Of all the victims of that bloody period, there is none whose story is so touching as that of the little son of Louis and Marie Antoinette. He was born at Versailles on the 27th of March, 1785. All eye-witnesses describe him as a bright and lovely child, with shining curls of fair hair, large, blue eyes, liquid as a summer sky, and a countenance of angelic sweetness and rare intelligence--“a thing of joy” to all who beheld him. Crowds waited for hours to catch a glimpse of him disporting himself in his little garden before the palace, a flower amidst the flower-beds, prattling with every one, making the old park ring with his joyous laughter. One day, when in the midst of his play, he ran to meet his mother, and, flinging himself into a bush for greater haste, got scratched by the thorns; the queen chided him for the foolish impetuosity. “How then?” replied the child; “you told me only yesterday that the road to glory was through thorns.” “Yes, but glory means devotion to duty, my son,” was Marie Antoinette’s reply. “Then,” cried the little man, throwing his arms, round her knees, “I will make it my glory to be devoted to you, mamma!” He was about four years old when this anecdote was told of him. It is rather characteristic of the child’s destiny that two hours after the bereavement which made him Dauphin of France, and while his parents were breaking their hearts by the still warm body of his elder brother, a deputation from the Tiers Etat came to demand an audience of the king. Louis XVI. was a prey to the first agony of his paternal grief, and sent to entreat the deputies to spare him, and return another day. They sent back an imperious answer, insisting on his appearing. “Are there no fathers amongst them?” exclaimed the king; but he came out and received them. The incident was trifling, yet it held one of those notes of prophetic anticipation which now first began to be heard, foretelling the approaching storm in which the old ship of French royalty was to be wrecked. On the 6th of October the palace of Versailles was stormed by the mob; the guards were massacred, the royal family led captives to Paris amidst the triumphant yells of the _sans-culottes_. Then followed the gilded captivity of the Tuileries, which lasted three years; then came the 10th of August, when this was exchanged for the more degrading prison of the Temple; then the _Conciergerie_--then the scaffold.