him only one of God's elect, little imagined him to be the declared enemy
of a Princess whom she served and revered. On the day of his death she ran
in tears to relate to the Queen the piety, humility, and repentance of the
last moments of the Duc de La Vauguyon. He had called his people
together, she said, to ask their pardon. "For what?" replied the Queen,
sharply; "he has placed and pensioned off all his servants; it was of the
King and his brothers that the holy man you bewail should have asked
pardon, for having paid so little attention to the education of princes on
whom the fate and happiness of twenty-five millions of men depend.
Luckily," added she, "the King and his brothers, still young, have
incessantly laboured to repair the errors of their preceptor."

The progress of time, and the confidence with which the King and the
Princes, his brothers, were inspired by the change in their situation
since the death of Louis XV., had developed their characters. I will
endeavour to depict them.

The features of Louis XVI. were noble enough, though somewhat melancholy
in expression; his walk was heavy and unmajestic; his person greatly
neglected; his hair, whatever might be the skill of his hairdresser, was
soon in disorder. His voice, without being harsh, was not agreeable; if
he grew animated in speaking he often got above his natural pitch, and
became shrill. The Abbe de Radonvilliers, his preceptor, one of the Forty
of the French Academy, a learned and amiable man, had given him and
Monsieur a taste for study. The King had continued to instruct himself;
he knew the English language perfectly; I have often heard him translate
some of the most difficult passages in Milton's poems. He was a skilful
geographer, and was fond of drawing and colouring maps; he was well versed
in history, but had not perhaps sufficiently studied the spirit of it. He
appreciated dramatic beauties, and judged them accurately. At Choisy, one