King Louis XVI. was then only thirty-seven years of age; his features resembled those of his race, rendered somewhat heavy by the German blood of his mother, a princess of the house of Saxony.  Fine blue eyes, very wide open, and clear rather than dazzling, a round and retreating forehead, a Roman nose, the nostrils flaccid and large, and somewhat destroying the energy of the aquiline profile, a mouth smiling and gracious in expression, lips thick, but well shaped, a fine skin, fresh 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 Caesars 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 Fenelon 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 point of corruption in which purity appears ridiculous, and modesty was treated with contempt.

Married at twenty years of age to a daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, the young prince had continued until his accession to the throne in his life of domestic retirement, study, and isolation.  Europe was slumbering in a disgraceful peace.  War, that exercise of princes, could not thus form him by contact with men and the custom of command.  Fields of battle, which are the theatre of great actors of his stamp, had not brought him under the observation of his people.  No prestige, except the circumstance of birth,