The queen had no suspicion of this. Now that Toulan was no longer there, no news came to her of what transpired beyond the prison, and Fidele's horn-signals were the only sounds of the outer world that reached her ear.

The evening of the 3d of July had come. The little prince had gone to bed, and had already sunk into a deep sleep. His bed had no curtains, but Marie Antoinette had with careful hands fastened a shawl to the wall, and spread it out over the bed in such a manner that the glare of the light did not fall upon the closed eyes of the child and disturb him in his peaceful slumbers. It was ten o'clock in the evening, and the ladies had that day waited unwontedly long before going to bed. The queen and Princess Elizabeth were busied in mending the clothing of the family, and Princess Theresa, sitting between the two, had been reading to them some chapters out of the Historical Dictionary. At the wish of the queen, she had now taken a religious book, Passion Week, and was reading some hymns and prayers out of it.

Suddenly, the quick steps of several men were heard in the corridor. The bolts flew back, the doors were opened, and six officials came in.

"We are come," cried one of them, with a brutal voice, "to announce to you the order of the committee, that the son of Capet be separated from his mother and his family."

At these words the queen rose, pale with horror "They are going to take my child from me!" she cried. "No, no, that is not possible. Gentlemen, the authorities cannot think of separating me from my son. He is still so young and weak, he needs my care."

"The committee has come to this determination," answered the official, "the Convention has confirmed it, and we shall carry it into execution directly."

"I cannot allow it," cried Marie Antoinette in desperation. "In the name of Heaven, I conjure you not to be so cruel!"

Elizabeth and Theresa mingled their tears with those of the mother. All three had placed themselves before the bed of the dauphin; they clung to it, they folded their hands, they sobbed; the most touching cries, the most humble prayers trembled on their lips, but the guards were not at all moved.

"What is all this whining for?" they said. "No one is going to kill your child; give him to us of your own free will, or we shall have to take him by force."

They strode up to the bed. Marie Antoinette placed herself with extended arms before it, and held the curtain firmly; it however detached itself from the wall and fell upon the face of the dauphin. He awoke, saw what was going on, and threw himself with loud shrieks into the arms of the queen. "Mamma, dear Mamma, do not leave me!" She pressed him trembling to her bosom, quieted him, and defended him against the cruel hands that were reached out for him.

In vain, all in vain! The men of the republic have no compassion on the grief of a mother! "By free will or by force he must go with us."

"Then promise me at least that he shall remain in the tower of the Temple, that I may see him every day."

"We have nothing to promise you, we have no account at all to give you. Parbleu, how can you take on and howl so, merely because your child is taken from you? Our children have to do more than that. They have every day to have their heads split open with the balls of the enemies that you have set upon them."

"My son is still too young to be able to serve his country," said the queen, gently, "but I hope that if God permits it, he will some day be proud to devote his life to Him."

Meanwhile the two princesses, urged on by the officials, had clothed the gasping, sobbing boy. The queen now saw that no more hope remained. She sank upon a chair, and summoning all her strength, she called the dauphin to herself, laid her hands upon his shoulders, and pale, immovable, with widely-opened eyes, whose burning lids were cooled by no tear, she gazed upon the quivering face of the boy, who had fixed his great blue eyes, swimming with tears, upon the countenance of his mother.

"My child," said the queen, solemnly, "we must part. Remember your duties when I am no more with you to remind you of them. Never forget the good God who is proving you, and your mother who is praying for you. Be good and patient, and your Father in heaven will bless you."

She bent over, and with her cold lips pressed a kiss upon the forehead of her son, then gently pushed him toward the turnkey. But the boy sprang back to her again, clung to her with his arms, and would not go.

"My son, we must obey. God wills it so." A loud, savage laugh was heard. Shuddering, the queen turned around. There at the open door stood Simon, and with him his wife, their hard features turned maliciously toward the pale queen. The woman stretched out her brown, bare arms to the child, grasped him, and pushed him before her to the door.

"Is she to have him?" shrieked Marie Antoinette. "Is my son to remain with this woman?"

"Yes," said Simon, with a grinning smile, as he put himself, with his arms akimbo, before the queen—" yes, with this woman and with me, her husband, little Capet is to remain, and I tell you he shall receive a royal education. We shall teach him to forget the past, and only to remember that he is a child of the one and indivisible republic. If he does not come to it, he must be brought to it, and my old cobbler's straps will be good helpers in this matter."

He nodded at Marie Antoinette with a fiendish smile, and then followed the officials, who had already gone out. The doors were closed again, the bolts drawn, and within the chamber reigned the stillness of death. The two women put their arms around one another, kneeled upon the floor and prayed.

From this day on, Marie Antoinette had no hope more; her heart was broken. Whole days long she sat fixed and immovable, without paying any regard to the tender words of her sister-in-law and the caresses of her daughter, without working, reading, or busying herself in any way. Formerly she had helped to put the rooms in order, and mend the clothes and linen; now she let the two princesses do this alone and serve her.

Only for a few hours each day did her countenance lighten at all, and the power of motion return to this pale, marble figure. Those were the hours when she waited for her son, as he went with Simon every day to the upper story and the platform of the tower. She would then put her head to the door and listen to every step and all the words that he directed to the turnkey as he passed by.

Soon she discovered a means of seeing him. There was a little crack on the floor of the platform on which the boy walked. The world revolved for the queen only around this little crack, and the instant in which she could see her boy.

At times, too, a compassionate guard who had to inspect the prison brought her tidings of her son, told her that he was well, that he had learned to play ball, and that by his friendly nature he won every one's love. Then Marie Antoinette's countenance would lighten, a smile would play over her features and linger on her pale lips as long as they were speaking of her boy. But oh! soon there came other tidings about the unhappy child. His wailing tones, Simon's threats, and his wife's abusive words penetrated even the queen's apartments, and filled her with the anguish of despair. And yet it was not the worst to hear him cry, and to know that the son of the queen was treated ill; it was still more dreadful to hear him sing with a loud voice, accompanied by the laugh and the bravoes of Simon and his wife, revolutionary and obscene songs—to know that not only his body but his soul was doomed to destruction.

At first the queen, on hearing these dreadful songs, broke out into lamentations, cries, and loud threats against those who were destroying the soul of her child. Then a gradual paralysis crept over her heart, and when, on the 3d of August, she was taken from the Temple to the prison, the pale lips of the queen merely whispered,

"Thank God, I shall not have to hear him sing any more!"



BOOK V.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN.

The Bartholomew's night of the murderous Catharine de Medicis, and her mad son, Charles IX., now found in France its horrible and bloody repetition; but the night of horror which we are now to contemplate was continued on into the day, and did not shrink even before the light.

The sun shone down upon the streams of blood which flowed through the streets of Paris, and upon the pack of wild dogs that swarmed in uncounted numbers on the thoroughfares of the city, and lived on this blood, which gave back even to the tame their natural wildness. The sun shone down upon the scaffold, that rose like a threatening monster upon the Place de la Revolution, and upon the dreadful axe which daily severed so many noble forms, and then rose from the block glittering and menacing.

The sun shone on that day, too, when Marie Antoinette ascended the scaffold, as her husband had done before, and so passed to her rest, from all the pains and humiliations of her last years.

That day was the 16th of October, 1793. For four months Marie Antoinette looked forward to it as to a joyful deliverance. It was four months from the time when she was transferred from the Temple to the prison, and she knew that those who were confined in the latter place only left it to gain the freedom, not that man gives, but which God grants to the suffering—the freedom of death!

Marie Antoinette longed for the deliverance. How far behind her now lay the days of her happy, joyous youth! how long ago the time when the tall, grave woman, her face full of pride and yet of resignation, had been charming Marie Antoinette, the very impersonation of beauty, youth, and love, carrying out in Trianon the idyl of romantic country life—in the excess of her gayety going disguised to the public opera-house ball, believing herself so safe amid the French people that she could dispense with the protection of etiquette—hailed with an enthusiastic admiration then, as she was now saluted with the savage shouts of the enraged people!

No, the former queen, Marie Antoinette, who, in the gilded saloons of Versailles and in the Tuileries, had received the homage of all France, and with a smiling face and perfect grace of manner acknowledged all the tribute that was brought to her, had no longer any resemblance to the widow of Louis Capet, sitting before the revolutionary tribunal, and giving earnest answers to the questions which were put to her. She arranged her toilet that day—but how different was the toilet of the Widow Capet from that which Queen Marie Antoinette had once displayed! At that earlier time, she, the easy, light-hearted daughter of fortune, had shut herself up for hours with her intimate companion, Madame Berthier, the royal milliner, planning a new ball-dress, or a new fichu; or her Leonard would lavish all the resources of his fancy and his art inventing new styles of head-dress, now decorating the beautiful head of the queen with towering masses of auburn hair; now braiding it so as to make it enfold little war-ships, the sails of which were finely woven from her own locks; now laying out a garden filled with fruits and flowers, butterflies and birds of paradise.

The "Widow Capet" needed no milliner and no hairdresser in making her toilet. Her tall, slender figure was enveloped with the black woollen dress which the republic had given her at her request, that she might commemorate her deceased husband. Her neck and shoulders, which had once been the admiration of France, was now concealed by a white muslin kerchief, which her keeper Bault had given her out of sympathy. Her hair was uncovered, and fell in long, natural locks on both sides of her pale, transparent face. Her hair needed no powder now; the long, sleepless nights and the sorrowful days have whitened it more than any powder could do; and the widow of Louis Capet, though but thirty-eight years old, had the gray locks of a woman of seventy.

