menehould; and when called, was not long in presenting himself.

"Alas! Is this the bridegroom?" asked the Princess, shrugging her shoulders, with an expression of pity.

"He looks better than that sometimes, when he plays with us," said Marc, zealous for his friend Charles.

"But his dress!" said a lady, who had seldom before seen a peasant, and was not familiarised with the coarse woollen garment and leathern belt, so common among the country people.

"It is just what father wears, and everybody," maintained Marc.

By this time the Count was waiting the pleasure of the Princess, ready to assure her of his patronage of any persons she might please to favour. The Dauphiness asked whether such poverty as she witnessed was not a thing hitherto unheard of,--whether such misery could be common in the country she had just entered? The bridling of some of her ladies, and the annoyance in the faces of some gentlemen of her suite, showed her that she had asked an imprudent question. Yet she was only fifteen, and was to be hereafter the queen of this country; and if she had never done worse things than asking such questions, she might have lived beloved, and died lamented, in a good old age.

She saw another thing in the countenances of her attendants,--that it was time to be gone. She therefore requested of the Count, as a favour to herself, that he would settle Charles advantageously on his lands; and smiling at the young man, she declared that she would answer for Charles's fidelity to his lord. Charles was on his knees at the word, too much overpowered to speak, but promising all by his clasped hands and heaving breast. The Count declared he should have a cottage and a field that very day, and his hearty consent to take Marie home as soon as the priest could marry them.

The Dauphiness asked one of her attendant gentlemen for her purse, and gave the boys gold for Marie. They were to tell her to make her cottage comfortable with it.

"As for yourselves," said she, "what did I hear just now that you wanted? Canary-birds, was it?"

"Pigeons,"--"rabbits," said the boys; "but never mind them now."

"O, but I do mind; you shall have some money for that too."

The bailiff explained that it was not poverty, but the law which interfered with the boys' pleasures. Pigeons abounded in the wood, and could feed themselves; but it was against the law for any under the rank of a noble to keep them. The Dauphiness supposed this was all as it should be; for she was apt, through life, to believe that the nobles were by nature entitled to all things, and might give only such leavings as they did not wish for, to inferior people: yet she was pleased, and repaid the bailiff with a gracious smile, when he said that all laws melted away before the wishes of a royal bride, and that these peasant boys should have their rabbit-hutch and dove-cot henceforth, by special permission.

None waved their caps more vehemently, none shouted "Long live the Dauphiness!" more vigorously, as the cavalcade set forth again, than Robin and Marc. When the last horseman vanished in the dust of the road, the attention of the crowd turned upon the favoured family of Randolphe. The poor man himself had retired overpowered, and no one could tell where he was. Charles was with Marie already. But the boys remained in the road; they were hoisted on the shoulders of their neighbours, having first delivered the precious gold pieces into the hands of the curd, lest they should lose Marie's treasure in the bustle. Robin would not be carried a step towards home till he had been allowed to speak to Jerome. He threw his arms round the neck of the good-natured soldier, and said that it was he who had made Marie's fortune. Then Jerome had to shake hands with every person in the crowd; and every man who had a house or cottage begged Jerome to be his guest. Jerome laughed, and said, that among so many he should not have known what to reply, and how to choose his host; but that he and his comrades were at Saint Menehould only for the occasion which was now passed, and before night they would be twenty miles off.

Before sunset, accordingly, Jerome and the smoker were riding side by side on the road to fresh quarters, each with a fine bouquet of spring flowers at his breast, sent by Marie. They were talking of the events of the morning, of the sudden rescue of a worthy family from the depths of misery. The smoker could not be cheered even by what he had witnessed; and he spoke as gloomily and sententiously as if the pipe were now between his lips, and his words coming forth in a cloud of smoke. Jerome could not but own, however, that there was much truth in what he said, when he declared, "It is all very well, and I am glad this one family is saved. But it is only one of many hundred thousand miserable families. What is to become of all the rest, who may not have the luck to see a royal bride pass their way? It is not a few royal smiles and gold pieces, here and there, that will save the royal, or the noble, or the poor, while the law and the customs of the great oppress and destroy a hundred to pamper one. If this young Dauphiness were to do this deed over again every hour of the year, she could not do more than put off for a little while the storm that will burst upon her and all of us, when the poor can endure no more."

