TOT in the records of history, nor

NOT

even in the regions of romance, is there a more sorrowful tale than that of the little boy of whom our artist has here given a life-like portrait. The tale has been often told, embellished, distorted, and made to suit the fancy, or the political predilections of the narrator. In the unadorned simplicity of truth it is here given, and the unvarnished facts are left to speak for themselves.

On the 27th of March, 1785, there were the gayest manifestations of rejoicing at the Château de Versailles. King Louis XVI., followed by all his court, went to the palace chapel to hear Te Deum sung in celebration of the birth of a young prince, his second son, who came into the world" at five minutes before seven in the evening."

Nursed amid elegance and luxury, the child grew and prospered, and soon, by his childish, winning ways, gained the hearts of all about him. In his gay beaming eyes, in his bright fantastic playfulness, in his very tricks of whim and willfulness, his mother saw and recognized every childlike grace and beauty. With a slight, but well-shaped figure, he had a forehead broad and open, the eyebrows finely arched, and the eyes large and blue, and of a soft and mild expression; his complexion was fair and blooming; his mouth well formed and rosy; his hair, of a dark chestnut color, curled naturally, and fell in ringlets over his shoulders; and on his chin there was a dimple, which reminded the beholder of his mother. His countenance partook of the peculiarities of both parents, uniting something of the dignity of Marie Antoinette with the milder amiability of Louis. All his movements were full of vivacity and gracefulness; and in his manner of behavior and address, there was a delicate and natural simplicity. His mental characteristics at this age were too partially developed to be very accurately described, though, from the representations we have received, he appears to have been of a quick and lively apprehension, sensitively affectionate, and, upon the whole, of a tractable and generous disposition.

Everything that is told of the prince gives one the impression of a kindly and gentle nature. Of important particulars, there are none: his life is simply that of a child reared in luxury and tenderness, secluded from every hurtful influence, and happy through the perfection of its innocence. All the days pass brightly with him. The hours roll on in gay succession, and cast no shadows over the gladsome path in which he walks. So have passed the years with him in the seclusion of Versailles-a gladsome, happy seasonwhich, however, is destined not to last.

For what mean these tumults, which in the summer months of 1789 are breaking out in Paris? The people there have risen in insurrection, urged by famine, by desperation, by vague, alarming rumors of impending massacres, by every imaginable illusion that can excite the fears of human nature in a state of panic and uncertainty. The Bastile has been stormed and taken; Paris and all France are getting armed; daily, on the Palais Royal, there is loud haranguing of the population by excited orators on the urgency of affairs; at the Hôtel de Ville the city authorities are striving to maintain some show of order, and discussing how Paris can be kept supplied with bread; the press is eloquent on the "rights of man." Every

morning one enormous difficulty recurs― the women, at street corners, and before the doors of bakers' shops, discuss this dreadful question with exasperated, mournful faces, with shrill, illogical eloquencewhich, however, produces a result. On the 4th of October somebody suggests the bold expedient of going to Versailles to fetch the king! The king once in Paris, they think, the scarcity must cease; that, surely, a supreme governor and protector of his people must have some secret divine gift for decreeing plenteousness. Under this sublime infatuation, some thousands of them are next morning in readiness to march. They march first to the Hôtel de Ville, hurrying with them all the women they chance to meet upon the road, under penalty of cutting off their hair. On entering the square, they are confronted by the National Guards; but they charge infantry and cavalry with a shower of stones, and the soldiers cannot make up their minds to fire on them. The women then force open the Hôtel de Ville, and enter all the offices, inquiring curiously into the use of every room, and entreating the representatives of the districts, who were present, to give a kind reception to the ladies they had forced to accompany them, several of whom, they said, were in a delicate state of health. Some, however, who were wild and ravenous, shouted out for bread and arms, and ordered the municipals to burn their writings and waste paper. They were even going to set fire to these themselves, and might possibly have burned the building, had they not been prevented by a man who presently gained an influence over them by his adroitness of address. This was Stanislaus Maillard, a person of gigantic stature, of severe countenance, by profession a bailiff, who agrees in the end to lead the women to Versailles. They appoint him their captain by acclamation, and he puts himself at the head of them, with ten or a dozen drums and a piece of cannon. There are about eight thousand women, followed by some hundreds of armed men—a hungry, excited, undrilled multitude, the leading and the guiding of whom is a work demanding rather a masterly sort of generalship. They enter Versailles, singing the popular and loyal air of Henry IV. The people of the town are delighted, and respond, "Vivent nos Parisiennes !" Maillard leads them to the National Assembly, where,

however, he will not allow more than a select number to enter. The Assembly is astonished at the invasion, but cannot help itself.

