In person Louis was very like his father, with his great height, pale face, and the excessive corpulence that neither constant activity in the field nor unwearied labours in the chase could subdue, and which gave him his almost contemporary surname of the Fat. Like his father also, he was greedy and sensual. But with all his faults, he had acquired at Saint-Denis the softness and mildness of disposition which was his most essential characteristic. He was, moreover, just, loyal, and upright, ever preferring to reach his aims by simple and direct means rather than by craft and treachery. ‘A mighty athlete and an eminent gladiator,’ as his biographer calls him, he was constantly engaged fighting from youth upwards, and never abandoned his military habits, though at the age of forty-six he was too bulky to be able to mount on horseback. His nobles disliked him, as the Normans disliked Henry I., for his love of men of low condition. He was no knight-errant, but a shrewd practical warrior, ever bent on maintaining or increasing his power, and making the chief object of his activity the abasement of the barons of the royal domain and the protection of the poor and the weak from their high-handed violence. He also carefully watched the overgrown power of the great feudatories. Unlike his father, Louis kept on good terms with the Church, posing as the protector of churchmen from the brutality and greed of the lay baronage. He was ever mindful of the monks, and never lost his love for the home of his youth. [Sidenote: Suger.] His famous minister Suger became, in 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis, and the relations of king and minister went back to the days when Louis abode within the great abbey where Suger, a boy like himself, was being prepared for the religious vocation. A man of humble origin, small and mean appearance, and with wretched health, but restless, indefatigable, clear-sighted and politic, Suger’s brain suggested a subtle policy such as the rough soldier-king delighted to follow. Suger accompanied his master in all his travels, and kept so constantly at court that the zealots reproached him with neglecting the administration of his abbey. In Louis’ later years the influence of St. Bernard induced the statesman-monk to make the reform of the discipline of Saint-Denis one of his main objects of attention. But he never lost his influence over Louis, and to his interest in the strong Church party must be largely attributed the direction of Louis’ ecclesiastical policy. After the king’s death, Suger wrote his biography, and gave us the clearest notion of the life and work of the first Capetian king who approached greatness.[22] [Sidenote: The conquest of the royal domain.]