less pomp and fuss about him than was
made about his brother, the heir to the throne. Yet, from the day of
his birth, he had an establishment of his own; and while a little
unconscious baby, not knowing one person from another, and wanting
nothing but to eat and sleep, he was called the master of several
ladies, waiting-women, gentlemen, and footmen, who were appointed to
attend upon him.

We happen to have full accounts of the way of living of this royal
family in the days of their prosperity, as well as of their adventures
when adversity overtook them. Up to the time when the Duke of Normandy
was four years old, life in the palace was as follows.

The oldest members of the royal family were the king's aunts,--the great
aunts of the Duke of Normandy. There were four sisters, all unmarried.
One of them had gone into a convent, and found herself very happy there.
After the dulness of her life at home, she quite enjoyed taking her
turn with the other nuns in helping to cook in the kitchen, and in
looking after the linen in the wash-house. Her three sisters led
dreadfully dull lives. They had each spacious apartments, with ladies
and gentlemen ushers to wait on them,--a reader to read aloud so many
hours a day, and money to buy whatever they liked. But they had nothing
to do,--and nobody to love very dearly. They were without husbands and
children, and even intimate friends; for all about them of their own age
and way of thinking were of a rank too far below their own to be made
intimate friends of. These ladies duly attended divine service in the
royal chapel; and they did a great deal of embroidery and tapestry-work.
When the proper hour came for paying their respects to their niece the
queen, they tied on their large hooped petticoats, and other articles of
court-dress, had their trains borne by their pages, and went to the
queen's apartment to make their courtesies, and sit down for a little
while, chiefly to show that they had a right to sit down unasked in the
royal presence. In a few minutes they went back to their apartments,
slipped off their hooped petticoats and long trains, and sat down to
their work again. They would have liked to take walks about Paris and
into the country, as they saw from their windows that other ladies did;
but it was not to be thought of,--it would have been too undignified: so
they were obliged to be contented with a formal, slow, daily drive, each
in her own carriage, each a