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER ONE.

ROYALTY.

It is a common belief, among those who have not learned to be wiser, that to be a king, or one of the king's family, is the same thing as to be perfectly happy. It is probable that all persons living in a country where there is a royal family have thought so at some time of their lives. The poor man who lives under the harsh orders of some superior, fancies the king with his crown on his head, ordering all things as he likes. Hard-working servant-girls think of the queen as driving about in her carriage all the morning, and going to the play every evening. Children, when tired of their lessons, or sent from some favourite book on an errand to the cellar, or a walk in the cold, imagine the royal princes and princesses doing what they like, and putting upon others whatever is disagreeable. Unless some circumstance should bring home to their minds the truth that royalty does not exempt from sickness and death, and from the troubles of the heart and mind, such persons may go on for the greater part of their lives envying royal personages who, perhaps, would gladly be peasants, or in any rank but the highest, the evils of which many a sovereign has found to be more than could be borne.

The poor people of France, at the time of the story you have just read, were as ignorant as I have described about royalty and its privileges. There was also something worse than ignorance in their minds about the inhabitants of the splendid royal palaces of Paris and Versailles. It has been shown how poor and how oppressed some of the country people were; this poverty and oppression, accompanied with ignorance, caused, in some parts of the kingdom, and especially in Paris, passions of fear and hatred which were then terrible to witness, and are now, after seventy years, dreadful to think of. One anecdote will show the mind and temper of some of the people of Paris about the time when the Dauphiness entered France.

The old king, Louis the Fifteenth, had ruined his health, as well as made himself detested, by his vices. At one time, when he was very ill, Paris was crowded with hungry wretches who had come up from the country, in hopes of finding a living in the capital. The police had orders to clear the city, every now and then, of these beggars, and send them back to their native places. On one occasion the police carried off some children of respectable persons, in hopes of getting large sums of money for ransom. The mothers of these children, seeking them in the streets and squares, and weeping as they went, attracted crowds; and a report was spread, and believed at once, that the physicians of the king had ordered for his cure baths of children's blood! Those who believed this nonsense rose in a riot, before it was found that the missing children were alive and safe; and several of the poor misled rioters were hanged.

This story proves more than the ignorance of the suffering people. It shows how the royal family and their attendants were regarded,--how tyrannical and cruel, how selfish and how powerful, they were thought. The royal family was from this time forward greatly wronged by the people; but it was because the people had already been much more wronged by the rich and powerful. They had been so ground down into poverty and wretchedness, that they felt the fiercest envy, the most brutal rage, towards all the wealthy and noble, believing them born to be unboundedly happy, and to make everybody below them as miserable as they pleased. Never, perhaps, were the absurd notions of the privileges of royalty held in such exaggeration as by the common people of France at this time; and never, perhaps, was a more intense hatred shown among men than by those who abolished this royalty. The story of the young king Louis the Seventeenth, which is now to be told, is a standing lesson to all who may imagine that to be a prince is to be happier than other people.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

ROYAL WAYS.

Louis the Seventeenth was born in 1785. He was the second son of the princess who passed through Saint Menehould from Vienna, after her marriage. From being Dauphiness she had since become queen, and her eldest boy was now the Dauphin. This second son, whose history we are to follow, was called the Duke of Normandy; and as he was never likely to be anything more, there was less pomp and fuss about him than was made about his brother, the heir to the throne. Yet, from the day of his birth, he had an establishment of his own; and while a little unconscious baby, not knowing one person from another, and wanting nothing but to eat and sleep, he was called the master of several ladies, waiting-women, gentlemen, and footmen, who were appointed to attend upon him.

We happen to have full accounts of the way of living of this royal family in the days of their prosperity, as well as of their adventures when adversity overtook them. Up to the time when the Duke of Normandy was four years old, life in the palace was as follows.

