at the peaceful close of his reign his whole budget was 4,655,000 livres--as against 1,800,000 livres at the close of his father's reign. The king who did most for French royalty would have made a sorry figure at the court of a Louis XIV. He was ungainly, with rickety legs. His eyes were keen and piercing, but a long hooked nose lent grotesqueness to a face marked with cunning rather than with dignity. Its ugliness was emphasized by the old felt hat which he wore,--its sole ornament the leaden figure of a saint. Until the close of his life, when he tried to mislead ambassadors as to the state of his health by gorgeous robes, he wore the meanest clothes. Dressed in grey like a pilgrim, and accompanied by five or six trustworthy servants, he would set out on his interminable travels, "ambling along on a good mule." Thus he traversed France, avoiding all ceremony, entering towns by back streets, receiving ambassadors in wayside huts, dining in public houses, enjoying the loose manners and language of his associates, and incidentally learning at first hand the condition of his people and the possibilities of using or taxing them--his needs of them rather than theirs of him. He loved to win men, especially those of the middle class, by affability and familiarity, employing all his arts to cajole and seduce those whom he needed. Yet his honied words easily turned to gall. He talked rapidly and much, sometimes for hours at a time, and most indiscreetly. He was not an agreeable companion, violent in his passions, nervous, restless, and in old age extremely irascible. Utterly unscrupulous, and without a trace of pity, he treated men like pawns, and was content only with absolute obedience. But this Machiavellian prince was the genuine son of St Louis. His religiosity was genuine if degenerate. He lavished presents on influential saints, built shrines, sent gifts to churches, went on frequent pilgrimages and spent much time in prayer--employing his consummate diplomacy to win celestial allies, and rewarding them richly when their aid secured him any advantage. St Martin of Tours received 1200 crowns after the capture of Perpignan. He tried to bribe the saints of his enemies, as he did their ministers. An unfaltering faith taught him the value of religion--as a branch of politics. Finally, more in the spirit of orthodoxy, he used the same arts to make sure of heaven. When the ring of St Zanobius and the blood of Cape Verde turtles gave him no relief from his last illness, he showered gifts upon his patron saints, secured for his own benefit the masses of his clergy, and the most potent prayers in Christendom, those of the two most effective saints of his day, Bernardin of Doulins and Francis of Paolo.