I wonder, too, if Louis knew about this dauphin, would he still continue to hate the picture? Or would he be afraid of it? I'm just crazy to tell him, yet I suppose it wouldn't be fair,--at present, anyway. Good gracious! An idea has just occurred to me. I happened to think of that strange dream Louis said he had when he was sick. Was there ever anything so curious? I remember that he said the little fellow seemed so changed, with ragged clothes and matted hair and tear-stained cheeks and a red cap on his head! Why, that is just the way one of those books described him after he was put in charge of the cobbler. Simon took away all his nice clothes and made him wear a red "liberty-cap," and forced him to sing the songs of the revolution and dance for him. And Louis dreamed all that change in his appearance, yet he doesn't know who the subject of the portrait is and very little, if anything, about this dauphin, in all probability. This is simply uncanny! I must tell Carol in the morning. April 19. I haven't had a chance to write a thing in this journal for a week. We have been having the dressmaker. She's getting all our spring things in order, and I've had to help her and Mother with the sewing every spare minute that I've had. Father's been laid up, too, with an acute attack of rheumatism, and was in bed several days. For nearly half the week I didn't even go to school. So, altogether, I've been having a rather strenuous time. But, all the same, I haven't forgotten our mystery for a single minute. Carol has kept me posted on anything new that has happened, though nothing special did happen till yesterday. She has been madly reading history ever since. She always did have a taste for it, and this has given her the inspiration to read up French history from the very beginning. She says she's finding it as interesting as a story. Well, maybe she is, but I'm sure _I_ wouldn't. One thing she said was that the more she read, the more she felt that the French weren't much to blame for what they did while getting rid of their kings and queens in that revolution. Of course they might have used gentler means, but they were probably too exasperated by the way they'd been downtrodden. From almost the beginning the reigning monarchs were a _precious lot_, evidently considering it their chief business in life to squeeze the most they could out of their subjects. Each one felt he'd lived in vain, apparently, if he hadn't gone his ancestor one better at that occupation! Carol says that Louis XVI seems to have been a lot better than most of them, but by that time the French were too furious to consider that, I suppose. Anyway, he had to suffer for what his ancestors had done.