The oldest members of the royal family were the king's aunts,--the great aunts of the Duke of Normandy. There were four sisters, all unmarried. One of them had gone into a convent, and found herself very happy there. After the dulness of her life at home, she quite enjoyed taking her turn with the other nuns in helping to cook in the kitchen, and in looking after the linen in the wash-house. Her three sisters led dreadfully dull lives. They had each spacious apartments, with ladies and gentlemen ushers to wait on them,--a reader to read aloud so many hours a day, and money to buy whatever they liked. But they had nothing to do,--and nobody to love very dearly. They were without husbands and children, and even intimate friends; for all about them of their own age and way of thinking were of a rank too far below their own to be made intimate friends of. These ladies duly attended divine service in the royal chapel; and they did a great deal of embroidery and tapestry-work. When the proper hour came for paying their respects to their niece the queen, they tied on their large hooped petticoats, and other articles of court-dress, had their trains borne by their pages, and went to the queen's apartment to make their courtesies, and sit down for a little while, chiefly to show that they had a right to sit down unasked in the royal presence. In a few minutes they went back to their apartments, slipped off their hooped petticoats and long trains, and sat down to their work again. They would have liked to take walks about Paris and into the country, as they saw from their windows that other ladies did; but it was not to be thought of,--it would have been too undignified: so they were obliged to be contented with a formal, slow, daily drive, each in her own carriage, each attended by her lady-in-waiting, and with her footmen mounted behind. They were fond of plants, and longed above everything to be allowed to rear flowers with their own hands, in a garden: but this too was thought out of the question: and they were obliged to be content with such flowers as would grow in boxes on their window-sills in the palace. Madame Louise, the one who became a nun, employed a young lady to read to her while she yet lived in the palace. Sometimes the poor girl read aloud for five hours together; and when her failing voice showed that she was quite exhausted, Madame Louise prepared a glass of _eau sucree_ (sugared water) and placed it beside her, saying that she was sorry to cause so much fatigue; but that she was anxious to finish a course of reading which she had laid out. It does not seem to have occurred to Madame Louise to take the book herself, or ask some one else to relieve her tired reader.

The king, Louis the Sixteenth, would probably have been a dull man in any situation in life. His mind was dull. But his tastes showed that he might have been better and happier in many places than in his own palace. Till he fell into misfortune, and showed a somewhat patient and forgiving temper, he seems not to have attached anybody to him. He was very silent, though now and then giving way to strange bursts of rudeness, which made his children and servants afraid of him. For many years after he married, his wife was not sure whether he cared at all about her. There must always be some doubt of this, for a time, in the case of royal marriages which take place, as his did, without the parties having ever met, or being able to tell whether they shall like one another. The king's manners were such that it was difficult to say whether he cared about anybody,--except, indeed, one person; and that person was not the queen, nor his aunts, nor his children, but--a locksmith of the name of Gamin.

There were three employments that the king was so fond of, that he seemed to have no interest left for anything else: first, of lock-making; secondly, of hunting; thirdly, of studying geography. As long as he could spend his hours with his huntsmen, with Gamin, or marking his copper globe, or colouring maps, he seemed to care little how his ministers managed his kingdom, or how his wife spent her time, and formed her friendships.

A person who had the opportunity of examining his apartments gives an account of them which shows how little the king liked the common course of royal life, and how differently he employed his hours in private from what his people supposed. On the staircase which led from one to another of his small private apartments, hung six pictures of the king's hunts, with exact tables of the game he had killed,--the quantity, the kind of game, and the dates of the occasions, divided into the months, the seasons, and the years of his reign. In a splendid room below stairs hung the engravings which had been dedicated to him, and designs of canals and other public works. The room above this contained the king's collection of maps, spheres, and globes. Here were found numbers of maps drawn and coloured by the king,--some finished, and many only half done. Above this was a workshop, with a turning-lathe, and all necessary instruments for working in wood. Here, while no one knew where the king was, did he spend hours with a footman, named Duret, in cleaning and polishing his tools. Higher up was a library, containing the books the king valued most, and some private papers relating to the history of the royal families of Hanover, England, Austria, and Russia. In the room over this, however, did his majesty most delight to spend his mornings. It contained a forge, two anvils, and every tool used in lock-making. Here he took lessons of Gamin, who was smuggled up the back stairs by Duret; and here the king and the locksmith hammered away for hours together; while all about the room might be seen common locks, finished in the most perfect manner, secret locks, and locks of copper splendidly gilt. Gamin was a vulgar-minded man; and he treated the king ill, both at this time, and after adversity had overtaken the royal family. In these early days, he felt that the king was in his power, so afraid was his majesty of the queen and court knowing about his lock-making, and Gamin having it in his power to tell, any day. He spoke gruffly to the king, and ordered him about as if he had been an apprentice; to which the king always submitted. He not only endured this treatment, but entrusted Gamin with various secret commissions, which were sometimes of great importance. The account which Gamin gave of the king was that he was kind and forbearing, timid, inquisitive, and _very_ apt to go to sleep.

