On the next day, at the time of his accustomed walk, the queen went into the dauphin's room to greet him before he went into the garden.
"Mamma, I beg your permission to remain here," said the dauphin. "My garden does not please me any longer."
"Why not, my son," asked Marie Antoinette, "has any thing happened to you?"
"Yes, mamma," he answered, "something has happened to me. There are so many bad people always standing around the fence, and they look at me with such evil eyes, that I am afraid of them, and they scold and say such hard things. They laugh at me, and say that I am a stupid jack, a baker's boy that does not know how to make a loaf, and they call me a monkey. That angers me and hurts my feelings, and if I begin to cry I am ashamed of myself, for I know that it is very silly to cry before people who mean ill to us. But I am still a poor little boy, and my tears are stronger than I. And so I want you, mamma, not to let me go to the garden any more. Moufflet and I would a great deal rather play in my room. Come here, Moufflet, make your compliments to the queen, and salute her like a regular grenadier."
And smiling, he caught the little dog by the fore-paws, and made him stand up on his hind legs, and threatened Moufflet with his hand till he made him stand erect and let his fore feet hang down very respectfully.
The queen looked down with a smile at the couple, and laughed aloud when the dauphin, still waving his hand threateningly to compel the dog to stand as he was, jumped up, ran to the table, caught up a paper cap, which he had made and painted with red stripes, and put it on Moufflet's head, calling out to him: "Mr. Jacobin, behave respectfully! Make your salutations to her majesty the queen!"
After that day, the dauphin did not go into his garden again, and the park of the Tuileries was now the exclusive property of the populace, that took possession of it with furious eagerness.
The songs of the revolution, the wild curses of the haters of royalty, the coarse laughter and shouting of the rabble—these were the storm birds which were beating at the windows of the royal apartments.
Marie Antoinette had still one source of enjoyment left to her in her sufferings, her correspondence with her absent friends, and the Duchess de Polignac before all others. Once in a while there was a favorable opportunity to send a letter by the hands of some faithful friend around her, and the queen had then the sad satisfaction at least of being able to express to some sympathizing heart what she was undergoing, without fearing that these complaints would be read by her enemies, as was the case with all letters which were sent by post.
One of these letters to the Duchess de Polignac, which history has preserved, gives a faithful and touching picture of the sorrows and grief of the queen. A translation of it runs thus: