bundle of eccentric sticks. Much more should
we be on our guard against an original unplated
article. There is a valet way of viewing things,
an innocent menial exaggeration which magnifies,
a gaping bumpkin wonder and consequent
distortion, and a gradual gathering of moss
as the narrative stone rolls on. The valet
historian, become of a sudden the depositary of
important facts, finds his details accumulate
prodigiously with every fresh recital, and as he
grows older, thickens his varnish, and deepens
his colours. So was it with the showman at
Waterloo; so is it with that ex-valet who now
tells and sells his stories at the Invalides.
Therefore must we accept these legends of little
Capet with a grain of salt.

It must have been a fearfully wise child that
at four years old could address its father in a
speech of this description: "Papa, I have a fine
immortelle in my garden; it will be at once my
gift and my compliment. In presenting it to
mamma, I shall say, May mamma resemble my
flower!" Only conceive, four years old! How
his amazed parent must have looked at him as
he lisped his way through this elaborate period.
Another time—still rising four years—he
astounds us by a neat and ingenious turn which
should be held up to all ordinary children at
their lessons. He was making some strange
sounds with his mouth over his task, and was
scolded. "Mamma," said the mysterious
infant, "I was hissing myself, because I said my
lessons so badly." Some one tried to stop him
forcing his way through some briars. Opposition
was instantly silenced by the reply, "Thorny
ways lead to glory!" He fell down on the
gravel-walk, and picked himself up with four
lines of an apt quotation from La Fontaine. He
made puns; checking himself in his intention of
bringing some soucis (a species of flower) to his
mother, because she had already a sufficiency of
them (cares). He was fearfully ready with his
classics, and told some one that he was more
fortunate than Diogenes, because he had found
a man and a good friend. He liked his garden
grenadiers (flowers) very much, but would rather
be at the head of living grenadiers. He was, in
short, a royal "terrible child."

No, this is the valet's child, the changeling of
the servants' hall. The poor hapless boy has
been so bewailed, talked over, wept over, that
he has been actually gossiped into a new shape.
There is a handsome margin left for the good
and the sympathising, who would weep over the
wretched destiny of the most gifted and
promising child ever born to a crown.

As a matter of course, he was soon put to
take his part in the theatrical shows of the time.
The little Royal Red Book alluded to, shows
a catalogue of names—crowded as the names
of an army list—who form the rank and file of
the various "houses" of his majesty, the queen,
of Monsieur, and the other persons of "the
blood;" and, naturally enough, the little Capet
had his share in the show. He was splendidly
glorified, this royal bambino, as yet only toddling
across the palace saloons, with a whole department
to himself, labelled "Education of my Lord
the Dauphin." He was encumbered with a
superfluity of stately supervision, and watched over
by a governor-in-chief, two sub-governors, two
clerical tutors or "institutors," a reader, a
secretary in ordinary, a governess, and four sub-
governesses.

We have always some picturesque glimpse of
this favoured child. Now we look down at
him from the Tuileries windows, pacing his
gardens at the head of a tall company of
National Guards, he himself a tiny National Guard
in a miniature uniform. How comic the
contrast between this Tom Thumb Dauphin pacing
up and down in his Lilliputian regimentals, and
the grave giants in the cocked-hats stalking
solemnly behind him! He made speeches to these
warriors with a quaint old-fashioned ceremoniousness
that makes us smile. He apologised for
the smallness of his own private garden, where
he himself was gardener, regretting that its
little walks could not accommodate the gentlemen
who came to visit him. That fatally
precocious wisdom, and strange readiness of speech,
someway suggest the childish partner in the
firm of Dombey and Son.

The Tom Thumb uniform was soon changed,
and we see him presently in the full dress of a
miniature colonel—Colonel of the Piccol'uomini
—or, more respectfully, the Royal Dauphin
Regiment. Royal Bonbon, said the French gamins,
screaming with laughter, as the little men
fluttered their colours, beat drums, saluted, carried
arms, and relieved guard at important posts, in
a droll parody on their elders. By-and-by this
Tom Thumb colonel will appear in other dresses.
Alas! not uniforms. He will be looking back
with despair in that boy-old age of his, from
out of darkness of soul and body, to that mimic
coloneling!

Our little Capet was fated to know some
troubled nights during his short span of ten
years. It seemed to be his destiny to be
perpetually awakened from his first sleep towards
midnight, and to be snatched from his cot and
hurriedly dressed. Or else, where all the
elements were raging, and the human storm howling,
to be brought out and held up by way of
show, to soothe the agitation. On a child's
mind those midnight rousings must have left a
bewildering impression.

For, indeed, into that ten years which made
up his little life were compressed the whole
seven ages of man. He saw a kind of copy of
youth, of manhood, and the terrible enforced
decay of a childish old age. I fancy no life of
that duration was ever so crowded with gaudy
scenes, horrid nightmare pictures, and snatches
of Elysium, all jumbled together in violent
contrast! As he shall lie hereafter, shrunk and
coiled up in a corner of his dark cell, with a
film before his eyes, and brain disordered by
disease, literally rotting away, what a company
of spectres shall be with him all night long!
How the black veil, which always hung before
the dark walls, must have parted and floated
away to the right and to the left, showing him