"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 Abbé 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 Abbé to give him lessons in grammar which he had begun to learn some time before.
"Gladly," answered the Abbé, "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 Abbé is a kind Abbé'; the comparative is when I say 'my Abbé is kinder than another Abbé,' 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 Abbé and Marie Antoinette exchanged glances of amusement and pride, but the little prince was unconscious of having said or done anything unusual.