There was one more apartment, a sort of observatory, on the leads, in which was an immense telescope. Duret was always at hand, either sharpening tools, or cleaning the anvil, or pasting maps; and the king employed him to fix the lens of the telescope so as to suit his majesty's eye; and there, in an arm-chair at the end of the telescope, sat the king, for hours together, spying at the people who thronged the palace courts, or who went to and fro in the avenue.

While his majesty was thus pursuing all this child's play in private, his people were starving by thousands, and preparing by millions to rebel; the government was deep in debt, the ministers perplexed, and the wisest of them in despair, because they never could get his majesty to speak or act, even so far as to say in council which of two different opinions he liked the best. He would sit by, hearing consultations on the most important and pressing affairs, and after all leave his ministers unable to act, because he would not utter so much as "Yes" or "No." He had no will, and nothing could be done without it. What a pity, for suffering France, and for the mild Louis himself and all his family, that he was not a huntsman or a mechanic instead of a king!

The little Duke of Normandy knew nothing of all this, and saw very little of his father in any way. What did he see his mother doing? The formality of the court was such that he saw less of his mother than almost any child in the kingdom of its parents; but the sort of life the queen led was as follows.

She had been married, as we know, at fifteen, when she was not only inexperienced, but very ignorant. Her mother, the Empress of Austria, was so busy governing her empire, that she could pay little attention to the education of her children. She gave them governesses; but these governesses indulged their pupils, doing their lessons for them,-- tracing their writing in pencil,--casting up their sums,--whispering to them how to spell,--doing the outline of their drawings first, and touching them up at last. The consequence was, that when this young girl entered France, a bride, at fifteen years of age, she knew next to nothing, and though she took some pains, she never learned to spell well in French, or to write grammatically, even after she declared that she had forgotten her native language--German. She was very clever, notwithstanding. She had a strong, firm, and decided mind. Her ignorance, however, was an irreparable evil,--especially her ignorance of men and common life. She had no means of repairing this ignorance. Everybody flattered her; every one yielded to her in the days of her prosperity; so that she knew no will but her own, till some mistake, which it was to late to set right, showed her how she had been deceived. Even during the happiest years of her life, while all appeared to go well, she was perpetually getting into scrapes, and making enemies; and we shall see, by-and-by, how, on one occasion, her inexperience cost, in its consequences, the lives of herself and all her family but one.

Of her many mistakes, however, none were so fatal as that of concluding that all was well because no one told her to the contrary,--of passing her days in splendour and pleasure, giving her whole mind to acting plays, masquerading, and inventing new amusements, and now and then providing for dependents by giving a licence to sell some necessary article dear to the poor, while the poor were growing desperate with famine. She was careless and selfish, but she was not hard-hearted; for whenever she witnessed misery she hastened to relieve it, often sacrificing her own pleasures for the purpose; but the people, hunger-bitten and in rags, seeing her splendour, and hearing reports of far more than was actually true, believed her hard-hearted; and from being proud of her, and devoted to her, when she entered France as a bride, they learned at last to hate her from the bottom of their souls.

There would be no end to the story of how many attendants the queen had, and what were the formalities observed among them. We will only briefly go over the history of a day, in order fully to understand how great was the reverse when she became a prisoner.