Meanwhile, another crowd of people, including about thirty thousand of the National Guards, had followed the women to Versailles. The next day, the château was stormed, and the king and the royal family were compelled to go to Paris. Nothing less than this would satisfy the people. The National Assembly, on Mirabeau's proposition, voted their inseparability from his majesty, and prepared to accompany him. Surrounded by deputies, by an army, by an innumerable concourse of his people, King Louis departs from the palace of Versailles, not to return again. About one o'clock the whole multitude is in motion, and marching toward Paris, some before the king, and some behind. They march with little order—a huge miscellaneous procession. "Men and women all go as they can-on foot or on horseback, in coaches and carts, on carriages of cannon, or whatever they could find." On the way they had the fortune to meet with a large convoy of flour-a prize extremely welcome to a famished town. As they march along, the women carry large loaves of bread on pikes. They enter Paris in a merry humor, as though satisfied with the termination of their exploit. "Fear for nothing now," cried they; "no more poverty. We are bringing back the Baker* and his wife, and the little shopboy!"

Poor little shop-boy! On entering the Tuileries, he exclaims, "Everything is very ugly here, mamma."

The queen was probably of his opinion, but she replied: "My dear, Louis XIV. lived here, and found it very comfortable; we must not be more fastidious than he."

But you cannot teach a child contentment. He yearned after the old familiar scenes, and it was not until he had got a garden assigned to him, that he became reconciled to the change. He then took to rearing rabbits and cultivating flowers, as aforetime. As all the royal family were now under strict surveillance, the little prince was usually attended in his movements by a detachment of the National Guards. The dauphin did not often leave the Tuileries.

The king was called the Great Baker.

Great public events are, meanwhile, going on. The king finds himself a prisoner in his palace, and has reason enough to fear that neither his own life, nor the life of the queen, nor of any member of his family, is safe from danger. The question of flight has often been secretly discussed, and at length it is concluded that in no other course is there any prospect of deliverance. On the 20th of June, 1791, the whole court is leaving Paris in the night; the intention being to travel in disguise to Montmèdy, a frontier fortress, where arrangements had been made for their reception by the Marquis de Bouillé, who was in command of a large army in those parts.

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putting his head out of the window to look for them, the king was recognized by Drouet, the postmaster, by his likeness to the effigy upon the coins and assignats. The carriages pass out of St. Menehould without hinderance; but in the meanwhile, away rides Drouet by the shortest road to Varennes, to give notice to the municipality, and intercept them. When the king arrived, it was past eleven o'clock; the little town seemed all asleep; the horses expected to be in waiting were nowhere visible, and no information respecting them could be obtained. They were, in fact, stationed at a place further on, over the bridge, in what is called the Lower Town—a prudent enough arrangement, but one with which the king had not been made acquainted. The delay thereby occasioned was fatal to further progress. On trying to go on with the former horses, the royal carriages were stopped upon the bridge by Drouet and an armed party, and the travelers compelled to alight and show their passports. They were carried to a grocer's shop, the residence of M. Sausse, procureur-syndic of Varennes.

When they woke up the dauphin at eleven o'clock at night, to dress him like a girl, and his sister asked him what he thought they were going to do: "I think," replied he, with his eyes half shut, "I think we are going to play a comedy, because we are disguised." The flight to Varennes was, indeed, something of a comedy, though running in the later acts into very painful tragedy. Count Fersen, the prince of coachmen, drove the fugitives out of Paris in the gayest style as far as Bondy, and saw them safely started on the road to Châlons. Relays of horses were already prepared at every post-house. Some distance short of Châlons, however, the king's carriage, though a new one made for the occasion, required repairs, and the royal family were detained an hour. A fatal hour, which threw all the arrangements wrong. But as yet there appeared no danger. They passed through Châlons about four in the afternoon; were recognized by a few bystanders, who prudently said nothing, and the carriages proceeded on their way. On passing the gates of the town, the king, the queen, and Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister, all exclaimed together, "We are saved!" But this, as it turned out, was rather premature gratulation. At the Pont de Sommeville they were to have been met by a detachment of huzzars from M. de Bouillé's camp; but, lo! on arriving there about six o'clock, not a soldier is to be seen. They had been waiting for six hours, under pretense of escorting "a quantity of specie," and being fearful of creating suspicions, had gone half an hour before. The fugitives, disconcerted, go onwards to St. Menehould, expecting there to be met by an escort of dragoons; and on

There is no hope left. The queen withdraws indignantly with the king's sister to an upper room, where her children were asleep, and looking on their helpless faces, burst passionately into tears. The king, after some time, joined them, and they all lay down, dressed as they were, and within hearing of the threatening murmurs of the people and the noise of footsteps, which every instant increased beneath the windows. Such was their situation in Varennes at seven o'clock in the morning. "The queen had not slept; all her feelings as a wife, a mother, a queen-rage, terror, despair-waged so terrible a conflict in her mind, that her hair, which had been auburn on the previous evening, was in the morning as white as snow."