In this toilet Marie Antoinette appeared before the revolutionary tribunal, from the 6th to the 13th of October. Nothing royal was left about her but her look and her proud bearing.

The people, pressing in dense masses into the spectators' seats, did not weary of seeing the queen in her humiliation and in her mourning-robe, and constantly demanded that Marie Antoinette should rise from the woven rush chair on which she was sitting, that she should allow herself to be stared at by this throng, brought there not out of compassion, but curiosity.

Once, as she rose in reply to the demand of the public, she was heard to whisper, as to herself: "Ah, will this people not soon be satisfied with my sufferings?" [Footnote: Marie Antoinette's own words.—See Goncourt, "Histoire de Marie Antoinette," p. 404.] At another time, her pale, dry lips murmured, "I am thirsty!" but no one around her dared to have compassion on this cry of distress; every one looked perplexed at the others, and no one dared give her a glass of water. At last one of the gens d'armes ventured to do it, and Marie Antoinette thanked him with a look that brought tears into his eyes, and that perhaps caused him to fall on the morrow under the guillotine as a traitor.

The gens d'armes who guarded the queen, they alone had the courage to show her compassion. One night, when she was conducted from the session-room to her prison, Marie Antoinette felt herself so exhausted, so overcome, that she murmured to herself, as she staggered on, "I cannot see, I cannot walk any farther." [Footnote: Goncourt, p.416] The guard who was walking by her side gave her his arm, and, supported by him, Marie Antoinette reeled up the stone steps that led to her prison.

At last, in the night intervening between the 14th and 15th of October, at four o'clock in the morning, her sentence was pronounced—"Death! execution by the guillotine!"

Marie Antoinette received it with unshakable calmness, while the tumult of the excited mob was hushed as by magic, and while many faces even of the exasperated fish-wives grew pale!

Marie Antoinette remained calm; gravely and coldly she rose from her seat, and with her own hands opened the balustrade in order to leave the hall to return to her prison!

Finally, on the morning of the 16th of October, her sufferings were allowed to end, and she was permitted to take refuge in the grave. It almost made her joyful; she had suffered so much, that to die was for her really blessedness.

She employed the still hours of the night before her death in writing to her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, and her letter was at the same time her testament. But the widow of Louis Capet had no riches, no treasures to convey. She had nothing more that she could call her own but her love, her tears, and her farewell greetings. These she left to all who had loved her. She sent a special word to her brothers and sisters, and bade them farewell.

"I had friends," she says, "and the thought that I am to be forever separated from them, and their sorrow for me, is the most painful thing in this hour; they shall at least know that I thought of them to the last moment."

After Marie Antoinette had ended this letter, whose writing was here and there blotted with her tears, she turned her thoughts to the last remembrances she could leave to her children—a remembrance which should not be profaned by the hand of the executioner. This was her long hair, whose silver locks, the only ornament that remained to her, was at the same time the sad record of her sorrows.

Marie Antoinette, with her own hands, despoiled herself of this ornament, and cut off her long back-hair, that it might be a last gift to her children, her relations, and friends. Then, after a period of meditation, she prepared herself for the last great ceremony of her career—her death. She felt herself exhausted, worn out, and recognized her need of some physical support during the hard way which lay before her. She asked for nourishment, and ate with some relish the wing of a fowl that was brought to her. After that she made her toilet—the toilet of death!

At the request of the queen, the wife of the turnkey gave her one of her own chemises, and Marie Antoinette put it on. Then she arrayed herself in the same garments which she had worn at her trial, with this single change—that over the black woollen dress, which she had often mended with her own hand, she now wore a cloak of white pique, Around her neck she tied a simple kerchief of white muslin, and as she would not be allowed to ascend the scaffold with uncovered head, she put on a plain linen cap, such as was in general use among the people. Black stockings covered her feet, and over these were shoes of black woollen stuff.

Her toilet was at last ended; she was done with all earthly things! Ready to meet her death, she lay down on her bed and slept.

She was still sleeping when it was announced to her that a priest was there, ready to meet her, if she wanted to confess. But Marie Antoinette had already unveiled her heart before God: she wanted none of those priests of reason whom the republic had appointed after it had banished or guillotined the priests of the Church.

"As I am not mistress of my own will," she had written to her sister Elizabeth, "I shall have to submit if a priest is brought to me; but I solemnly declare that I will not speak a word to him, and that I shall treat him as a person with whom I wish to have no relations."

And Marie Antoinette kept her word; she did not refuse to allow Geroid to enter; but when he asked her if she wished to receive the consolations of religion from him, she declined.

Then, in order to warm her feet, which were cold, she walked up and down her little room. As it struck seven the door opened. It was Samson, the public executioner, who entered!

A slight thrill passed through the form of the queen.

"You have come very early, sir; could you not delay a little?" When Samson denied her request, Marie Antoinette put on her calm, cold manner. She drank, without resistance, a cup of chocolate which was brought to her; she remained possessed, and wore her wonted air of dignity as they bound her hands behind her with thick cords.

At eleven o'clock she left her room, passed through the corridor, and ascended the car, which was waiting for her before the prison door. No one accompanied her, no one bade her a last farewell, not a look of pity or compassion was bestowed upon her by her keepers.

Alone, between the rows of gens d'armes that were placed along the sides of the corridor, the queen advanced, Samson walking behind her, carrying the end of the rope with which the queen's hands were bound, and behind him his two assistants and the priest. This is the retinue of the queen, the daughter of an emperor, on the way to her execution!

It may be, that at this hour thousands are on their knees, offering their fervent prayers to God in behalf of Marie Antoinette, whom, in their hearts, they continued to call "the queen;" it may be that thousands are pouring out tears of compassion for her who now mounts the wretched car, and sits down on the board which is bound by ropes to the sides of the vehicle. But those who are praying and weeping have withdrawn to the solitude of their own apartments, and only God can see their tears and hear their cries. The eyes which witnessed the queen in this last drive were not allowed to shed a tear; the words which followed her on her last way could express no compassion.

All Paris knew the hour of the execution, and the people were ready to witness it. On the streets, at the windows, on the roofs, immense masses had congregated, and the whole Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde) was filled with a dark, surging crowd.

And now the drums of the guards stationed before the Conciergerie began to beat. The great white horse, (which drew the car in which the queen sat, side by side with the priest, and facing backward,) was driven forward by a man who was upon his back. Behind Marie Antoinette were Samson and his assistants.

The queen was pale, all the blood had left her cheeks and lips, but her eyes were red! Poor queen, she bore even then the marks of much weeping! But she could shed no tears then! Not a single one obscured her eye as her look ranged, gravely and calmly, over the mass, up the houses to the very roofs, then slowly down, and then away over the boundless sea of human faces.

Her face was as cold and grave as her eyes, her lips were firmly compressed; not a quiver betrayed whether she was suffering, and whether she shrank from the thousand and ten thousand scornful and curious looks which were fixed upon her. And yet Marie Antoinette saw it all! She saw a woman raise a child, she saw the child throw her a kiss with its little hand! At that the queen gave way for an instant, her lips quivered, her eyes were darkened with a tear! This solitary sign of human sympathy reanimated the heart of the queen, and gave her a little fresh life.

But the people took good care that Marie Antoinette should not carry this one drop of comfort to the end of her journey. The populace thronged around the car, howled, groaned, sang ribald songs, clapped their hands, and pointed their fingers in derision at Madame Veto.

The queen, however, remained calm, her gaze wandering coldly over the vast multitude; only once did her eye flash on the route. It was as she passed the Palais Royal, where Philippe Egalite, once the Duke d'Orleans, lived, and read the inscription which he had caused to be placed over the main entrance of the palace.

At noon the car reached its destination. It came to a halt at the foot of the scaffold; Marie Antoinette dismounted, and then walked slowly and with erect head up the steps.

Not once during her dreadful ride had her lips opened, not a complaint had escaped her, not a farewell had she spoken. The only adieu which she had to give on earth was a look—one long, sad look- -directed toward the Tuileries; and as she gazed at the great pile her cheeks grew paler, and a deep sigh escaped from her lips.

Then she placed her head under the guillotine,—a momentary, breathless silence followed.

Samson lifted up the pale head that had once belonged to the Queen of France, and the people greeted the sight with the cry, "Long live the republic!"

That same evening one of the officials of the republic made up an account, now preserved in the Imperial Library of Paris, and which must move even the historian himself to tears. It runs as follows: "Cost of interments, conducted by Joly, sexton of Madelaine de la Ville l'Eveque, of persons condemned by the Tribunal of the Committee of Safety, to wit, No. 1 . . . ." Then follow twenty-four names and numbers, and then "No. 25. Widow Capet:

For the coffin, . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 francs. For digging the grave,. . . . . . . . . 25 francs."

Beneath are the words, "Seen and approved by me, President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, that Joly, sexton of the Madelaine, receive the sum of two hundred and sixty-four francs from the National Treasury, Paris, llth Brumaire. Year II. of the French Republic. Herman, President."

The interment of the Queen of France did not cost the republic more than thirty-one francs, or six American dollars.



