The Princess Elizabeth ran out of the room, and returned with a sickle in each hand, which she held out of the window with a demure smile. “Let them cut grass for the cows,” she said, “while we go on with our butter-making.” The young Duke de Richelieu, for it was no less a person, took the sickles, and tossing one to the feet of his companion, fell upon his knees beneath the window, and made an awkward attempt at cutting the grass. The ladies at the window burst into shouts of mellow laughter, and smoothing their aprons, went to work again like so many dairy-maids. “Now,” said Marie Antoinette, approaching the churn, “I will be more obedient.” She took the dasher between her hands, and continued the slow, steady motion, which seemed so easy to Dame Tillery. The work had almost been done in her hands. Directly she saw the ridges of cream that gathered in a circle about the dasher divide off into particles, while the rejected milk flowed in thin bluish drops back to the churn. “It has come!” exclaimed Dame Tillery, with mild triumph. “What has come?” demanded her pupil, astonished to hear a liquid-splash come up from the churn, instead of a mellow sound, half-smothered in the richness of the cream, which her dasher had all the time produced. “What has come? Your, your —— My pretty dame! why, the butter, of course. You can hear it floating in lumps against the dasher.” “Butter! and I have really made it! Oh! how delicious, Campan. Elizabeth Polignac, come and see your Capet in her glory. Butter of her own churning—golden butter, sweet as violets, and such quantities! Look! look!” The queen lifted the lid of her churn, and a swarm of pretty women crowded around it. “Oh! this is something like!” exclaimed one. “Superb!” cried another. “But how are we to get it out?” “Bring a dish,” said Dame Tillery, whose portly figure seemed to swell and broaden under a consciousness of superior knowledge. “Bring a dish, little one.” CHAPTER XXI. DAME TILLERY TEACHES THE COURT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT. Marguerite sprang from her place at the window, and taking a long porcelain dish from the table, brought it to the churn, and kneeling on the door, held it up to be filled. Dame Tillery arose, slipped the lid of the churn over the handle of the dasher, and gave the whole group a view of the golden treasure floating within. Then she gave the dasher a dexterous twirl, and drew it up gently, laden with fragrant butter, from which a white rain of milk dripped back in showers. Easily and daintily she deposited this first relay upon the dish, and dropped the dasher for another deposit. But here the queen broke in, “No, no! I must gather it with my own hands. I promised the ki—— that is, my good man, that he should breakfast on butter of my own making, and so he shall. This is the way you separate it from the milk?”