est ballads of the Paris
streets. It was he who had a ring of fairies dance about the Lord
Chamberlain until that haughty person was so dizzy that he had to put
his hands to his eyes and run as rapidly as dignity would let him to a
place of safety. The boy took his orders from the beautiful Queen of the
Fairies, Marie Antoinette, who, more radiant and lovely than ever, sat
on the rustic throne and sent her messengers to the different groups in
the gardens. Beside her stood the young King Louis, laughing and
admiring the ingenuity of her plans.

Next day, however, came the retribution. The courtiers were up in arms.
They had managed to go through one such evening, but they did not
propose to stand another. The most important people in France went to
the King and placed their grievances before him. Louis loved peace, so
that now he was willing to take the side of the courtiers, and as a
result the day of the children was over.

Marie Antoinette, fond of pleasure above everything else, tried to have
her way for a short time, but before a month had passed, the weight of
its old time formal dignity had fallen on Versailles, and the children
were again made to pattern after their elders.

Fond as the young Marquis had been of the good times with playmates of
his own age at Versailles, he could not endure the stiff court nor look
with any satisfaction to the formal life which most of the young men of
the time led. He was naturally too independent to bow and scrape as was
required. In spite of his careful training he found that he had not
acquired the endless flow of frivolous talk which was popular at court.
He was usually silent in company, and more and more given to going away
by himself, in order to escape the affectations of the life about him.
His only chance seemed to lie in the army, and therefore he spent a
great deal of his time with his regiment of Black Musketeers, and began
to plan for a military career.

He had been made a cadet of the old French regiment called the Black
Musketeers when he was only twelve years old. Then he was a slight
little chap with bright reddish hair and very fair complexion, and much
too small to carry a man's arms; but he was so fond of the
splendid-looking set of men that whenever they paraded he was sure to be
somewhere near at hand to watch them. The boy's name had been placed on
the Musketeers' rolls, though not as a regular cadet, very soon after
his birth, because his great-uncl