CHAPTER XXV.

KING LOUIS THE SEVENTEENTH.

The "one and indivisible republic" bad gained the victory over the lilies of France. In their dark and unknown graves, in the Madelaine churchyard, King Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette slept their last sleep. The monarchy had perished on the guillotine, and the republicans, the preachers of liberty, equality, and fraternity, repeated triumphantly: "Royalty is forever extinguished, and the glorious republic is the rising sun which is to bring eternal deliverance to France."

But, in spite of this jubilant cry, the foreheads of the republican leaders darkened, and a peculiar solicitude took possession of their hearts when their eyes fell upon the Temple—that great, dismal building, that threw its dark shadows over the sunny path of the republic. Was it regret that darkened the brows of the regicides as they looked upon this building, which had been the sad prison of the king and queen? Those hearts of bronze knew no regret; and when the heroes of the revolution crossed the Place de la Guillotine, on which the royal victims had perished, their eyes flashed more proudly, and did not fall even when they passed by the Madelaine churchyard.

No, it was not the recollection of the deed that saddened the brows of the potentates of the republic when they looked at the dismal Temple, but the recollection of him who was not yet dead, but who was still living as a captive in the gloomy state-prison of the republic.

This prisoner was indeed only a child of eight years, but the legitimists—and there were many of them still in the country— called him the King of France; and priests in loyal Vendee, when they had finished the daily mass for the murdered king, prayed to God, with uplifted hands, for grace and deliverance for the young captive at the Temple, the young king, Louis XVII.

"Le roi est mort—Vive le roi!"

There were, it must be confessed, among the royalists and legitimists many who thought of the young prisoner with bitterness and anger, and who accused and blamed him as the calumniator of his mother! As if the child knew what he was doing when, at the command of his tormentor Simon, he wrote with trembling hand his name upon the paper which was laid before him in the open court. As if the poor innocent boy knew what meaning the dreadful questions had, which the merciless judges put to him, and which he answered with no, or with yes, according as his scrutinizing looks were able to make out the fitting answer on the hard face of Simon, who stood near him. For the unhappy lad had already learned to read the face of the turnkey, and knew very well that every wrinkle of the forehead which was caused by him must be atoned for with dreadful sufferings, abuses, and blows.

The poor boy was afraid of the heavy fist that came down like an iron club upon his back and even on his face, when he said any thing or did any thing that displeased Simon or his wife; and therefore he sought to escape this cruel treatment, confirming with his yes and no what Simon told the judges, and what the child in his innocence did not understand! And therefore he subscribed the paper without reluctance in which he unconsciously gave evidence that disgraced his mother.

With this testimony they ventured to accuse Marie Antoinette of infamy, but the queen gave it no other answer than scornful silence and a proud and dignified look, before which the judges cast down their eyes in shame. Then after a pause they repeated their question, and demanded an answer.

Marie Antoinette turned her proud and yet gentle glance to the women who had taken possession in dense masses of the spectators' gallery, and who breathlessly awaited the answer of the queen.

"I appeal to all mothers present," she said, with her sad, sonorous voice—" I ask whether they hold such a crime to be possible."

No one gave audible reply, but a murmur passed through the ranks of the spectators, and the sharp ear of the judges understood very well the meaning of this sound, this language of sympathy, and it seemed to them wiser to let the accusation fall rather than rouse up the compassion of the mothers still more in behalf of the queen. Her condemnation was an event fixed upon, the "guilty" had been spoken in the hearts of the judges long before it came to their lips, and brought the queen to the guillotine.

Marie Antoinette referred to this dreadful charge in the letter which she wrote to her sister-in-law Elizabeth in the night before her execution, a letter which was at the same time her testament and her farewell to life.

"May my son," she wrote, "never forget the last words of his father! I repeat them to him here expressly: 'May he never seek to avenge our death!' And now I have to speak of a matter which surely grieves my heart, I know what trouble this child must have occasioned you. Forgive him, my dear sister; think how young he is, and how easy it is to induce a child to say what people want to have him say, and what he does not understand. The day will come, I hope, when he shall better comprehend the high value of your goodness and tenderness to both of my children." [Footnote: Beauchesne, "Louis XVII., sa Vie, son Agonie," etc., vol. i. ., p. 150, facsimile of Marie Antoinette's letter.]*

At the same hour when Marie Antoinette was writing this, there was a dispute between Simon and his wife, who had been ordered by the Convention to watch that night, in order that the enraged legitimists might not make an effort to abduct the son of the queen. They were contending whether the execution would really occur the next day. Simon, in a jubilant tone, declared his conviction that it would, while his wife doubted. "She is still handsome," she said, gloomily, "she knows how to talk well, and she will be able to move her judges, for her judges are men."

"But Justice is a woman, and she is unshakable," cried Simon emphatically, and as his wife continued to contradict, Simon proposed a bet. The wager was, that if the Queen of France should be guillotined the next noon, the one who lost should furnish brandy and cakes the next evening for a jollification.

The next morning Simon repaired with the little prisoner to the platform of the tower, from which there was a free lookout over the streets, and where they could plainly see what was going on below.

His wife meanwhile had left the Temple at early dawn with her dreadful knitting-work. "I must be on the spot early if I want a good place to-day," she said, "and it would be a real misfortune for me, if I should not see the miserable head of the she-wolf drop, and not make a double stitch in my stocking."

"But you forget, Jeanne Marie," said Simon, with a grin, "you forget that you lose your bet if you make the mark in your stocking."

"I would rather lose all the bets that were ever made than not make the mark in my stocking," cried the knitter, grimly. "I would rather lose my wedding-dress and my marriage-ring than win this bet. Go up to the platform with the young wolf, and wait for me there. As soon as I have made the mark in my stocking, I will run home and show it to you."

"It is too bad that I cannot go with you," said Simon, sighing. "I wish I had never undertaken the business of bringing up the little Capet. It is hateful work, for I can never leave the Temple, and I am just as much a prisoner as he is."

"The republic has done you a great honor," said the knitter, solemnly. "She has confidence that you will make out of the son of the she-wolf, out of the worthless scion of tyrants, a son of the republic, a useful citizen."

"Good talk," growled Simon, "and you have only the honor of the affair, and the satisfaction besides of plaguing the son of our tyrants a bit."

"Of taking revenge," struck in the knitter—"revenge for the misery which my family has suffered from the tyrants."

"But I," continued Simon, "I have certainly the honor of the thing, but I have also the burden. In the first place, it is very hard to make a strong and useful citizen, of the republic out of this whining, tender, and sensitive urchin. And then again it is very unpleasant and disagreeable to have to live like a prisoner always."

"Listen, Simon, hear what I promise you," said Jeanne Marie, laying her hard brown hand upon Simon's shoulder. "If the Austrian atones to-day for her crimes, and the executioner shows her head to the avenged people, I will give up my place at the guillotine as a knitter, will remain with you here in the Temple, will take my share in the bringing up of the little Capet, and you yourself shall make the proposition to the supervisor, that your wife like yourself shall not be allowed to leave the Temple."

"That is something I like to hear," cried Simon, delighted; "there will then be at least two of us to bear the tedium of imprisonment. So go, Jenne Marie, take your place for the last time at the guillotine, for I tell you, you will lose your bet; you will have to furnish brandy and cakes, and stay with me here at the Temple to bring up the little Capet. So go, I will go up to the platform with the boy, and wait there for your return."

He called the little Louis Charles, who was sitting on the tottering rush-chair in his room, and anxiously waiting to see whether "his master" was going to take him that day out of the dismal, dark prison.

"Come, little Capet," cried Simon, pushing the door open with his foot—" come, we will go up on the platform. You can take your ball along and play, and I advise you to be right merry to-day, for it is a holiday for the republic, and I am going to teach you to be a good republican. So if you want to keep your back free from my straps, be jolly to-day, and play with your ball"

"Oh!" cried the child, springing forward merrily with his ball—" oh! only be good, master, I will certainly be merry, for I like to play with my ball, and I am ever so fond of holidays. What kind of one is it to-day?"

"No matter about your knowing that, you little toad!" growled Simon, who in spite of himself had compassion on the pale face of the child that looked up to him so innocently and inquiringly. "Up the staircase quick, and play and laugh."

Louis obeyed with a smile, sprang up the high steps of the winding stairway, jumped about on the platform, throwing his ball up in the air, and shouting aloud when he caught it again with his little thin hands.

Meanwhile Simon stood leaning on the iron railing that surrounded the platform, looking with his searching eyes down into the street which far below ran between the dark houses like a narrow ribbon.

The wind now brought the sustained notes of the drums to him; then he saw the street below suddenly filled with a dark mass, as if the ribbon were turning into crape that was filling all Paris.

"The people are in motion by thousands," cried Simon, delightedly, "and all rushing to the Place de la Revolution. I shall win my bet."

And again he listened to the sound that came up to him, now resembling the beat of drums, and now a loud cry of exultation.

"Now I think Samson must be striking the head off the wolf!" growled Simon to himself, "and the people are shouting with pleasure, and Jeanne Marie is making a mark in her stocking, and I, poor fellow, cannot be there to see the fine show! And this miserable brat is to blame for it," he cried aloud, turning suddenly round to the child who was playing behind him with his ball, and giving him a savage blow with his fist.