The queen was awakened regularly at eight o'clock, at which hour her first lady of the bed-chamber entered the room, sad came within the gilt railing which surrounded the bed, bringing in one hand a pincushion, and in the other the book containing patterns of all the queen's dresses, of which she had usually thirty-six for each season, besides muslin and other common dresses. The queen marked with pins the three she chose to wear in the course of that day;--one during the morning, another at dinner, and a third in the evening,--at a card-party, a ball, or the theatre. The book was then delivered to a footman, who carried it to the lady of the wardrobe. She took down from the shelves and drawers these dresses and their trimmings; while another woman filled a basket with the linen, etcetera, which her majesty would want that day. Great wrappers of green taffeta were thrown over these things, and footmen carried them to the queen's dressing-room. Sometimes the queen took her breakfast in bed, and sometimes in her bath. Her linen dress was trimmed with the richest lace; her dressing-gown was of white taffeta; and the slippers in which she stepped to the bath were of white dimity, trimmed with lace.

Two women were kept for the sole business of attending to the bath, which was usually rolled into the room upon castors. The bathing-gown was of fine flannel, with collar and cuffs, and lining throughout of fine linen. The breakfast, of coffee or chocolate, was served on a tray which stood on the cover of the bath. Meantime one of the ladies warmed the bed with a silver warming-pan, and the queen returned to it, sitting up in her white taffeta dressing-gown, and reading; or if any one who had permission to visit her at that hour wished to see her, she took up her embroidery. This kind of visit, at a person's rising, is customary abroad; and it had been so long so at the court of France, that certain classes of persons were understood to have a right to visit the queen at the hour of her levee, as it was called. These persons were the physicians and surgeons of the court; any messengers from the king; the queen's secretary and others; so that there were often, besides the ladies in waiting, ten or a dozen persons visiting the queen as she sat up in bed, at work, or taking her breakfast.

The great visiting hour, however, was noon, when the queen went into another room to have her hair dressed. We see in prints, how the hair was dressed at that time,--frizzed and powdered, and piled up with silk cushions, and ribbons and flowers, till the wonder was how any head could bear such a weight. It took a long time to dress a lady's hair in those days. The queen sat before a most splendid toilet-table, in the middle of the room. The ladies who had been in waiting for twenty-four hours now went out, and gave place to others in full dress, with rose-coloured brocade petticoats, wide hoops, and high head-dresses with lappets, and all the finery of a court. The usher took his place before the folding-doors; great chairs and stools were set in a circle for such visitors as had a right to sit down in the presence of royalty. Then entered the ladies of the palace, the governess of the royal children, the princes of the royal family, the secretaries of state, the captains of the guard, and, on Tuesdays, the foreign ambassadors. According to their rank, the queen either nodded to them as they entered, or bowed her head, or leaned with her arm upon her toilet-table, as if about to rise. This last salutation was only to the royal princes. She never actually rose, for her hair-dresser was powdering her hair.

It was considered presumptuous and dangerous to alter any customs of the court of France; but this queen thought fit to alter one among others. It had always, before her time, been the etiquette for the lady of the highest rank who appeared in readiness in the queen's chamber, to slip her majesty's petticoats over her head in dressing; but when her majesty was pleased to have her head dressed so high that no petticoat would go over it, but must be slipped up from her feet, she used to step into her closet, to be dressed by her favourite milliner and one of her women. This change gave great offence to the ladies who thought they had a right to the honour of dressing the queen.

Her majesty came forth from her closet ready to go to mass in the chapel, on certain days: and by this time her chaplains were in waiting among her suite. The royal princesses and their trains stood waiting to follow the queen to the chapel: but, strangely enough, this was the hour appointed for signing deeds of gift on the part of the queen. These gifts were too often licences for the exclusive sale of articles which all should have been left free to sell. The secretary of the queen presented the pen to her majesty; and at these hours she signed away the goodwill of thousands of well-disposed subjects. At such a moment, while she stood, beautiful and smiling, among a crowd of adorers, and while her husband, with smutted face and black hands, was filing his locks in his attic, how little did either of them think that their eldest son was sinking to his grave, and that the storm of popular fury was even now growling within their dominions,--the tremendous storm which was to prove fatal to themselves!

