“He is an amiable being, and a nice child,” she remarked one day to another woman. “He cleans and polishes my shoes, and makes the fire for me when I get up,” for these were also his duties now. Alas! what a change from the days when every morning he had brought his adored mother a nosegay from his garden, picked and arranged with his own hands! Now, the drudge of a shoemaker’s wife—poor, lovely, high-born little Prince! A systematic effort was made to debase the child in every way, morally and physically; no pains were spared to vitiate his pure innocent mind and make him familiar with the most revolting infamies. Madame Simon cut off his beautiful hair for no other reason than because it had been his mother’s delight. As it happened, some guards and deputies witnessed the act, and one of them, a good-natured fellow named Meunier, cried out: “Oh, what have you slashed off all his pretty hair for?” “What for?” retorted Madame Simon. “Why, don’t you see, citizen, we were playing the part of dethroned King, here!” And all, with the exception of Meunier, burst into shouts of laughter over the shorn lamb, who bent his poor little disfigured head upon his breast in mute despair. Not content with this outrage, that same evening the brutal wretches forced the child to drink large quantities of wine, which he detested; and when they had succeeded in making him drunk, so that he did not know what he was doing, Simon put the red cap on his head. “At last I see you a Jacobin!” cried the villain, triumphantly, as the Revolutionary emblem nodded on the brow of the unhappy descendant of Louis the Fourteenth, the proudest King of Christendom! They had broken the child’s noble pride at last—one shudders to think by what terrible means; and from this time a few blows or curses sufficed to make him put on the new head-covering. Thus far the wretched child’s unhappy fate had remained unknown to his mother, although she had never ceased to implore the guards or deputies for news of him. They all assured her that she need not be uneasy about her son—that he was in good hands and well cared for; but all these protestations failed to soothe her maternal anxiety and but too well-founded distrust.