ote themselves to the one
great object of escape.

Poor little Louis must have been very sorry. He had seen the hay-making
at Saint Cloud, last summer: and now he must have been pleased at the
thought of the sweet fields and gardens of the country, and the woods
just bursting into leaf. There were many woods about Saint Cloud. He
knew nothing of armed nobles lurking there to save him and his family.
What he thought of was the violets and daffodils, and fresh grass and
sprouting shrubs,--the young lambs in the field, and the warbling larks
in the air. And now, when actually in the carriage to go (his garden
tools probably gone before), he had to get out again, and stay in hot,
dusty, glaring Paris; and, what was far worse, in danger of seeing every
day the sneering, angry faces which had been crowded round the carriage
for nearly two hours; and of hearing, wherever he walked, the cruel
laugh or fierce abuse with which his parents were greeted when they
attempted to do anything which the people did not like. No doubt, the
little boy's heart was heavy when he was lifted from the coach, and went
back into the palace.

How much happier he might have been if he had been one of the children
he had seen hay-making at Saint Cloud, the year before! Or even as the
child of a Paris tradesman he might have been happier than now, though
the children of the tradesmen of capital cities seldom have a run in the
fields, or gather violets in the fresh woods of April. But, as a
shop-keeper's child, he might at least have seen his father cheerful in
his employment, and his mother bright and gay. He might have passed his
days without hearing passionate voices, and seeing angry faces; without
dreaming of being afraid. It was now nothing to him that he was born a
prince, and constantly told that he was to be a king. He saw nothing in
his father's condition that made him think it a good thing to be a king;
and he would have given all the grandeur in which he lived, all the
ladies and footmen that waited upon him, all his pretty clothes, all his
many playthings, all the luxuries of the palace, to be free from the
terrors of the revolution, and to see his parents look as happy as other
children see theirs every day.

He did not know it, but preparations were from this time going on
diligently for an escape,--for a real flight, by night.

We must not suppose that in this, any more than other affairs, the king
showed decision, or the