Part 18

Joyfully the Dauphin received the beautiful present and listened eagerly to the explanation of how to play the new game. On the back of each domino, in the black marble, was a gold letter, and when the whole set of dominoes was arranged in regular order, they formed this sentence, Vive le Roi, Vive la Reine, et Vive le Dauphin (Long live the King, the Queen and the Dauphin). The marble of the box was taken from the altar-slab in the chapel of the Bastile, and in the middle, in gold relief, was a picture of King Louis.

"That is my papa!" cried Louis joyfully, when he saw it.

"Yes," said Palloy. "Every one of us bears him in his heart. And like the King, you will live for the happiness of all, and like him, you will be the idol of France. We who shall one day be French soldiers and citizens, bring to you, who will then be our commander-in-chief and king, our homage as the future supporters of the throne which is destined for you and which the wisdom of your father has placed under the unshakable power of law. The gift which we offer you is small, but each one of us adds his heart to it."

"And I give you all of my heart in return for it," cried the Dauphin, joyfully, "and I shall take great pains to do my lessons well so I may be allowed to amuse myself playing dominoes."

The delight of the Dauphin was so evident that his comrades who had brought him the present felt a keener affection even than before for their little Colonel, and the Queen who had been present during the whole scene spoke in friendly words of thanks to the boys, who then withdrew, escorted by the king and the Dauphin, who had no knowledge, child of destiny that he was, of the omen contained in that present. But Marie Antoinette knew only too well, and her heart was heavy when she saw the present made from the stones of the Bastile. But of this she gave no sign, and from that day attempted more than ever to endear herself and her son to the people who had so little trust in her. One day when a crowd of fiendish women behind the fence called out cruel things about the Queen, the Dauphin could be no longer silent.

"You lie, oh, you lie!" he cried angrily. "My mamma is not a wicked woman, and she does not hate the people. She is good. She is so good that--that----" tears choked him, and ashamed to show such signs of weakness, he dashed out of the garden into the palace, but as he reached the queen's apartments he choked back the tears, saying, "I will not cry any more, for that will only trouble mamma and I can see she has trouble enough without that. I will laugh and sing and jump about, and then she may smile a little instead of crying, as I often find her doing."

His tutor, the Abbe Davout, heartily approved of this, and the Dauphin sprang into his mother's presence with a merry smile which gladdened the queen's heart and made her forget her sorrows for awhile. This pleased the Dauphin greatly, and he re-doubled his efforts to be merry, making the little dog stand on its hind legs, while Louis put on its black head a paper cap which he had made, painted with red stripes, like those worn by the Jacobins or Revolutionists and cried:

"Monsieur Jacobi, behave respectfully. Make your salutations to her majesty, the Queen!"

He was rewarded by a hug and a kiss from the Queen and then ran off with the dog barking at his heels.

Little Louis was, as we have seen, an eager and brilliant scholar and one day he begged the Abbe to give him lessons in grammar which he had begun to learn some time before.

"Gladly," answered the Abbe, "your last lesson, if I remember rightly, was upon the three degrees of comparison--the positive, the comparative and the superlative. But you must have forgotten all that."

"You are mistaken," answered the Dauphin, "and I will prove it to you. Listen:--the positive is when I say, 'my Abbe is a kind Abbe'; the comparative is when I say 'my Abbe is kinder than another Abbe,' and the superlative," he continued, looking at the Queen who was listening--"is when I say, 'mamma is the kindest and most amiable of all mammas!'"

The retort was so clever, the manner of saying it so charming, that the Abbe and Marie Antoinette exchanged glances of amusement and pride, but the little prince was unconscious of having said or done anything unusual.

Besides grammar, Louis studied Italian, which he could speak and read fluently; he also studied Latin, and some of the sentences he translated have been preserved, such as "True friends are useful to princes." "I know a prince who easily flies into a passion." "Flatterers are very dangerous to princes." From these sentences it is evident that the Abbe was trying to teach his clever little scholar more than one thing at a time. Louis was also taught arithmetic, geometry and geography, this last by means of a huge hollow globe lit by a lantern, which had been invented for the special use of the Dauphin, by a celebrated professor in the University of Paris. Louis also was trained in all sorts of athletic sports and when he was seven years old was sturdy of body and far more mature of mind than many older boys. At seven, according to the court custom of France, he was obliged to be given into the care of a governor. The people wished to choose this governor and named several candidates who were utterly unworthy of the position, but they were obliged to set aside their wishes and accept a man named by the king, who also himself continued to superintend his son's education.

