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brothers. Contemporaries mistook his shyness and
sluggish manner for a lack of intelligence, and this negative image
was reinforced by his physical appearance. Although he had the
blue eyes and blond hair of his German mother, he inherited a tendency toward corpulence from his father-a trait compounded over
time by a passionate love of food and drink. Even as a young man
he seemed little concerned with his personal appearance, and he
walked slowly in an awkward, tottering gait that seemed the very antithesis of courtly grace. The description of Madame de Campan,
one of the queen's ladies in waiting, was not untypical: "His step
was heavy and without noble bearing. He quite neglected his
clothes, and despite the daily efforts of his hairdresser, his hair was
promptly in disorder from the utter carelessness of his manner."'

    [To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
    Louis XVI at the End of the Old Regime. Heavyset, with his double chin,
stooped posture, and somewhat sleepy look, Louis appeared the very opposite
of the elegant Versailles courtier.

    Contemporaries were also nonplussed by his fascination with
physical activities like locksmithing and masonry, hobbies that
"shocked the common prejudices as to the proper pastimes for a
monarch"-as even his locksmith instructor was reported to have
told him.' The one such practice that fully matched both general expectations and the image of his royal predecessors was his passion
for hunting. As an adolescent, he went out almost daily, roaming
the several great royal forests surrounding Paris and learning by
heart every alley and byway. As king, he was prepared to cancel a
meeting with foreign ambassadors, even in time of war, whenever a
fine day for the hunt presented itself.' And he maintained a precise
journal of every expedition, listing each stag, boar, rabbit, and
swallow shot or run down by his dogs, in an animal hecatomb of
nearly 200,000 "pieces" spanning fourteen years.'
    Yet despite the snide remarks of courtiers and ambassadors and
despite his own misgivings, Louis was not unintelligent. Considerable care had been taken with his education, especially after the
deaths of his father and older brother made him the dauphin, the direct heir to the throne. He applied himself methodically, perhaps
even taking refuge in his studies from the demands of a court for
which he had so little natural grace and predilection. And his accomplishments were not unimpressive. Eventually he learned English, German, and Italian. With an excellent memory for detail, he
excelled in astronomy, geography, and history, and with the help of
his tutor he undertook a translation of the English historian Gibbon. He read all his life, occasionally commenting on the newspapers he had perused, even purchasing a copy of Diderot's celebrated Encyclopedia in 1777. He also adored maps, knew French
geography exceptionally well, and sometimes plotted out the trips
he hoped one day to make through his kingdom.' Indeed, he had an almost obsessive fascination with facts and figures, as demonstrated
by his immense hunting logs and by the endless lists and summary
tables drawn up with all the precision of an accountant or a Benedictine monk: of the names and careers over time of all the palace
servants and the keepers of his hounds; of the names and descriptions of every horse he had ridden since age eleven (a total of 128);
of the animals sighted in the various royal parks; and of every detail in his daily household budget. He maintained a personal diary
as well, but this, too, was essentially a factual recapitulation of activities, in which hunting again took pride of place. Nowhere were
there any indications of personal sentiments or ideas.'

    Perhaps more than any of his Bourbon predecessors, Louis also
received careful instruction in what his tutors conceived to be the
duties and obligations of kingship, instructions that while still a boy
he