than those of old age. Deceived by every one, even by the minions
about him, experience had intensified his natural distrust. The desire
to live became in him the egotism of a king who has incarnated himself
in his people; he wished to prolong his life in order to carry out his
vast designs.

All that the common-sense of publicists and the genius of revolutions
has since introduced of change in the character of monarchy, Louis XI.
had thought of and devised. Unity of taxation, equality of subjects
before the law (the prince being then the law) were the objects of his
bold endeavors. On All-Saints' eve he had gathered together the
learned goldsmiths of his kingdom for the purpose of establishing in
France a unity of weights and measures, as he had already established
the unity of power. Thus, his vast spirit hovered like an eagle over
his empire, joining in a singular manner the prudence of a king to the
natural idiosyncracies of a man of lofty aims. At no period in our
history has the great figure of Monarchy been finer or more poetic.
Amazing assemblages of contrasts! a great power in a feeble body; a
spirit unbelieving as to all things here below, devoutly believing in
the practices of religion; a man struggling with two powers greater
than his own--the present and the future; the future in which he
feared eternal punishment, a fear which led him to make so many
sacrifices to the Church; the present, namely his life itself, for the
saving of which he blindly obeyed Coyctier. This king, who crushed
down all about him, was himself crushed down by remorse, and by
disease in the midst of the great poem of defiant monarchy in which
all power was concentrated. It was once more the gigantic and ever
magnificent combat of Man in the highest manifestation of his forces
tilting against Nature.