as his valet could see.  Five hundred people assembled to see him shave and put on his breeches in the morning.  He then kneeled down at the side of his bed, and said his prayer, while the whole assembly awaited the end in solemn silence,—­the ecclesiastics on their knees, and the laymen with their hats before their faces.  He walked about his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels.  All Versailles came to see him dine and sup.  He was put to bed at night in the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in the morning.  He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically in the presence of all the grandes and petites entrees.  Yet though he constantly exposed himself to the public gaze in situations in which it is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity, he to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe and reverence.  The illusion which he produced on his worshippers can be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially subject during the season of courtship.  It was an illusion which affected even the senses.  The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall.  Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly of his majestic stature.  Yet it is as certain as any fact can be, that he was rather below than above the middle size.  He had, it seems, a way of holding himself, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of the multitude.  Eighty years after his death, the royal cemetery was violated by the revolutionists; his coffin was opened; his body was dragged out; and it appeared that the prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and loudly extolled, was in truth a little man.

His person and his government have had the same fate.  He had the art of making both appear grand and august, in spite of the clearest evidence that both were below the ordinary standard.  Death and time have exposed both the deceptions.  The body of the great King has been measured more justly than it was measured by the courtiers who were afraid to look above his shoe-tie.  His public character has been scrutinized by men free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Moliere.  In the grave, the most majestic of princes is only five feet eight.  In history, the hero and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant.—­the slave of priests and women,—­little in war, little in government,—­little in every thing but the art of simulating greatness.