His accusations against the King only expressed the general feeling of the people whom he strove to please. True, this general sentiment would not have been possible had not the monarchy for years been its own worst enemy and made of itself a laughing stock. There is, indeed, no excuse for political murder. The King merited the guillotine as little as did thousands of others on both sides who were sacrificed to it on account of their political opinions. That Louis XVI was arraigned before a tribunal of his people, however, was in part at least the fault of the monarchy itself. This particular King possessed very few of those qualities which a nation expects from its sovereign. It is one of Fate’s most remarkable ironies that Louis XVI had every desire to be democratic--but his manner of so being was unfortunate to a degree. The story runs that as nineteen year old Dauphin he used to pursue the servants laden with soiled laundry in order to tickle them under the arms, and as King the blacksmith’s hammer and anvil were his favorite diversions. The young and charming Marie Antoinette found it hard to accustom herself to a clumsy husband with soiled hands who emerged red-faced from his smithy and approached her affectionately. It happened that did the King espy from a window masons working in the courtyard below he would run down with rolled-up sleeves to assist them. There is a certain kind of good nature that is inappropriate to Princes. His portraits show him as having a clumsy, phlegmatic figure and plain, not too intelligent features. A typical representative of a doomed caste, he lacked any energy to stem misfortune, any originality or appreciation of the new conceptions of the day. It seems as though a curse rests on people of this type, that everything they do tends only to make their situation worse, as though they help to bring about their own destruction. What weakness when in the hour of the greatest danger Louis writes to his brother, the Comte d’Artois: “I have revoked the orders that I gave. My troops will abandon Paris, and I will use more gentle means. Don’t speak to me of a Coup d’État, a display of force. I feel it is wiser to wait for the storm to abate, and to expect everything from time, from the awakening of right-thinking people and the love of the French nation for their King.” Ideas of this kind never arrested a revolution! It was fortunate for him that his phlegmatic temperament could find refuge in prayer. This quality helped him to meet death with resolution but was of small service to the caste he represented. The times were too violent for Christian temperaments such as the King’s. Once when David received a commission for a portrayal of Christ, and his patron remarked subsequently that the figure looked more like Cato, David’s reply was: “The times are not favorable for Christendom.” [Illustration: FIG. 18. MADAME SERIZIAT AND SON (1795) _Louvre, Paris_] [Illustration: FIG. 19. MONSIEUR SERIZIAT (1795)