g, and threw himself trembling into her arms, crying, "O,
mamma, is to-day going to be yesterday again?" When they were settled,
and everything was done to make him as happy as a child should be, he
did not forget what he had seen and heard. He not only walked with his
mother, or with Madame de Tourzel, in the garden of the Tuileries, but
he had a little garden of his own, railed in, and a little tool-house
for his spade and rake. There the rosy, curly-headed boy was seen
digging in the winter, and sowing seeds in the spring; and, sometimes,
feeding the ducks on the garden ponds with crumbs of bread. Still he
did not forget what he had seen and heard. One day, his father saw the
boy looking at him very gravely and earnestly. The king asked him what
he was thinking about. Louis said he wanted to ask a very serious
question, if he might; and the king gave him leave.

"I want to know," said Louis, "why all the people who used to love you
so much are now so angry with you. I want to know what you have done to
put them in such a passion."

The king took him upon his knee, and said,--

"My dear, I wished to make the people happier than they were before. I
wanted money to pay the expenses of our great wars. I asked it of the
parliament, as the kings of France have always done before. The
magistrates who composed the parliament were unwilling, and said that
the people alone had a right to consent that this money should be given.
I called together at Versailles the principal people of every town,
distinguished by their rank, their fortune, or their talents. These
were called the States-General. When they were assembled, they required
of me things which I could not do, either for my own sake or yours; as
you are to be king after me. Wicked persons have appeared, causing the
people to rebel; and the shocking things that have happened lately are
their doing. We must blame them and not the people."

So spoke Louis the Sixteenth to his young son: and from these words
(among other evidence) we learn how little he was aware of the true
causes and nature of the great Revolution which was taking place. It
appears that he really thought this revolution was owing to the acts of
the last few months, and not to the long course of grinding oppression
which had begun hundreds of years before he was born. He believed that
the violence he witnessed was owing to the malice of a few "wicked
persons," and not to the exasperation