"You are the cause, stupid, that I cannot be there today!"

"Master," said the child, beseechingly, lifting his great blue eyes, in which the tears were standing, up to his tormentor—" master, I beg your forgiveness if I have troubled you."

"Yes, you have troubled me," growled Simon, "and you shall get your thanks for it in a way you will not like. Quick, away with your tears, go on with your play if you do not want your back to make acquaintance with my straps. Merry, I say, little Capet, merry!"

The boy hastily dried his tears, laughed aloud as a proof of his merriment, and began to jump about again and to play with his ball.

Simon listened again, and looked down longingly into the streets, which were now black with the surging masses of men. Steps were now heard upon the stairway, and Jeanne Marie presently appeared on the platform. With a grave, solemn air she walked up to her husband, and gave him her stocking, on which three great drops of blood were visible.

"That is her blood," she said, calmly. "Thank God, I have lost the bet!"

"What sort of a bet was it?" asked the boy, with a smile, and giving his ball a merry toss.

"The bet is nothing to you," answered Jeanne Marie, "but if you are good you will get something by and by, and have a share in the payment of the bet!"

That evening there was a little feast prepared in the gloomy rooms of the Simons. The wife paid the wager, for the Queen of France had really been executed, and she had lost. She provided two bottles of brandy and a plum cake, and the son of the murdered queen had a share in the entertainment. He ate a piece of the plum cake, and, under the fear of being beaten if he refused, he drank some of the brandy that was so offensive to him.

From this time the unhappy boy remained under the hands of the cobbler and his cruel wife. In vain his aunt and his sister implored their keepers to be allowed to see and to talk with the prince. They were put off with abusive words, and only now and then could they see him a moment through a crack in the door, as he passed by with Simon, on his way to the winding staircase. At times there came up through the floor of their room—for Simon, who was no longer porter, had the rooms directly beneath these occupied by the princesses—the crying and moaning of the little prince, filling their hearts with pain and bitterness, for they knew that the horrible keeper of the dauphin was giving his pitiable ward a lesson, i.e., he was beating and maltreating him. "Why? For what reason? One day, perhaps, because he refused to drink brandy, the next because he looked sad, or because he asked to be taken to his mother or the princesses, or because he refused to sing the ribald songs which Simon tried to teach him about Madame Veto or the Austrian she-wolf.

In this one thing the boy remained immovable; neither threats, abuse, nor blows would force him to sing scurrilous songs about his mother. Out of fear he did every thing else that his tormentor bade him. He sung the Marseillaise, and the Caira, he danced the Carmagnole, uttered his loud hurrahs as Simon drank a glass of brandy to the weal of the one and indivisible republic; but when he was ordered to sing mocking songs about Madame Veto, he kept a stubborn silence, and nothing was able to overcome what Simon called the "obstinacy of the little viper."

Nothing, neither blows nor kicks, neither threats nor promises! The child no longer ventured to ask after its mother, or to beg to be taken to his aunt and sister, but once in a while when he heard a noise in the room above, he would fix his eyes upon the ceiling for a long time, and with an expression of longing, and when he dropped them, again the clear tears ran over his cheeks like transparent pearls.

He did not speak about his mother, but he thought of her, and once in the night he seemed to be dreaming of her, for he raised himself up in bed, kneeled down upon the miserable, dirty mattress, folded his hands and began to repeat in a loud voice the prayer which his mother had taught him.

The noise awakened Simon, who roused his wife, to let her listen to the "superstitious little monkey," whom he would cure forever of his folly.

He sprang out of bed, took a pitcher of cold water, that was standing on the table, and poured it upon the head of the kneeling boy. Louis Charles awoke with a shriek, and crouched down in alarm. But the whole bed was wet, only the pillow had been spared. The boy rose carefully, took the pillow, carried it into a corner of the room, and sat down upon it. But his teeth chattered with the cold in spite of himself. This awakened Simon a second time, just as he was dropping asleep. With a wild curse he jumped out of bed and dressed himself.

"That is right!" cried Jeanne Marie, "bring the brat to his senses. Make little Capet know that he is to behave respectfully."

And Simon did make the poor boy understand it, sitting on the pillow, shivering in his wet shirt. He seized him by his shoulders, shook him angrily from one side to another, and shouted: "I will teach you to say your Pater Noster, and get up in the night like a Trappist!"

The boy remaining silent, Simon's rage, which knew no bounds when he thought he was defied or met with stubbornness, entirely took possession of him. He caught up his boot, whose sole was secured with large iron nails, and was on the point of hurling it at the head of the unoffending boy, when the latter seized his arm with convulsive energy.

"What have I done to you, master, that you should kill me?" cried the little Louis.

"Kill you, you wolf-brat!" roared Simon. "As if I wanted to, or ever had wanted to! Oh, the miserable viper! So you do not know that if I only took fairly hold of your neck, you never would scream again!"

And with his powerful arm he seized the boy and hurled him upon the water-soaked bed. Louis lay down without a word, without a complaint, and remained there shivering and with chattering teeth until morning. [Footnote: Beauchesne, "Louis XVII.," vol. ii., p. 185.]

From this period there was a change in the boy. Until this time his moist eyes had fixed themselves with a supplicating look upon his tormentors when they threatened him, but after this they were cast down. Until now he had always sought to fulfil his master's commands with great alacrity; afterward he was indifferent, and made no effort to do so, for he had learned that it was all to no purpose, and that he must accept a fate of slavery and affliction. The face of the child, once so rosy and smiling, now took on a sad, melancholy expression, his cheeks were pale and sunken. The attractive features of his face were disfigured, his limbs grew to a length disproportionate to his age; his back bent into a bow, as if he felt the burden of the humiliations which were thrown upon him. When the child had learned that every thing that he said was twisted, turned into ridicule, and made the cause of chastisement, he was entirely silent, and only with the greatest pains could a word be drawn from him.

This silence exasperated Simon, and made him furiously command the boy to sing, laugh, and be merry. At other times he would order Louis to be silent and motionless for hours, and to have nothing to do with the bird-cage, which was on the table, and which was the only thing left that the little fellow could enjoy.

This cage held a number of birds, and a piece of mechanism, an automaton in the form of a bird, which ate like a living creature, drank, hopped from one bar to another, opened his bill, and sang the air which was so popular before the revolution, "Oh, Richard! oh, my king!"

This article had been found among the royal apparel, and a compassion ate official guard had told Simon about it, and induced him to apply to the authorities in charge of the Temple and ask for it for the little Capet.

Simon, who, as well as his wife, could no more leave the building than their prisoner could, took this solitary, confined life very seriously, and longed for some way to mitigate the tedium. He therefore availed himself gladly of the official's proposition, and asked for the automaton, which was granted by the authorities. The boy was delighted with the toy at first, and a pleased smile flitted over his face. But he soon became tired of playing with the thing and paid no attention to it.

"Does not your bird please you any longer?" asked Miller, the official, as he came one day to inspect the Temple. "Do you have no more sport with your canary?"

The boy shook his head, and as Simon was in the next room and so could not strike him, he ventured to speak.

"It is no bird," he answered softly and quickly. "But I should like to have a bird."

The good inspector nodded to the boy, and then went out to have a long talk with Simon, and so to avert any suspicion of being too familiar with, or too fond of, the prince. But after leaving the Temple he went to his friends and acquaintances, and told them, with tears in his eyes, about the little prisoner in the Temple, the "dauphin," as the royalists used always to call him beneath their breath, and how he wanted a living bird. Every one was glad to have an opportunity of gratifying the wish of the dauphin, and on the next day Miller brought the prince a cage, in which were fourteen real canaries.

"Ah! those are real birds," cried the child, as he took them one after the other and kissed them. The playing of the birds, which all lived in one great cage, together with the automaton, was now the only pleasure of the boy. He began to tame them, and among the little feathered flock he found one to which he was especially drawn, because he was more quiet than the others, allowed itself to be easily caught, sat still on the finger of the prince, and, turning his little black eyes to the boy, warbled a little, sweet melody. At such moments the countenance of the boy beamed as it had done in the days of his happiness; his cheeks flushed with color, and out of his large blue eyes, which rested with inexpressible tenderness upon the bird, there issued the rays of intelligence and sensibility. He had now something to love, something to which all his gentle sympathies could flow out, which hitherto had all been suppressed beneath the harsh treatment of his keepers.

He was no longer alone, he was no longer joyless! His little friend was there in the great cage among the twittering companions who were indifferent to the little prince. In order to know him at first sight, and always to be able to recognize him, Louis took the rose- colored ribbon from the neck of the automaton, and tied it around the neck of his darling. The bird sang merrily at this, and seemed to be as well pleased with the decoration as if it had been an order which King Louis of France was hanging around the neck of a favorite courtier.

It was a fortunate thing for the boy that Simon himself was fond of birds, else the objections of his wife would soon have robbed the little fellow of his last remaining comfort. It was for the keeper a little source of amusement, an interruption in the dreadful monotony of his life. The birds were allowed to stay therefore, and their singing and twittering animated a little the dark, silent rooms, and reminded him of the spring, the fresh air, the green trees!

But very soon this source of comfort and cheer was to be banished from the dismal place! On the 19th of December, 1793, the inspectors of the Temple made their rounds. Just at the moment when they entered the room of the little Louis Capet, the automaton began to sing with his loud, penetrating voice, "Oh! Richard, oh my king!"

