riumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his reign were not
achieved by himself,--though his later years were crowded with defeats
and humiliations,--though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood
the Latin of his mass-book,--though he fell under the control of a
cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman,--he succeeded in passing
himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the
more extraordinary because he did not seclude himself from the public
gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen, and whose
very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no
man is a hero to his valet;--and all the world saw as much of Louis the
Fourteenth 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, w