With all her boastfulness, there was something in that presence which subdued the exuberance of Dame Tillery’s self-conceit. So she came forward smiling and blushing like a peony in the sunshine, and waited in a flutter of expectation for the queen to address her. “So, my good dame, you have found your audience, though we had forgotten it,” said Marie Antoinette. Dame Tillery performed one of her profound courtesies, which swept the grass with the swelling circumference of her garments. “The gentleman up yonder knowing that the queen desired my company, bade me and my companion walk in the Park until the pleasure of your highness should be known; these were his very words.” “So you came out here to see our Park, and chanced upon this spot. Well, dame, all places are proper where a service is to be rewarded. Madame has a purse of gold that I have desired her to present to you.” Madame Campan arose, smiling, and placed the purse in Dame Tillery’s hand, which was rather reluctantly extended. The queen who was not accustomed to see her favors received with awkward silence, looked a little annoyed; but before she could speak, Dame Tillery had dropped down on her knees in the grass, making what a school-girl would have called enormous cheeses with her dress, and clasped her plump hands in a passion of entreaty. “Take the money back. Oh! your royal highness and sacred majesty, take back the gold! It is another reward I want.” “Another,” said the queen, scarcely caring to check the burst of sunshiny humor that came over her face. “Well, let us hear what it is that you love better than gold.” “Oh, madame! Oh, my queen! I love the wife of our king ten thousand times better than gold or precious stones. I want to serve her; I want to adore her. I pine to go forth among the people and say how good, how grand, how beautiful she is! I wish to say that it is not always from the nobility she chooses those who serve her; but where the people have ability, she is ready to acknowledge it.” “And so I am,” answered Marie Antoinette, looking at Madame Campan for sympathy with this new idea. “So I am, if that would please our subjects; but how to begin.” The queen had addressed her companion in a low voice, but Dame Tillery heard her. Leaning forward, and pressing one hand into the grass, she lifted herself up and spoke with great earnestness, before the little governess had time to collect her thoughts. “I do not ask to be made a lady of the palace!” Here the smile that had hovered about the queen’s lips broke into a laugh, so clear and ringing that the dame stopped abruptly, and looked around to see what object could have given her majesty such amusement; but discovering nothing, she went on, “No, I ask nothing of that kind; but there is a position, a title, as one may assert, that a woman of the people might fairly claim. Make me the Dame of the Dairy.”