The officials came to a halt upon the threshold, as though petrified at this unheard-of license, and fixed their cold, angry looks now upon the bird-, now upon the boy, who was sitting upon his rush- chair before the cage, looking at the birds with beaming eyes.

A second time the automaton began the unfortunate air, and the exasperated inspectors strode up to the cage. "What does this mean?" asked one of them. "How does any one dare to keep up, in the glorious republic, such worthless reminders of the cursed monarchy."

"Only see," cried another—"see the order that one of the birds is wearing. It is plain that the old passion of royalty still lurks here, for even here ribbons are given away as signs of distinction. The republic forbids such things, and we will not suffer such infamy."

The inspector put his hand into the cage, seized the little canary- bird with the red ribbon, and squeezed him so closely that the poor little creature gave one faint chirp and died. The man drew him out, and hurled him against the wall of the room.

The little boy said not a word, he uttered not a complaint; he gazed with widely-opened eyes at his dead favorite, and two great tears slowly trickled down his pale cheeks.

The next day the inspectors gave a report of this occurrence, couched in terms of worthy indignation, and all hearts were stirred with righteous anger at the story of the automaton that sang the royal aria, and of the living bird that wore the badge of an order about its neck. They were convinced that the secret royalists were connected with this thing, and it was registered in the communal acts as "the conspiracy of the canary-bird."

The little winged conspirators, the automaton as well as the living birds, were of course instantly removed from the Temple; and Simon had the double vexation of receiving a reprimand from the authorities, and then the losing his little merry companions from the prison. It was all the fault of this little, good-for-nothing boy, who knew how to make long faces, and allowed himself to waken and disturb his master in the night by his crying and sobbing.

"The worthless viper has spoiled my sleep for me," growled Simon the next morning. "My head is as heavy as a bomb, and I shall have to take a foot-bath, to draw the blood away from my ears."

Jeanne Marie silently carried her husband the leaden foot-bath, with the steaming water, and then drew back into the corner, in whose dismal shadow she often sat for hours, gazing idly at her "calendar of the revolution," the long stocking, on which traces of the blood of the queen were still visible.

Meanwhile, Simon took his foot-bath, and while he did so, his wicked, malicious eyes now fell upon his wife, who had once been so cheerful and resolute, and who now had grown so sad and broken, now upon the boy, who, since yesterday, when his canaries had been taken from him, had spoken not a word, or made a sound, and who sat motionless upon the rush-chair, folding his hands in his lap, and gazing at the place where his dead bird lay yesterday.

"This life would make one crazy," growled Simon, with the tone of a hyena. "Capet," he cried aloud, "take the towel and warm it at the chimney-fire, so as to wipe my feet."

Louis rose slowly from his chair, took the towel and crept to the chimney-fire to spread it out and warm it; but the glow of the coals burned his little thin hands so badly, that he let the cloth fall into the fire, and before the trembling, frightened child had time to draw it back, the towel had kindled and was burning brightly.

Simon uttered a howl of rage, and, as with his feet in the water he was not able to reach the boy, he heaped curses and abuse upon him, and not alone on him, but on his father and mother, till his voice was hoarse, and he was exhausted with this outpouring of his wrath.

Deceived by the quiet which followed, little Louis took another towel, warmed it carefully at the chimney, and then cautiously approached his master, to wipe his feet. Simon extended them to the boy and let himself he served as if by a little slave; but just as soon as his feet were dry he kicked the boy's head with such force that without a cry Louis fell down, striking his head violently on the floor. Perhaps it was this pitiful spectacle that exasperated the cobbler still more. He beat the unconscious boy, roused him with kicks and with the noise of his curses, raised his clinched fists and swore that he would now dash the viper in pieces, when he suddenly felt his hands grasped as in iron clamps, and to his boundless astonishment saw before him the pale, grim face of his wife, who had come out from her corner and fixed her black, glistening eyes upon him, while she held his hands firmly.

"What is it, Jeanne Marie?" said Simon, surprised! "why are you holding me so?"

"Because I do not want you to beat him to death," she said, with a hoarse, rough voice.

He broke out into loud laughter. "I really believe that the knitter of the guillotine has pity on the son of the she-wolf."

A convulsive quiver passed through her whole frame. A singular, gurgling sound came from her chest; she put both her hands to her neck and tore the little kerchief off, as if it were tied tight enough to strangle her.

"No," she said, in a suppressed tone, "no compassion on the wolf's brood! But if you beat him to death, they will have to bring you to the guillotine, that it may not appear as if they had ordered you to kill the little Capet."

"True," said Simon, "you are right, and I thank you, Jeanne Marie, that you may remind me of it. It shows that you love me still, although you are always so quiet. Yes, yes, I will be more careful; I will take care to beat the little serpent only so much that it may not bite, but cannot die."

Jeanne Marie made no reply, but sat down in the corner again, and took up her stocking, without touching the needles, however, and going on with her work.

"Get up, you cursed snake!" growled Simon, "get up and go out of my sight, and do not stir me up again."

The child rose slowly from the floor, crept to the wash-basin and with his trembling, bruised hands wiped away the blood that was flowing out of his nose and mouth. A loud, gurgling sound came from the corner where Jeanne Marie sat. It seemed half like a cry, half like a sob. When Simon looked around, his wife lay pale and motionless on the floor; she had sunk from her chair in a swoon.

Simon grasped her in his strong arms and carried her to the bed, laid her gently and carefully down, and busied himself about her, showing a manifest anxiety.

"She must not die," he murmured, rubbing her temples with salt water; "she must not leave me alone in this horrible prison and with this dreadful child.—Jeanne Marie, wake up, come to yourself!" She opened her eyes, and gazed at her husband with wild, searching looks.

"What is the matter, Jeanne Marie?" he asked. "Have you pain? Are you sick?"

"Yes," she said, "I am sick, I am in pain."

"I will go to bring you a physician, you shall not die! No, no, you shall not die, you shall have a physician. The Hotel Dieu is very near, they will certainly allow me to go as far as there, and bring a doctor for my dear Jeanne."

He was on the point of hastening away, but Jeanne Marie held him fast. "Remain here," she murmured, "do not let me be alone with him- -I am afraid of him!"

"Of whom?" asked Simon, astonished; and as he followed the looks of his wife, they rested on the boy, who was still busy in checking the blood that was flowing freely from his swollen nose.

"Of him!" asked Simon, in amazement.

Jeanne Marie nodded. "Yes," she whispered, "I am afraid of him, and I do not want to remain alone with him, for he would kill me." Simon burst into a loud, hoarse laugh. "Now I see that you are really sick, and the doctor shall come at once. But they certainly will not let me leave this place, for this despicable brat has made us both prisoners, the miserable, good-for-nothing thing!"

"Send him away; let him go into his own room," whispered Jeanne Marie. "I cannot bear to see him; he poisons my blood. Send him away, for I shall be crazy if I have to look at him longer."

"Away with you, you viper!" roared Simon; and the boy, who knew that he was meant—that the term viper was applied only to him—hastily dried his tears, and slipped through the open door into his little dark apartment.

"Now I will run and call the porter," said Simon, hurriedly; "he shall send some one to the Hotel Dieu, and bring a physician for my poor, dear, sick Jeanne Marie."

He hastened out, and turned back, after a few minutes, with the report that the porter himself had gone to bring a doctor, and that help would come at once.

"Nonsense!" cried Jeanne Marie; "no doctor can help me, and there is nothing at all that I want. Only give me something to drink, Simon, for my throat burns like fire, and then call little Capet in, for in his dark room his eyes glisten like stars, and I cannot bear them."

Simon shook his head sadly; and, while holding a glass of cold water to her lips, he said to himself: "Jeanne Marie is really sick! She has a fever! But we must do what she orders, else it will come to delirium, and she might become insane."

And with a loud voice he called, "Capet, Capet! come here, come here! you viper, you wolf's cub, come here!"

The boy obeyed the command, slowly crept into the room, and sat down in the rush-chair in the corner. "He shall not look at me," shrieked Jeanne Marie; "he shall not look into my heart with his dreadful blue eyes, it hurts me—oh! so much, so much!"

"Turn around, you viper!" said Simon. "Look round this way again, or I'll tear your eyes out of your head! I—"

The door leading to the corridor now opened, and an old man, leaning on a cane, entered, wearing on his head a powdered peruke, his bent form covered with a black satin coat, beneath which a satin vest was seen; on his feet, silk stockings and buckled shoes; in his lace- encircled hand, a cane with a gold head.

"Well," cried Simon, with a laugh, "what sort of an old scarecrow is that? And what does it want here?"

"The scarecrow wants nothing of you," said the old man, in a kindly way, "but you want something of it, citizen. You have sent for me."

"Ah! so you are the doctor from the Hotel Dieu."

"Yes, my friend, I am Citizen Naudin."

"Naudin, the chief physician at the Hotel Dieu?" cried Simon. "And you come yourself to see my sick wife?"

"Does that surprise you, Citizen Simon?"

"Yes, indeed, it surprises me. For I have been told so often that Citizen Naudin, the greatest and most skilful physician in all Paris, never leaves the Hotel Dieu; that the aristocrats and ci- devants have begged him in vain to attend them, and that even the Austrian woman, in the days when she was queen, sent to no purpose to the celebrated Naudin, and begged him to come to Versailles.

