bent, that people called him the Cardinal Mazarin.

Louis was at this time endowed with all the natural gifts
which make the perfect gentleman; his eye was brilliant,
mild, and of a clear azure blue. But the most skillful
physiognomists, those divers into the soul, on fixing their
looks upon it, if it had been possible for a subject to
sustain the glance of the king, -- the most skillful
physiognomists, we say, would never have been able to fathom
the depths of that abyss of mildness. It was with the eyes
of the king as with the immense depths of the azure heavens,
or with those more terrific, and almost as sublime, which
the Mediterranean reveals under the keels of its ships in a
clear summer day, a gigantic mirror in which heaven delights
to reflect sometimes its stars, sometimes its storms.

The king was short of stature -- he was scarcely five feet
two inches: but his youth made up for this defect, set off
likewise by great nobleness in all his movements, and by
considerable address in all bodily exercises.

Certes, he was already quite a king, and it was a great
thing to be a king in that period of traditional devotedness
and respect; but as, up to that time, he had been but seldom
and always poorly shown to the people, as they to whom he
was shown saw him by the side of his mother, a tall woman,
and monsieur le cardinal, a man of commanding presence, many
found him so little of a king as to say, --

"Why, the king is not so tall as monsieur le cardinal!"