At this hour of the toilet, on the first day of the month, the queen was presented with her pocket-money for the month--the sum which she might do what she liked with, and out of which she made presents. This sum was always in gold, and was presented in a purse of white kid, embroidered in silver, and lined with white silk. Its amount was, on an average for the year round, 12,500 pounds. It was by saving out of this allowance that she paid for the pair of diamond ear-rings which she bought soon after her marriage; but it took six years' savings to pay for that one ornament. She was young and giddy when she bought those jewels, and she paid for them out of her own pocket-money; but, as has been seen, the purchase did not sound well in the ears of peasants who boiled nettles for food when they could get no bread, from the pressure of the taxes. Whether the discontented knew it or not, a good deal of this monthly gold went in charity--charity, however, which did not do half the good that self-denial would have done.

Her majesty was waited on at dinner by her ladies. She dined early, generally eating chicken, and drinking water only. She supped on broth, or the wing of a fowl, and biscuits which she steeped in water. She spent the afternoons among her ladies, or with her two most intimate friends--the Duchess de Polignac, for some time governess to the royal children, and the Princess de Lamballe, superintendent of the household. After a time the friendship with both these ladies cooled; but while it lasted, the pleasantest hours the queen passed were when working and conversing with these ladies. After the private theatre was given up, the evenings were commonly spent in small dull card-parties, but sometimes in more agreeable parties in the apartments of one or other of her two friends. It was thoughtless and undignified of the queen to act plays, to which the captains of the guard, and various other persons, were in time admitted as spectators; but though her best friends would have been glad that she should have abstained from such performances, it is not surprising that she inclined to an amusement that gave her something to think of and to do, and from which she really learned more of literature than she could otherwise have done. Amidst the deplorable dulness of such a life as hers, we cannot wonder that studying some of the best French dramatic poetry, and feeling for the hour that she was the companion and not the queen, should have been a pleasure which she was sorry to forego. She sorely lamented afterwards that she had ever indulged in it.

But, it may be said, she had children and she had friends. Could she not make herself happy with them? Alas! She found herself disappointed there,--as she was whichever way she turned for happiness. Though her friend, the Duchess de Polignac, was governess to her children, and though she had hoped by this plan to enjoy more freedom with both than by any other means, all went wrong. The other gentlemen and ladies--the tutors and under-governesses who were about the children--became jealous of the duchess, and taught the children to dislike her. The Princess de Lamballe also had misunderstandings with the duchess; and the queen and her children's governess began to be equally hated by the people, who believed that the duchess instigated the queen to all the bad actions of which she was reported guilty.

The Duke of Normandy was three years old when the serious misfortunes of his family began. Up to that time he had seen only what was bright and gay. He himself was a little rosy, plump, merry child, with beautiful curling hair, and so sweet a temper that everybody loved him. He found many to love. There was his beautiful, kind mother. She could not do for him what a mother of a lower rank would have done; she could not wash and dress him, and keep him on her lap, or play with him half the day, or walk in the sweet, fresh fields with him--but she often opened her arms to him, and always smiled upon him, and loved him so much, that some ill-natured people persuaded his elder brother, the Dauphin, that the little Duke of Normandy was his mother's favourite, and that she did not care for her other children.

Then there was the Princess Royal, the eldest of the children. She was at that time eight years old, and as grave a little girl as was ever seen at that age. She rarely laughed or played, but she was kind to her brothers and the people about her.

Next was the Dauphin, a year younger than his sister. He was sinking under disease; and it made every one's heart ache to see his long sharp face, and his wasted hands, and his limbs, so shrunk and feeble that he could not walk. His tutor could not endure the duchess, his governess, and taught the poor fretful child to be rude to her, and even to his mother. When the duchess came near to amuse him, he told her to go away, for he could not bear the perfumes that she was so dreadfully fond of. This was put into his head, for she used no perfumes. When the queen carried to her poor boy some lozenges that she knew could not hurt him, and that he was fond of, the under-tutors, and even a footman of the Dauphin, started forward, and said she must give him nothing without the advice of the physicians. She knew that these were the very people who were always putting it into the Dauphin's head that, she was more fond of his little brother, and she saw that it was intended to prevent her having any influence with her own sick child; and bitterly she wept over all this in her own apartment.

