In the Hall of the Clocks, in Versailles Palace, a pink-cheeked and meek-eyed young gentleman was walking about with a somewhat vulgar step. His arms were pendent and his head sunk forward. He was in his seventeenth year. He was recognizable as the king's heir by being the living image of the Bourbon race, most exaggerated. Louis Auguste, Duke of Berry and heir to the throne as the dauphin, soon wearied of his lounge and stopped to gaze with the air of one who understood horology, on the great clock in the back of the hall. It was a universal machine, which told of time to the century, with the lunar phases and the courses of the planets, and was always the prince's admiration.
Suddenly the hands on which his eyes were fastened came to a standstill. A grain of sand had checked the mechanism, and the master-piece was dead.
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