pretty as little Cupids. They kept in good health up to their third or
fourth year; they went no further. It was as though a fate was over
these charming creatures; so that the King and Queen trembled whenever
the accoucheurs announced a daughter instead of a son.

My readers remember the little negress who was born to the Queen in the
early days,--she whom no one wanted, who was dismissed, relegated,
disinherited, unacknowledged, deprived of her rank and name the very day
of her birth; and who, by a freak of destiny, enjoyed the finest health
in the world, and surmounted, without any precautions or care, all the
difficulties, perils, and ailments of infancy.

M. Bontems, first valet de chambre of the cabinets, served as her
guardian, or curator; even he acted only through the efforts and
movements of an intermediary. It was wished that this young Princess
should be ignorant of her birth, and in this I agree that, in the midst
of crying injustice, the King kept his natural humanity. This poor child
not being meant, and not being able, to appear at Court, it was better,
indeed, to keep her from all knowledge of her rights, in order to deprive
her, at one stroke, of the distress of her conformation, the hardship of
her repudiation, and the despair of captivity. The King destined her for
a convent when he saw her born, and M. Bontems promised that it should be
so.

At the age of three, she was withdrawn from the hands of her nurse, and
Madame Bontems put her to be weaned in her own part of the world.
Opportune,--[She was born on Sainte Opportune's Day.]--clothed and
nourished like the other children of the farmer, who was her new patron,
played with them in the barns or amongst the snow; she followed them into
the orchards and fields; she filled, like them, her little basket with