We heard that the answer was: 'I am the physician of the poor and the sick in the Hotel Dieu, and whoever is poor and sick may come to me in the house which bears the name of God. But whoever is too rich and too well for that, must seek another doctor, for my duties with the sick do not allow me to leave the H6tel Dieu.' And after that answer reached the palace—so the great Doctor Marat told me—the queen had her horses harnessed, and drove to Paris, to consult Doctor Naudin at the Hotel Dieu, and to receive his advice. Is the story really true, and are you Doctor Naudin?"

"The story is strictly true, and, my friend, I am Doctor Naudin."

"And you now leave the Hotel Dieu to come and visit my sick wife?" asked Simon, with a pleasant look and a flattered manner.

"Does your wife not belong to my poor and sick?" asked the doctor. "Is she not a woman of the people, this dear French people, to whom I have devoted my services and my life? For a queen Doctor Naudin might not leave his hospital, but for a woman of the people he does it. And now, citizen, let me see your sick wife, for I did not come here to talk."

Without waiting for Simon's answer, the physician walked up to the bed, sat down on the chair in front of it, and began at once to investigate the condition of the woman, who reached him her feverish hand, and, with an almost inaudible voice, answered his professional questions.

The cobbler stood at the foot of the bed, and directed his little cunning eyes to the physician in amazement and admiration. Behind him, in the corner, sat the son of Marie Antoinette, humiliated, still, and motionless. Yet, in spite of the injunction of Jeanne Marie, he had turned around, and was looking toward the bed; but not to the knitter of the guillotine were his looks directed, but to this venerable old gentleman with his powdered peruke, his satin coat, silk stockings, breeches, shoe-buckles, gold embroidered waistcoat and lace ruffles. This costume reminded him of the past; the halls of Versailles came back to him, and he saw before him the shadowy figures of the cavaliers of that time, all clothed like the dear old gentleman who was sitting before the bed there.

"Why do you look at me in such a wondering way, Citizen Simon?" asked Naudin, who was now through with his examination.

"I really wonder—I really do wonder immensely," said Simon, "and that is saying much, for, in these times, when there are so many changes, a man can hardly wonder at any thing. Still I do wonder, Citizen Naudin, that you can venture to go around in this costume. That is the style of clothing worn by traitorous ci-devants and aristocrats. Anybody else who dare put it on would have only one more walk to take, that to the guillotine, and yet you venture to come here!"

"Venture?" repeated Naudin, with a shrug. "I venture nothing, citizen. I wear my clothes in conformity with a habit of years' standing: they fitted well under the monarchy, they fit just as well under the republic, and I am not going to be such a fool as to put by my soft and comfortable silk clothes, and put on your hateful, uncomfortable thick ones, and strut about in them. I am altogether too old to take up the new fashions, and altogether too well satisfied with my own suit to learn how to wear your cloth coats with swallow-tails, and your leather hose and top-boots. Defend me from crowding my old limbs into such stuffs!"

"Citizen doctor," cried Simon, with a laugh, "you are a jolly, good old fellow, and I like you well. I do not blame you for preferring your comfortable silk clothes to the new style that our revolutionary heroes have brought into mode, that nothing might remind us of the cursed, God-forsaken monarchy. I wonder merely that they allow it, and do not make you a head shorter!"

"But how would they go on with matters in the Hotel Dieu? Without a head nothing could be done with the sick and the suffering, for without a head there is no thinking. Now, as I am the head of the hospital, and as they have no head to take my place, and as, in spite of my old-fashioned clothes, my sick are cured, and have confidence in me, the great revolutionary heroes wink at me, and let me do as I please, for they know that under the silk dress of an aristocrat beats the heart of a true democrat. But that is not the question before us now, citizen. We want to talk about the health of your wife here. She is sick, she has a fever, and it will be worse yet with her, unless we take prompt measures and provide a cooling drink for her."

"Do it, citizen doctor," said Simon; "make my Jeanne Marie well and bright again, or I shall go crazy here in this accursed house. Jeanne Marie is sick just with this, that she is not accustomed to be idle, and to sit still and fold her hands in her lap, and run around like a wild beast in its cage. But here in the Temple it is no better than in a cage; and I tell you, citizen, it is enough to make one crazy here, and it has made Jeanne sick to have no fresh air, no exercise and work."

"But why has she no exercise and no work? Why does she not go out into the street and take the air?"

"Because she cannot," cried Simon, passionately. "Because the cursed little viper there embitters our whole life and makes us prisoners to this miserable, wretched prisoner, Look at him there, the infernal little wolf! he is the one to blame that I cannot go into the street, cannot visit the clubs, the Convention, or any meeting, but must lire here like a Trappist, or like an imprisoned criminal. He is the one to blame that my wife can no longer take her place at the guillotine, and knit and go on with her work there."

"Yes," cried Jeanne Marie, with a groan, raising her head painfully from the pillow, "he is to blame for it all, the shameless rascal. He has made me melancholy and sad; he has worried, and vexed, and changed me! Oh! oh! he is looking at me again, and his eyes burn into my heart!"

"Miserable viper," cried Simon, dashing toward the boy with clinched fists, "how dare you turn your hateful eyes toward her, after her expressly forbidding it? Wait, I will teach you to disobey, and give you a lesson that you will not forget."

His heavy hand fell on the back of the boy, and was raised again for a second stroke, when it was held as in an iron vice.

"You good-for-nothing, what are you doing?" cried a thundering voice, and two blazing eyes flashed on him from the reddened face of Doctor Naudin.

Simon's eyes fell before the angry look of the physician, then he broke out into a loud laugh.

"Citizen doctor, I say, what a jolly fellow you are," he said, merrily. "You did that just as if you were in a theatre, and you called out to me just as they call out to the murderers in a tragedy. What do you make such a halloo about when I chastise the wolf's cub a bit, as he has richly deserved?"

"It is true," said Naudin, "I was a little hasty. But that comes from the fact, citizen, that I not only held you to be a good republican, but a good man as well, and therefore it pained me to see you do a thing which becomes neither a republican nor a good man."

"Why, what have I done that is not proper?" asked Simon, in amazement.

"Look at him, the poor, beaten, swollen, stupefied boy," said Naudin, solemnly, pointing to Louis, who sat on his chair, weeping and trembling in all his limbs—"look at him, citizen, and then do not ask me again what you have done that is not proper."

"Well, but he deserves nothing better," cried Simon, with a sneer. "He is the son of the she-wolf, Madame Veto."

"He is a human being," said Doctor Naudin, solemnly, "and he is, besides, a helpless boy, whom the one, indivisible, and righteous republic deprived of his father and mother, and put under your care to be educated as if he were a son of your own. I ask you, citizen, would you have struck a son of your own as you just struck this boy?"

A loud, convulsive sob came from the bed on which Jeanne Marie lay, and entirely confused and disturbed Simon.

"No," he said, softly, "perhaps I should not have done it. But," continued he eagerly, and with a grim look, "a child of my own would not have tried and exasperated me as this youngster does. From morning till evening he vexes me, for he does nothing that I want him to. If I order him to sing with me, he is still and stupid, and when he ought to be still he makes a noise. Would you believe me, citizen, this son of the she-wolf leaves me no quiet for sleep. Lately, in the night, he kneeled down in the bed and began to pray with a loud voice, so as to wake both my wife and myself."

"From that night on I have been sick and miserable," moaned Jeanne Marie; "from that night I have not been able to sleep."

"You hear, citizen doctor, my wife was so terrified with that, that it made her sick, and now you shall have a proof of the disobedience of the little viper. Capet, come here."

The boy rose slowly from his chair, and stole along with drooping head to his master.

"Capet, we will sing," said Simon. "You shall show the doctor that you are a good republican, and that you have entirely forgotten that you are the son of the Austrian, the rascally Madame Veto. Come, we will sing the song about Madame Veto. Quick, strike in, or I will beat you into pulp. The song about Madame Veto, do you hear? Sing!"

A short pause ensued. Then the boy raised his swollen face and fixed his great blue eyes with a defiant, flaming expression upon the face of the cobbler.

"Citizen," he said, with clear, decided tones, "I shall not sing the song about Madame Veto, for I have not forgotten my dear mamma, and I can sing nothing bad about her, for I love my dear mamma so much, so much, and—"

The voice of the boy was drowned in his tears; he let his head fall upon his breast, ready to receive the threatened chastisement. But, before the fist of Simon, already raised, could fall upon the poor head of the little sufferer, a thrilling cry of pain resounded from the bed.

"Simon, come to me," gasped Jeanne Marie. "Help me draw the dagger out of my breast, I am dying—oh, I am dying!"

"What kind of a dagger?" cried Simon, rushing to the bed and taking the convulsed form of his wife in his arms.

"Hush!" whispered the doctor, who also had gone to the bed of the sick woman—"hush! she is speaking in her fever, and the dagger of which she talks she feels in her heart and conscience. You must spare her, citizen, if you do not want her to die. Every thing must be quiet around her, and you must be very careful not to agitate her nerves, lest she have an acute typhoid fever. I will send her some cooling medicine at once, and to-morrow morning I will come early to see how it fares with her. But, above every thing else, Simon, remember to have quiet, that your good wife may get well again."

