of a nation,--the fury of many
millions of sufferers against a few hundreds of the rich and powerful.
This was not the first time of the king's showing how little he
understood of what was taking place and what ought to be done. When it
was absolutely necessary to the peace of the kingdom to have a minister
who would relieve the people of the heaviest taxes, the king removed
such a minister, and thought he was doing what he could to make up for
this, by retrenching some expenses in the palace. For instance, it had
always been the custom for the two first bed-chamber women of the queen
to have for their own all the wax-lights placed daily in the whole suite
of royal apartments, whether lighted or not. These they sold for many
hundred pounds a year. When the king began to retrench, he took from
these women the wax-light privilege; and the candles which were not
lighted one evening served for the next. The ladies were not pleased at
being thus deprived of a large part of their income; but this, with the
few other retrenchments made by the royal family, was right. All these
retrenchments were nothing, however, in comparison with what was wanted.
The peasantry still had to pay the grievous land-tax, even when they
were reduced to eat boiled nettles and grass. The poor still had to buy
the quantity of dear salt ordered by law, even when they had no meat to
eat it with. The labouring man and his sons, weakened by hunger and
spent with toil, still had to turn out and work upon the roads, without
wages, while wife and young children were growing savage with want in
their ruined hut. It was all very well for the king and queen to burn
fewer wax-lights; but far happier would it have been could the monarch
have seen and known that the thing wanted was to relieve the poor from
these heavy oppressions; and that his duty was to uphold a minister who
would do it, even if every rich and noble person quitted his court, and
turned against him. This, however, was not to be expected; for the king
and queen lived amongst, and were acquainted with, not the poor, but the
noble and the rich, and heard only what they had to say.

It is not known whether little Louis was ever told what the poor suffer.
It is probable that he heard something of it; for his elder brother and
sister certainly had, upon one occasion. It was the queen's custom to
give her children a stock of new playthings on New Year's Day. One very
hard winter, she and t