"Come, come!" she said. "Let be! Another time perhaps, he will listen to reason!" The child gave her a grateful glance that she never forgot.
In addition to his other hardships, the young king was obliged to wait on his two captors, and run at their beck and call like the meanest servant. He performed his tasks without a murmur, and counted himself fortunate if he were not rewarded by a kick, or a cuff on the ear.
One morning while it was yet dark, Louis XVII awoke on his hard truckle-bed. All days now were bad enough and sad enough, but he somehow had a presentiment that this one would be worse than the rest. He rose shivering, lighted a little foot-stove, and took it to Madame Simon's bed as he had been directed to do. She scolded him sleepily for not bringing it sooner, and his heart ached as he recalled how he used to lay a bouquet from his garden at Versailles on his mother's bed every morning. Oh, the hideous difference! After his scanty breakfast, he caught the eye of Simon fastened upon him, with some new, malignant interest in its gaze.
"Thou art bewigged like a royal courtier!" growled the cobbler, passing his rough hand over the silky curls. "'Tis little like a good Republican's head. This must go!" With a huge pair of shears, he hacked into the thick hair with great, jagged strokes. In a few moments the curls all lay on the floor, and Louis Charles stood like a shorn lamb, heartbroken but tearless, before his tormentor. Then the cobbler took his charge down to the courtyard for his daily breath of fresh air. Some of the soldiers, at the sight of the poor, ill-cropped head, laughed immoderately. Only one commissary, Meunier, said regretfully:
"Why have you hacked off all the hair that was so becoming, Simon?"
"Oh, don't you see! We are playing at a game of despoiling kings!" chuckled Simon. Again the soldiers laughed. The child, always peculiarly sensitive to mockery, hung his head and turned away, losing all desire to run about with his football. He was glad when Simon took him in again.
That night the cobbler made him drink two glasses of bad wine. As he had heretofore never touched anything but water, it made him stupid and heavy. Perhaps he did not quite understand what was happening. Perhaps his spirit was at last beginning to break. But, at any rate, when Simon said to him:
"Now here's your nice red cap! Put it on!" the boy, worn out with struggling, yielded at last.
"Ah! Now thou art a true sans-culotte!" cried Simon in triumph. And he crowned the shorn head of Louis XVII with the badge of the Commune!