"Who would have told me two weeks ago that Jeanne Marie had nerves?" growled Simon. "The first knitter of the guillotine, and now all at once nerves and tears, but I must be careful of her. For it would be too bad if she should die and leave me all alone with this tedious youngster. I could not hold out. I should run away. Go, Capet, get into your room, and do not get in my way again to-day, else I will strangle you before you can make a sound. Come, scud, clear, and do not let me see you again, if your life is worth any thing to you."

The child stole into his room again, sat down upon the floor, folded his little hands in one another, fixed his great blue eyes on the ceiling above, and held his breath to listen to every little sound, every footfall that came from the room above.

All at once he heard plainly the steps of some one walking up and down, and a pleased smile flitted across the face of the boy.

"That is certainly my dear mamma," he whispered to himself. "Yes, yes, it is my mamma queen, and she is taking her walk in the sitting-room, just as she has done since she has not been allowed to go out upon the platform. Oh, mamma, my dear mamma, I love you so much!"

And the child threw a kiss up to the ceiling, not knowing that she to whom he sent his greeting had long been resting in the silent grave, and that with the very hand which was throwing kisses to her, he had himself signed the paper which heaped upon his mother the most frightful calumnies.

Even Simon had not had the cruel courage to tell the boy of the death of his mother, and of the unconscious wrong that he, poor child, had done to her memory, and in his silent chamber his longing thoughts of her were his only consolation.

And so he sat there that day looking up to the ceiling, greeting his dear mamma with his thoughts, and seeing her in spirit greeting him again, nodding affectionately to him and drawing her dear little Louis Charles to her arms.

These were the sweet, transporting fancies which made the child close his eyes so as not to lose them. Immovably he sat there, until gradually thoughts and dreams flowed into each other, and not only his will, but sleep as well, kept his eyes closed. But the dreams remained, and were sweet and refreshing, and displayed to the sleeping child, so harshly treated in his waking hours, only scenes of love and tenderness. And it was not his mother alone who embraced him in his happy slumbers; no, there were his aunt and his sister as well, and at last even—oh how strange dreams are!—at last he even saw Simon's wife advancing toward him with kindly and tender mien. She stooped down to him, took him up in her arms, kissed his eyes, and begged him in a low, trembling voice to forgive her for being so cruel and bad. And while she was speaking the tears streamed from her eyes and flowed over his face. She kissed them away with her hot lips, and whispered, "Forgive me, poor, unhappy angel, and do not bring me to judgment. I will treat you well after this, I will rescue you from this hell, or I will die for you. Oh, how the bad man has beaten your dear angel face! But believe me, I have felt every blow in my own heart, and when he treated you so abusively I felt the pain of hell. Oh, forgive me, dear boy, forgive me!" and again the tears started from her eyes and flowed hot over his locks and forehead. All at once Jeanne Marie quivered convulsively, laid the boy gently down, and ran hastily away. A door was furiously opened now, and Simon's loud and angry voice was heard.

The tones awakened the little Louis. He opened his eyes and looked around. Yes, it had really all been only a dream—he had heard neither his mother nor Simon's wife, and yet it had been as natural as if it had all really transpired. He had felt arms tenderly embracing him and tears hot upon his forehead.

Entirely unconscious he raised his hand to his brow and drew it back affrighted, for his hair and his temples were wet, as if the tears of which he dreamed had really fallen there.

"What does this mean, Jeanne Marie?" asked Simon, angrily, "Why have you got out of bed while I was away, and what have you had to do in the room of the little viper?"

"If you leave me alone with him I have to watch him, sick as I am," moaned she. "I had to see whether he was still there, whether he had not run away, and gone to report to the Convention that we have left him alone and have no care for him."

"Oh, bah! he will not complain of us," laughed Simon; "but keep quiet, Jeanne Marie, I promise you that I will not leave you alone again with the wolf's cub. Besides, here is the medicine that the doctor has sent, and to-morrow he will come himself again to see how you get on. So keep up a good heart, Jeanne Marie, and all will come right again."

The next morning, Dr. Naudin came again to look after the sick woman. Simon had just gone up-stairs to announce something to the two princesses in the name of the Convention, and had ordered the little Capet to remain in the anteroom, and, if the doctor should come, to open the door to him.

Nobody else was in the anteroom when Dr. Naudin entered, and the door leading into the next room was closed, so that the sick person who was there could see and hear nothing of what took place.

"Sir," whispered the boy, softly and quickly, "you were yesterday so good to me, you protected me from blows, and I should like to thank you for it."

The doctor made no reply, but he looked at the boy with such an expression of sympathy that he felt emboldened to go on.

"My dear sir," continued the child, softly, and with a blush, "I have nothing with which to show my gratitude to you but these two pears that were given me for my supper last night. And just because I am so poor, you would do me a great pleasure if you would accept my two pears." [Footnote: The boy's own words.—See Beauchesne, vol. ii., p. 180.]

He had raised his eyes to the doctor with a gentle, supplicatory expression, and taking the pears from the pocket of his worn, mended jacket, he gave them to the physician.

Then happened something which, had Simon entered the room just then, would probably have filled him with exasperation. It happened that the proud and celebrated Dr. Naudin, the director and first physician of the Hotel Dieu, sank on his knee before this poor boy in the patched jacket, who had nothing to give but two pears, and that he was so overcome, either by inward pain or by reverence, that while taking the pears he could only whisper, with a faint voice: "I thank your majesty. I have never received a nobler or more precious gift than this fruit, which my unfortunate king gives me, and I swear to you that I will be your devoted and faithful servant."

It happened further that Dr. Naudin pressed to his lips the hand that reached him the precious gift, and that upon this hand two tears fell from the eyes of the physician, long accustomed to look upon human misery and pain, and which had not for years been suffused with moisture.

Just then, approaching steps being heard in the corridor, the doctor rose quickly, concealed the pears in his pocket, and entered the chamber of the sick woman at the same instant when Simon returned from his visit above-stairs.

Tne boy slipped, with the doctor, into the sick-room, and as no one paid any attention to him, he stole softly into his room, crouched down upon his straw bed, with fluttering heart, to think over all he had experienced or dreamed of that day.

"And how is it with our sick one to-day?" asked Doctor Naudin, sitting down near the bed, and giving a friendly nod to Simon to do the same.

"It goes badly with me," moaned Mistress Simon. "My heart seems to be on fire, and I have no rest day or night. I believe that it is all over with me, and that I shall die, and that is the best thing for me, for then I shall be free again, and not have to endure the torments that I have had to undergo in this dreadful dungeon."

"What kind of pains are they?" asked the doctor. "Where do you suffer?"

"I will tell you, citizen doctor," cried Simon, impatiently. "Her pains are everywhere, in every corner of this lonely and cursed building; and if it goes on so long, we shall have to pack and move. The authorities have done us both a great honor, for they have had confidence enough in us to give the little Capet into our charge; but it is our misfortune to be so honored, and we shall both die of it. For, not to make a long story of it, we both cannot endure the air of the prison, the stillness and solitude, and it is a dreadful thing for us to see nothing else the whole day than the stupid face of this youngster, always looking at me so dreadfully with his great blue eyes, that it really affects one. We are neither of us used to such an idle, useless life, and it will be the death of us, citizen doctor. My wife, Jeanne Marie, whom you see lying there so pale and still, used to be the liveliest and most nimble woman about, and could do as much with her strong arms and brown hands as four other women. And then she was the bravest and most outrageous republican that ever was, when it came to battling for the people. We both helped to storm the Bastile, both went to Versailles that time, and afterward took the wolf's brood from the Tuileries and brought them to the Convention. Afterward Jeanne Marie was always the first on the platform near the guillotine; and when Samson and his assistants mounted the scaffold in the morning, and waited for the cars, the first thing they did was to look over to the tribune to see if Mistress Simon was there with her knitting, for it used to seem to them that the work of hewing off heads went more briskly on if Jeanne Marie was there and kept the account in her stocking. Samson himself told me this, and said to me that Jeanne Marie was the bravest of all the women, and that she never trembled, and that her eyes never turned away, however many heads fell into the basket. And she was there too when the Austrian—"

"Hush!" cried Jeanne Marie, rising up hastily in bed, and motioning to her husband to be silent. "Do not speak of that, lest the youngster hear it, and turn his dreadful eyes upon us. Do not speak of that fearful day, for it was then that my sickness began, and I believe that there was poison in the brandy that we drank that evening. Yes, yes, there was poison in it, and from that comes the fire that burns in my heart, and I shall die of it! Oh! I shall burn to death with it!"

She put her hands before her face and sank back upon the pillows, sobbing. Simon shook his head and heaved a deep sigh. "It is not that," murmured he; "it is not from that, doctor! The thing is, that Jeanne Marie has no work and no exercise, and that she is going to wreck, because we are compelled to live here as kings and aristocrats used to live, without labor and occupation, and without doing any more than to nurse our fancies. We shall all die of this, I tell you!"

"But if you know this, citizen, why do you not give up your situation? Why do you not petition the authorities to dismiss you from this service, and give you something else to do?"

