"My God! what will he do?" whispered the queen to herself.
At the same instant, there resounded from behind the fence a loud, mighty bravo, and a thousand voices took it up and cried, "Bravo! bravo!"
The dauphin had stretched up his little white hand and laid it upon the brown, clinched fist that was stretched out toward him, and nodded pleasantly at the man who looked down so fiercely upon him.
"Good-day, sir!" he said, with a loud voice—"good-day!"
And he took hold with his little hand of the great hand of the man and shook it a little, as in friendly salutation. "Little knirps," roared the man, "what do you mean, and how dare you lay your little paw on the claws of the lion?"
"Sir," said the boy, smiling, "I thought you were stretching out your hand to reach me with it, and so I give you mine, and say, 'Good-day, sir!'"
"And if I wanted, I could crush your hand in my fist as if it were in a vise," cried the man, holding the little hand firmly.
"You shall not do it," cried hundreds and hundreds of voices in the crowd. "No, Simon, you shall not hurt the child."
"Who of you could hinder me if I wanted to?" asked the man, with a laugh. "See here, I hold the hand of the future King of France in my fist, and I can break it if I want to, and make it so that it can never lift the sceptre of France. The little monkey thought he would take hold of my hand and make me draw it back, and now my hand has got his and holds it fast. And mark this, boy, the time is past when kings seized us and trod us down; now we seize them and hold them fast, and do not let them go unless we will."
"Sir!" cried the queen, motioning back with a commanding gesture the two lackeys who were hurrying up to release the dauphin from the hand of the man, "sir, I beg you to withdraw your hand, and not to hinder us in our walk."