At this time the clouds of political disaster were again hanging over the palace, and even the Dauphin could see and feel the uneasiness that surrounded him.

On June 20, 1792, King Louis refused to sign two decrees which the people wished him to sign, and with his refusal the storm of riot and revolution burst forth again. An immense mob of shrieking, howling people stormed the Tuileries, where no measures had been taken in defence, and the king gave orders that the doors of the palace be flung open and the people be allowed to pass in unhindered. In a few minutes every inch of space in rooms and corridors and halls was filled with the dense crowd. Only one room was locked, and in that room were the king and queen, the Dauphin and his sister, Therese with a few loyal friends. Therese was terrified and would have screamed with fright, but the manly little Dauphin watching her, held back his own tears and kept her terror under control by his words and manner, acting with the dignity of a grown-up guardian.

Breathlessly, the little company gathered there listened to the sound of an axe, doors were being battered down, the door of the royal apartment was opened, and an officer of the National Guard knelt before the King, beseeching him to show himself to the frenzied mob. The expression on all faces, the sounds from without were too much for the Dauphin's self-control. He burst into sobs and begged the queen to take him to his room, and while Marie Antoinette was comforting him as best she could, the king went out and stood in the middle of the hall, surrounded by the rabble, speaking in quiet words, of his love for his people. The crowd was delighted at this, but in the meantime, the still greater crowd outside the palace surged through the hall and into the room where the queen and her children were. The National Guards quickly rolled a table up between the queen and the mob, and stood at either side, ready to defend them. Only a table now separated the queen from her enemies, but she was calm and courageous and stood proudly erect with a child on either side of her, wide-eyed at the sights they saw. Suddenly, the queen trembled with a deathly fear. Before her stood the man whose brawny arm had reached through the paling to grasp the Dauphin. Simon, the cobbler, stood there, hatred and desire for revenge on his face, and Marie Antoinette knew with a quick instinct that this man would bring no good to her child. Then the cries of the Jacobins rent the air and they surged into the room with the fury of wild beasts sure of their prey.

The queen lifted the Dauphin up and set him on a table and whispered to him that he must not grieve or fear or cry, but be a man now, and the child smiled and kissed her hand. Just then a drunken woman flung a red cap--the cap worn by the Jacobins--on the table, and commanded the queen, on pain of death, to put it on.

Calmly, the queen turned to a general standing beside her and told him to place it on her head.

The general, pale with rage at the insult, obeyed in silence and the woman howled with pleasure. But in a moment, the general took the cap off the queen's hair and laid it on the table.

Ever since the King had vetoed the bills, the people had called the King, Monsieur Veto; Marie Antoinette, Madame Veto, and the Dauphin, Little Veto, and now from all sides burst forth the cry, "The red cap for the Dauphin! The tri-colour for little Veto!"

"If you love the nation," cried the woman to the Queen, "put the red cap on your son."

The Queen motioned to one of the ladies to put the red cap on the child, and he, not understanding whether it was a joke or not, stood there in easy grace, as handsome a little prince as ever a nation had.

One of the revolutionary leaders, who had looked complacently at the scene, now stood near the queen, and as her eyes met his in calm defiance, he felt a thrill of pity for her and for the little Dauphin, and when he saw the perspiration rolling down the boy's forehead from under the thick woollen cap, he called out roughly:

"Take that cap off the child--don't you see how he sweats?"

The queen's gratified glance thanked him, as she took the cap herself from the Dauphin's head. While this was occurring, the Mayor of Paris had entered the outer hall and was quieting the mob, bidding them disband and leave the palace at once, which they did.

The King sank into a chair, exhausted and agonised, and cried out:

"Where is the queen? Where are the children?" and in a moment the royal victims were together.