Down
with you into the basket, and if you venture to put your head up
again, and if to-morrow you are not obedient and do just what we bid
you, I will beat you and him, both of you, to pieces, and pack you
into the clothes-basket, and carry you away. Down into the basket!"
The boy sank down out of sight; and when, after a little while,
Jeanne Marie cautiously looked to see whether he had fallen asleep,
she saw that Louis Charles was kneeling on the bottom of the basket,
and raising his folded hands up to heaven.
"Simon," she whispered--" Simon, do not laugh at me and scold me.
You say, I know, that there is no God, and the republic has done
away with Deity, and the Church, and the priests. But let me once
kneel down and pray to Him with whom little Louis Charles is talking
now, and to whom the Austrian spoke on the scaffold."
Without waiting for Simon's answer, Jeanne Marie sank upon her
knees. Folding her hands, she leaned her forehead on the rim of the
basket, and softly whispered, "Louis Charles, do you hear me?"
"Yes," lisped the child, "I hear you."
"I ask your forgiveness," whispered Jeanne Marie. "I have sinned
dreadfully against you, but remorse has taken hold of my heart, and
tears it in pieces and gives me no rest day or night. Oh, forgive
me, son of the queen, and when you pray, implore your mother to
forgive me the evil that I have done her.
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