He was handsome, like all his race.  Slender figure, firm step, smiling countenance, piercing glance, limbs made supple by all bodily exercises, with a heart disposed to love, and a splendid horseman, that great accomplishment of princes; a condescension void of familiarity, a ready eloquence, unquestionable courage, liberal to the arts, even to extravagance; those faults which are only due to the luxuries of the age, all marked him out as a popular favourite.  He took every advantage of it; and, perhaps, his early intoxication with it somewhat affected his natural good sense.  The love of the people appeared to him a means of avenging himself for the contempt in which the court neglected him.  In his mind he braved the king of Versailles, feeling himself king of Paris.

He had married a princess of a race as beloved by the people; the only daughter of the Duc de Penthievre.  Lovely, amiable, and virtuous, she brought to her husband as dowry, with the vast fortune of the Duc de Penthievre, that amount of consideration and public esteem which belonged to her house.  The first political act of the Duc d’Orleans was a bold resistance to the wishes of the court, at the period of the exile of the parliaments.  Exiled himself in his chateau of Villars-Cotterets, the esteem and interest of the people followed him.  The applauses of France sweetened the disgrace of the court.  He believed that he comprehended the part of a great citizen in a free country; he desired to do so.  He forgot too easily, in the atmosphere of adulation which surrounded him, that a man is not a great citizen only to please the people, but to defend—­serve—­and frequently to resist them.

Returned to Paris, he was desirous of joining the prestige of glory of arms to the civic crowns, with which his name was already decorated.  He solicited of the court the dignity of grand-admiral of France, the survivorship of which belonged to him, after the Duc de Penthievre, his father-in-law.  He was refused.  He embarked as a volunteer on board the fleet, commanded by the Comte d’Orvilliers, and was at the battle of Ouessant on the 17th of July, 1778.  The results of this fight, when victory remained without conquest, in consequence of a false manoeuvre, were imputed to the weakness of Duc d’Orleans, who wished to check the pursuit of the enemy.  This dishonouring report, invented and disseminated by court hatred, soured the resentments of the young prince, but could not hide the brilliancy of his courage, which he displayed in caprices unworthy of his rank.  At St. Cloud he sprang into the first balloon that carried aerial navigators into space.  Calumny followed him even there, and a report was spread that he had burst the balloon with a thrust of his sword, in order to compel his companions to descend.  Then arose between the court and himself a continual struggle of boldness on the one hand and slander on the other.  The king treated him, however, with