t to the
queen's rooms, and there learned and recited lessons.

The little Dauphin was a brilliant scholar and said such bright things
that all the courtiers took great pleasure in asking him questions,
that they might hear his answers. One day while saying his lessons, he
began to hiss loudly, for which his mother reproved him.

"I was only hissing at myself," he said, "because I just said my lesson
so badly."

On the evening before the queen's birthday the king told the Dauphin
that he would buy him a handsome bouquet to give his mother for a
birthday present, but that he wanted him to write a letter of
congratulation to go with it. To his surprise the Dauphin did not show
as much pleasure as he expected at this and finally on questioning him
he discovered the truth.

"I have got a beautiful everlasting in my garden," Louis said, "I want
to give it to her, please, papa, it will be my bouquet and my letter
all together, for when I give it to mamma I shall say, 'I hope mamma,
that you will be like this flower.'"

The idea was so pretty and the boy so eager, that he had his way, and
King Louis' pride in this clever child was great.

He was no prig, no saintly child, this little King Louis Seventeenth to
be, he was just a sensitive, affectionate boy, whose winning manner and
charm of person attracted all to him, and made him an especial pet of
the older people from whose conversation he gathered much information
which they never thought he understood.

One day when playing in the garden, full of excited vigour, he was just
going to rush through a hedge of roses, when an attendant stopped him
and warned him, saying:

"Monseigneur, one of those thorns might blind you or tear your face."

But the Dauphin persisted, and when halfway through the hedge, called
back:

"Thorny paths lead to glory"--a phrase so ominous of the poor little
Dauphin's future that it has ever been remembered as one of the most
remarkable of his sayings.

For some time, the Dauphin who was quick to respond to joy or sadness
in those around him noticed many signs of distress, not only in the
faces of his father and mother, but in those of others whom he saw
daily, and many an hour when no one knew it, his childish mind spent in
wondering about the situation, trying to understand the heated words he
heard, the tears he saw, and sometimes he would creep up to Marie
Antoinette and pat her smooth cheek reassuringly, and kiss her
lovingly, and