Apparently, at least, the visible instrument that accomplished this great result was the dogma of absolute power, the monarchical régime; the king was the earthly image of God, divine, inviolable: _loyalisme_ was a veritable religion, it had its symbols, its mysteries, and its rites. "If the king were not afraid of the devil," said Saint-Simon, "he would cause himself to be worshipped." This faith and this worship were already manifested "in their incomparable splendor by the ceremonies attending the opening of the _États Généraux_ in 1614, dominated, not, as in 1789, by the august and abstract idea of the nation, but by the pale and melancholy figure of a boy of thirteen." For the tremendous and elaborate pomp of his court, the ceremonial ostentation which hedged around his own redoubtable figure, the tedious and suffocating etiquette which attended all approach to his person, Louis XIV himself had very definite reasons, which he expressed with an appreciable logic in his _Mémoires_. "Those who deem that these are only matters of ceremony deceive themselves greatly. The people over whom we reign, not being able to penetrate to the depths of things, form their judgments usually on that which they see on the surface, and most frequently measure their respect and their obedience by precedence and rank. As it is important to the public to be governed by one only, it is also of importance to it that he who fills this function should be elevated in such a manner above the others that there should be no person who can be either confounded or compared with him, and it is not possible, without injury to the whole body of the State, to deprive its chief of the slightest marks of superiority which distinguish him from all the other members."