h the suffering of his mind, among the holiday groups
of Saint Menehould; and when called, was not long in presenting himself.

"Alas! Is this the bridegroom?" asked the Princess, shrugging her
shoulders, with an expression of pity.

"He looks better than that sometimes, when he plays with us," said Marc,
zealous for his friend Charles.

"But his dress!" said a lady, who had seldom before seen a peasant, and
was not familiarised with the coarse woollen garment and leathern belt,
so common among the country people.

"It is just what father wears, and everybody," maintained Marc.

By this time the Count was waiting the pleasure of the Princess, ready
to assure her of his patronage of any persons she might please to
favour. The Dauphiness asked whether such poverty as she witnessed was
not a thing hitherto unheard of,--whether such misery could be common in
the country she had just entered? The bridling of some of her ladies,
and the annoyance in the faces of some gentlemen of her suite, showed
her that she had asked an imprudent question. Yet she was only fifteen,
and was to be hereafter the queen of this country; and if she had never
done worse things than asking such questions, she might have lived
beloved, and died lamented, in a good old age.

She saw another thing in the countenances of her attendants,--that it
was time to be gone. She therefore requested of the Count, as a favour
to herself, that he would settle Charles advantageously on his lands;
and smiling at the young man, she declared that she would answer for
Charles's fidelity to his lord. Charles was on his knees at the word,
too much overpowered to speak, but promising all by his clasped hands
and heaving breast. The Count declared he should have a cottage and a
field that very day, and his hearty consent to take Marie home as soon
as the priest could marry them.

The Dauphiness asked one of her attendant gentlemen for her purse, and
gave the boys gold for Marie. They were to tell her to make her cottage
comfortable with it.

"As for yourselves," said she, "what did I hear just now that you
wanted? Canary-birds, was it?"

"Pigeons,"--"rabbits," said the boys; "but never mind them now."

"O, but I do mind; you shall have some money for that too."

The bailiff explained that it was not poverty, but the law which
interfered with the boys' pleasures. Pigeons abounded in the wood, and
could feed themselves; but it was against the law for a