One day, some Indian ambassadors were to visit the king in great splendour, and it was known that there would be a crowd of people in the courts and galleries to see them. The queen desired that the Dauphin might not be encouraged to think of seeing this sight, as it would be bad for him, and she could not have him exposed, deformed and sickly, to the gaze of a crowd of people. Notwithstanding her desire, the Dauphin's tutor helped him to write a letter to his mother, begging that he might see the ambassadors pass. She was obliged to refuse him. When she reproached the tutor with having caused her and her boy this pain, he replied that the Dauphin wished to write, and he could not vex a sick child--the very thing which he compelled the mother to do, after having fixed the subject in the boy's mind, and raised his hopes.

There was another sister, younger than the Duke of Normandy--quite a baby. The Duke of Normandy used to see this little baby every day, and kiss her, and hear her crow, and see her stretch out her little hand towards the lighted wax candles, which made the palace almost as light as day. One morning, baby was not to be seen: everybody looked grave: his mother's eyes were red, and her face very sad. Baby was dead; and, young as he was, Louis did not forget Sophie immediately. He saw and heard things occasionally which put him in mind of baby for long afterwards.

There was one more person belonging to the family, whom the children and everybody dearly loved. This was their aunt Elizabeth, the king's sister, a young lady of such sweet temper--so religious, so humble, so gentle--that she was a blessing wherever she went. She disliked the show and formality of a life at court, and earnestly desired to become a nun. The king and queen loved her so dearly that they could not bear the idea of her leaving them. They devised every indulgence they could think of to vary the dulness of the court. The king declared her of age two years before the usual time, and gave her a pretty country-house, with gardens, where she might spend her time as she pleased; and he encouraged her taking long country rides, as she was fond of horse-exercise. At last, when she was full of gratitude for her brother's kindness, he begged her to promise not to become a nun before she was thirty, when, if she still wished it, he would make no further opposition. She promised. We shall see, by-and-by, what became of this sweet princess when she was thirty.

She was at this time twenty-three years old. She was a great comfort to the queen, not concealing from her that she thought the Dauphin was dying, and the nation growing very savage against the royal family; but endeavouring to console and strengthen her mind, as religious people are always the best able to do. The poor queen began to want comfort much. She went to bed very late now, because she could not sleep; and a little anecdote shows that her anxieties made her again as superstitious as she had formerly been, when she dreaded misfortune because she was born on the day of the great earthquake at Lisbon.

On the table of her dressing-room, four large wax candles were burning one evening. Before they had burned half-way down, one of them went out. The lady-in-waiting lighted it. A second went out immediately, and then a third. The queen in terror grasped the lady's arm, saying, "If the fourth goes out, I shall be certain that it is all over with us." The fourth went out. In vain the lady observed that these four candles had probably been all run in the same mould, and had therefore the same fault. The queen allowed this to be reasonable, but was still much impressed by the circumstance.

For one of the impending evils there was no remedy. The Dauphin died the next June, when the Duke of Normandy, then four years old, became Dauphin. It may give some idea of the formality of the court proceedings to mention that, when a deputation of the magistrates of Paris came, according to custom, to view the lying-in-state, the usher of the late Dauphin announced to the dead body, as he threw open the folding-doors, that the magistrates of Paris had come to pay their respects.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER THREE.

THE DAUPHIN LOSES HIS GOVERNESS.

Little Louis had no cause to rejoice in his new honours. Much more observance was paid to him within the palace, now that he had become heir to the throne; but out of doors all was confusion: and five weeks from his brother's death had not passed before the little prince had to endure one of those fits of terror of which he had but too much experience from that time forward.

The two principal royal palaces were, that called the Tuileries, in Paris, and that of Versailles, twelve miles from Paris. At this time, July, 1789, the royal family were at Versailles. The discontented, long-murmuring people of Paris rose in rebellion, because their favourite minister, Necker, who had managed the money affairs of the nation well, and was more likely to take off taxes than any other minister, had been dismissed from his office. The nation were determined to have him back again; but, having once risen in rebellion, they aimed at more achievements than one. On the 14th of July the people of Paris besieged and took the Bastille, the great state-prison, where, for hundreds of years, victims had suffered cruel imprisonments, often without having been tried. The very sight of this gloomy castle was odious to the people; and they pulled it down, leaving not one brick upon another, and carrying the prisoners they found there on their shoulders through the city, in triumphant procession.

While this attack on the Bastille was taking place, there was a ball given in the orangery at Versailles, where the court ladies and the officers of the troops danced, and laughed, and talked, and took their refreshments, as if all was well. The French Parliament was sitting in the town of Versailles; and they sent some of their body repeatedly that day to the palace, to tell the king of the danger, and urge him to do what was proper: but there was no moving the king to do anything, that day, any more than on other occasions; and he only sent word to the parliament to mind their own business. The inhabitants of Versailles were alarmed at the reports that arrived from Paris, and they were all on the watch, consulting in the streets, or wondering in their own houses what would happen next. Some vague rumours reached the palace; but the court ladies and their guests danced away in the orangery, till the time for breaking up the ball arrived. Late at night, a nobleman who had a right to demand an audience of the king at all times, arrived, made his way, dusty as he was, to the king's chamber, and told of the rebellion, the destruction of the Bastille, and the murder of two faithful officers, well-known to the king. "Why," said the king, as much surprised as if nothing had happened to warn him, "this is a revolt."

"It is not a revolt," said the nobleman: "it is a revolution."

The Dauphin was fast asleep when this alarm arrived. He saw, the next morning, that every one about him was in terror, and that the courts of the palace were filled with a crowd of ill-looking angry people. His governess appeared greatly alarmed; and well she might be; for the mob outside were shouting her name, and saying that they would be revenged on her for giving the queen bad advice. The king had gone to address the parliament, promising to do all that they had advised the day before, and to recall Monsieur Necker, the favourite minister. While he was gone, one of the queen's ladies came to the room where Louis was with his governess, unlocked the door with the queen's key, and told him that he was to go with her to his mother. The Duchess de Polignac asked whether she might not take him herself to the queen: but the lady messenger shook her head, and said she had no such orders. She knew very well that if the people who were looking up at the windows should once see the duchess, they would be ready to pull her to pieces. The duchess, understanding the lady's countenance, took the child in her arms, and wept bitterly. Louis did not know what it all meant; but it frightened him. The messenger tried to console the duchess with promising to bring Louis back presently; but she said, weeping, that she knew too well now what to expect. One of the under-governesses asked whether she might take the prince to his mother, and did so.

The queen was waiting for the boy, with the Princess Royal by her side. She stepped out into the balcony with her two children, and repeatedly kissed them in the sight of the people. Little Louis might well be glad to step back from the balcony into the room again; for the mob was very noisy and rude. The lady who had been sent to summon him slipped out among the people, to hear what they were saying. A woman, who kept a thick veil down over her face, seized her by the arm, told her she knew her, and desired her to tell the queen not to meddle any more in the government, but to leave it to those who cared more for the people. A man then grasped her other arm, and said he knew her too, and bade her tell the queen that times were coming very different from those which were past. Just then, the queen and the children appeared in the balcony. "Ah!" said the veiled woman, "the duchess is not with her."

"No," said the man, "but she is still in the palace, working underground like a mole: but we will dig her out." The queen's lady had heard quite enough. She was glad to go in and sit down, for she could scarcely stand. She thought it her duty to tell the queen what she had heard; and the queen made her repeat it to the king.

One of the king's aunts was at her tapestry-work that day, in a room which looked towards the court, and where there was a window-blind through which she could see without being seen. Three men were talking together; and she knew one of them. They did not whisper, or speak low; and one of them said, looking up at the window of the throne-room, "There stands that throne of which there will soon be left no remains."