"I have done that twice already," answered Simon, bringing his fist down upon the table near the bed so violently that the bottles of medicine standing there were jerked high into the air. "Twice already have I tried to be transferred to some other duty, and the answer has been sent back, that the country orders me to stand at my post, and that there is no one who could take my place."

"That is very honorable and flattering," remarked the physician.

"Yes, but very burdensome and disagreeable," answered Simon. "We are prisoners while holding these honorable and flattering posts. We can no more leave the Temple than Capet can, for, since his father died, and the crazy legitimists began to call him King Louis XVII., the chief magistrate and the Convention have been very anxious. They are afraid of secret conspiracies, and consider it possible that the little prisoner may be taken away from here by intrigue. We have to watch him day and night, therefore, and are never allowed to leave the Temple, lest we should meet with other people, and lest the legitimists should make the attempt to get into our good graces. Would you believe, citizen doctor, that they did not even allow me to go to the grand festival which the city of Paris gave in honor of the taking of Toulan! While all the people were shouting, and having a good time, Jeanne Marie and I had to stay here in this good-for- nothing Temple, and see and hear nothing of the fine doings. And this drives the gall into my blood, and it will make us both sick, and it is past endurance!"

"I believe that you are right, citizen," said the physician, thoughtfully. "Yes, the whole trouble of your wife comes from the fact that she is here in the Temple, and if she must be shut up here always she will continue to suffer."

"Yes, to suffer always, to suffer dreadfully," groaned Jeanne Marie. Then, all at once, she raised herself up and turned with a commanding bearing to her husband. "Simon," she said, "the doctor shall know all that I suffer. He shall examine my breast, and the place where I have the greatest pain; but in your presence I shall say nothing."

"Well, well, I will go," growled Simon. "But I think those are pretty manners!"

"They are the manners of a respectable and honorable woman," said the doctor, gravely—"a woman who does not show the pains and ailments of her body to any one excepting her physician. Go, go, Citizen Simon, and you will esteem your good wife none the less for not letting you hear what she has to say to her old physician."

"No, certainly not," answered Simon, "and that you may both see that I am not curious to hear what you have to say to one another, I will go with the youngster up to the platform and remain a whole hour with him."

"You will beat him again, and I shall hear him," said Jeanne Marie, weeping. "I hear every thing now that goes on in the Temple, and whenever you strike, the youngster, I feel every blow in my brain, and that gives me pain enough to drive me to distraction."

"I promise you, Jeanne Marie, that I will not strike him, and will not trouble myself about him at all. He can play with his ball.— Halloa, Capet! Come! We are going up on the platform. Take your ball and any thing else you like, for you shall play to-day and have a good time."

The child stole out of his room with his ball, not looking particularly delighted, and the prospect of "playing" did not give wings to his steps, nor call a smile to his swollen face. He left the room noiselessly, and Simon slammed the doors violently behind him.

"And now we are alone," said Doctor Naudin, "and you can tell me about your sickness, and about every thing that troubles you."

"Ah, doctor, I do not dare to," she whispered. "I am overpowered by a dreadful fear, and I think you will betray me, and bring my husband and myself to the scaffold."

"I am no betrayer," answered the doctor, solemnly. "The physician is like a priest; he receives the secrets and disclosures of his patients, and lets not a word of them pass his lips. But, in order that you may take courage, I will first prove to you that I put confidence in you, by showing you that I understand you. I will tell you what the disease is that you are suffering from, and also its locality. Jeanne Marie Simon, you are enduring that with which no pains of the body can be compared. Your sickness has its seat in the conscience, and its name is remorse and despair."

Jeanne Marie uttered a heart-rending cry, and sprang like an exasperated tiger from her bed. "You lie!" she said, seizing the doctor's arm with both hands; "that is a foul, damnable calumny, that you have thought out merely to bring me under the axe. I have nothing to be sorry for, and my conscience fills me with no reproaches."

"And yet it is gnawing into you with iron teeth, which have been heated blood-red in the fires of hell," said the doctor, with a compassionate look at the pale, quivering face of the woman. "Do not raise any quarrel, but quietly listen to me. We have an hour's time to talk together, and we want to use it. But let us speak softly, softly, together; for what we have to say to each other the deaf walls themselves ought not to hear."

Simon had not returned from the platform with the boy, when Doctor Naudin ended his long and earnest conversation, and prepared to leave his patient, who was now quietly lying in her bed.

"You know every thing now that you have to do," he said, extending his hand to her. "You can reckon on me as I reckon on you, and we will both go bravely and cheerfully on. It is a noble work that we have undertaken, and if it succeeds your heart will be light again, and God will forgive you your sins, for two martyrs will stand and plead in your behalf at the throne of God! Now, do every thing exactly as I have told you, and speak with your husband to-night, but not sooner, that you may be safe, and for fear that in his first panic his face would betray him."

"I shall do every thing just as you wish," said Jeanne Marie, who had suddenly become humble and bashful, apparently entirely forgetful of the republican "thou." "It seems to me, now that I have disburdened my heart to you, that I have become well and strong again, and certainly I shall owe it to you if I do live and get my health once more. But shall you come again to-morrow, doctor?"

"No," he replied, "I will send a man to-morrow who understands better than I do how to continue this matter, and to whom you can give unconditional confidence. He will announce himself to you as my assistant, and you can talk over at length every thing that we have been speaking of. Hush! I hear Simon coming! Farewell!"

He nodded to Jeanne Marie, and hastily left the room. Outside, in the corridor, he met Simon and his silent young ward.

"Well, citizen doctor," asked Simon, "how is it with our sick one? She has intrusted all her secrets to you, and they must have made a long story, for you have been a whole hour together. It is fortunate that you are an old man, or else I should have been jealous of your long tete-a-tete with my wife."

"Then you would be a great fool, and I have always held you to be a prudent and good man. But, as concerns your wife, I must tell you something very serious, and I beg you, Citizen Simon, to mark my words well. I tell you this: unless your wife Jeanne Marie is out of this Temple in less than a week, and enjoys her freedom, she will either lose her senses or take her life. I will say to you this, besides: if Citizen Simon does not, as soon as possible, leave this cursed place and give up his hateful business, it will be the same with him as with his wife. He will not become insane, but he will lapse into melancholy, and if he does not take his own life consumption will take it for him, the result of his idle, listless life, the many vexations here, and the wretched atmosphere of the Temple."

"Consumption!" cried Simon, horrified. "Do you suppose I am exposed to that?"

"You have it already," said the doctor, solemnly. "Those red spots on your cheeks, and the pain which you have so often in the breast, announce its approach. I tell you that if you do not take measures to leave the Temple in a week, in three months you will be a dead man, without giving the guillotine a chance at you. Good-by! Consider well what I say, citizen, and then do as you like!"

"He is right," muttered Simon, as he looked after the doctor with a horrified look, as Naudin descended the staircase; "yes, I see, he is right. If I have to stay here any longer, I shall die. The vexations and the loneliness, and—something still more dreadful, frightful, that I can tell no one of-have made me sick, and the stitch in my side will grow worse and worse every day, and—I must and will get away from here," he said aloud, and with a decided air. "I will not die yet, neither shall Jeanne Marie. To-morrow I will hand in my resignation, and then be away!"

While Simon was walking slowly and thoughtfully toward his wife, Doctor Naudin left the dark building, went with a light heart out into the street, and returned with a quick step to the Hotel Dieu. The porter who opened the door for him, reported to him that during his absence the same old gentleman who had come the day before to consult him, had returned and was waiting for him in the anteroom.

Doctor Naudin nodded, and then walked, quickly toward his own apartments. Before the door he found his servant.

"Old Doctor Saunier is here again," he said, taking off his master's cloak. "He insisted on waiting for you. He said that he must consult you about a patient, and would not cease begging till you should consent to accompany him to the sick person's house. For, if a case seemed desperate, the great Naudin might still save it."

"You are an ass for letting him talk such nonsense, and for believing it yourself, Citizen Joly," cried Naudin with a laugh, and then entering the anteroom.

An old gentleman, clad in the same old-fashioned costume with Doctor Naudin, came forward. Citizen Joly, as he closed the door somewhat slowly, heard him say:

"Thank God that you have come at last, citizen! I have waited for you impatiently, and now I conjure you to accompany me as quickly as possible to my patient."

Naudin, opening the door of his study, said in reply, "Come in, Citizen Saunier, and tell me first how it is with your sick one."

Nothing more could Joly, Naudin's servant, understand, for the two doctors had gone into the study, and the door was closed behind them. After a short time, however, it was opened. Naudin ordered the valet to order a tiacre at once, and a few minutes later Director Naudin rode away at the side of Doctor Saunier.

At a house in the Rue Montmartre the carriage stopped, and the two physicians entered. The porter, opening the little, dusty window of his lodge, nodded confidentially to Saunier.

"That is probably the celebrated Doctor Naudin of the Hotel Dieu, whom you have with you?" he asked.

"Yes, it is he," answered Saunier, "and if anybody can help our patient, it is he. Citizen Crage is probably at home?"

"Certainly he is at home, for you know he never leaves his sick boy. You will find him above. You know the way, citizen doctor!"

The two physicians passed on, ascended the staircase, and entered the suit of rooms whose door was only partially closed—left ajar, as it seemed, for them. Nobody came to meet them, but they carefully closed the door behind them, drew the bolt, and then walked silently and quickly across the anteroom to the opposite door.