and high-coloured in tint, though rather loose; of short stature, stout
frame, timid carriage, irregular walk, and, when not moving, a
restlessness of body in shifting first one foot and then the other
without advancing--a habit contracted either from that impatience common
to princes compelled to undergo long audiences, or else the outward
token of the constant wavering of an undecided mind. In his person there
was an expression of _bonhommie_ more vulgar than royal, which at the
first glance inspired as much derision as veneration, and on which his
enemies seized with contemptuous perversity, in order to show to the
people in the features of their ruler the visible and personal sign of
those vices they sought to destroy in royalty; in the _tout ensemble_
some resemblance to the imperial physiognomy of the later Cæsars at the
period of the fall of things and races,--the mildness of Antoninus, with
the vast obesity of Vitellius;--this was precisely the man.


X.

This young prince had been educated in complete solitude at the court of
Louis XV. The atmosphere which had infected the age had not touched his
heir. Whilst Louis XV. had changed his court into a place of ill-fame,
his grandson, educated in a corner of the palace of Meudon by pious and
enlightened masters, grew up in respect for his rank, in awe of the
throne, and in a real love for the people whom he was one day to be
called upon to govern. The soul of Fénélon seemed to have traversed two
generations of kings in the palace where he had brought up the Duke of
Burgundy, in order to inspire the education of his descendant. What was
nearest the crowned vice upon the throne was perhaps the most pure of
any thing in France. If the age had not been as dissolute as the king,
it would have directed his love in that direction. He had reached that