Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/324

 286 Readings in European History In whatever did not concern what he believed to be his rightful authority and prerogative, he showed a natural kind- ness of heart and a sense of justice which made one regret the education, the flatteries, the artifice which resulted in preventing him from being his real self except on the rare occasions when he gave way to some natural impulse and showed that, — prerogative aside, which choked and stifled everything, — he loved truth, justice, order, reason, — that he loved even to let himself be vanquished. How Louis Nothing could be regulated with greater exactitude than spent his day. were his days and hours. In spite of all his variety of places, affairs, and amusements, with an almanac and a watch one might tell, three hundred leagues away, exactly what he was doing. . . . Except at Marly, any man could have an oppor- tunity to speak to him five or six times during the day ; he listened, and almost always replied, " I will see," in order not to accord or decide anything lightly. Never a reply or a speech that would give pain ; patient to the last degree in business and in matters of personal service ; completely master of his face, manner, and bearing ; never giving way to impatience or anger. If he administered reproof, it was rarely, in few words, and never hastily. He did not lose control of himself ten times in his whole life, and then only with inferior persons, and not more than four or five times seriously. Now for the reverse of the picture : 340a. Out- Louis XIV's vanity was without limit or restraint ; it rageous colored everything and convinced him that no one even the king. approached him in military talents, in plans and enterprises, in government. Hence those pictures and inscriptions in the gallery at Versailles which disgust every foreigner ; those opera prologues that he himself tried to sing ; that flood of prose and verse in his praise for which his appetite was insatiable ; those dedications of statues copied from pagan sculpture, and the insipid and sickening compliments that were continually offered to him in person and which he swallowed with unfailing relish ; hence his distaste for all