The house and streets were filled with people, when, about seven o'clock in the morning, appeared M. de Romeuf, aidede-camp of Lafayette, bearing with him a decree of the Assembly, which he, with much confusion, presented to the king. On reading it, the king exclaimed: "There is no longer a king in France!" The queen read it after him; and then he took it up, and read it over again, laying it afterward upon the bed where the children were still lying. The queen, with fierce impetuousness, threw it off the bed,

exclaiming, "I will not have it sully my children." An officer present took up the document, and placed it on the table. By the noise in the room, the children were awakened; and the dauphin, in particular, attracted the attention of the people. Some admired his beauty, others put questions to him about the journey, which, however, were scarcely answered by the drowsy child, whose eyes, as they opened, sought his mother's, endeavoring to read there an explanation of what was passing.

"O, Charles," his sister whispered to him, "you were sadly mistaken; this is not a comedy."

"I have found that out long since," returned the boy.

It is verily no comedy; the turn which things are taking is visibly becoming tragical. The king is escorted back to Paris as a captive, amid the hootings and jeers of crowds of people who precede and follow him along the road. Here and there some little sympathy is manifested by loyalhearted individuals; but, in general, the populations of the towns and villages through which the procession passes are hostile and derisive. "The journey," says Lamartine, was a Calvary of sixty leagues, every step of which was a torture."

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Paris looms murkily in the distance; and heavily beat the hearts of the poor captives, as the procession advances slowly into the grim, tumultuous city. On all the walls is posted the proclamation; "whoever cheers the king shall be beaten; whoever insults him shall be hanged." The citizens receive him with sullen, distrustful countenances, with suppressed indignation, silent hatred, and contempt. The foreheads of the children streamed with perspiration, and the poor little dauphin could hardly breathe. Tremblingly, but quickly, the queen let down one of the windows, appealing to the people nearest for compassion and a little air. "See, gentlemen," she exclaimed, "in what a state my poor children are-one of them is choking." "Ay, we will choke you in another fashion," replied some, ferociously, in an under-tone. It is the evening of the 25th of June, five days after the night of their departure.

That night, as soon as the dauphin was in bed, he called to his attendant, M. Hue, and said: "Tell me what all this is about? We had no sooner got to Varennes than they sent us back again. Why was that?

I can't tell at all: do you know?" M. Hue knew well enough, but he understood the need of silence, and represented to the prince, that he must not speak to any one a single word about the journey. The child, though weary, lay a long while restless; and, as Royalists report, when he at last fell asleep, he had a frightful dream, in which he seemed to be surrounded by wolves, tigers, and all manner of ferocious beasts-a dream which they interpret as portending all the dreadful things which subsequently happened.

Royalty in France is fallen. King Louis is henceforth a king without authority. It will require but a few more heavings of the Revolution to strike the crown from off his head. The Constituent Assembly dissolves itself, and is succeeded by a new assembly called the Legislative, which ere long begins to aim at the total overthrow of the monarchy. Very early the Assembly passed two decrees, which brought it into direct collision with his majesty: one, pronouncing a sentence of death against all French emigrants in arms on the frontier who did not disarm themselves within a given time; and the other, decreeing the banishment of "unsworn priests"—that is, all the clergy who, from conscientious motives, had not subscribed to the new ecclesiastical regulations established by the Revolution. By an article of the Constitution, the king was empowered to withhold his sanction from the Assembly's decrees, and, accordingly, by his veto he stopped the two in question. The result was another insurrection, another violent invasion of the royal palace by an armed and furious mob, angrily demanding the sanction of the decrees, and the restoration of the Girondist ministers, recently dismissed. The king's life was in danger; but he withstood the tumult firmly, and even won the good-will of some of the rioters by his frankness and intrepidity. He put on the bonnet rouge-red cap of liberty—to please them, and the act was accepted as the sign of his good faith. The rebels were the most exasperated against the queen, and after seeking her throughout the château, found her at length in a swoon in company with her children. The little dauphin, now seven years old, was seated on a table before her; his innocent face radiant with all the beauty of the Bourbons, and expressive of more surprise than fear. The most ferocious of the rebels were softened in