Another feature of the reign which marks the semi-oriental character of the rule of Louis XIV was the cult--for it cannot be called less--of the monarch. “Qui considérera que le visage du prince fait toute la félicité du courtisan, qu’il s’occupe et se remplit pendant toute sa vie de le voir et d’en être vu, comprendra un peu comment voir Dieu peut faire toute la gloire et tout le bonheur des Saints.” So writes La Bruyère, and his commentator cites apt passages from the letters of Mme de Sévigné and her cousin Bussy-Rabutin, of the Maréchal de Villeroy and the Duc de Richelieu, to illustrate his remark. It was, indeed, literally true of such typical courtiers as Dangeau and D’Antin and La Rochefoucauld, the son of the author of the _Maxims_, who sometimes, says Saint-Simon, went for ten years without spending a night away from the Court, and in over forty years did not sleep twenty times at Paris. “Jamais valet ne le fut de personne avec tant d’assiduité et de bassesse, il faut lâcher le mot, avec tant d’esclavage.” As La Bruyère says without any hesitation, “Qui est plus esclave qu’un courtisan assidu, si ce n’est un courtisan plus assidu?” Nor must we forget that prince of flatterers, the Cardinal de Polignac, of whom Saint-Simon tells us that once, when it was beginning to rain at Marly and the King made a civil remark about his fine coat, he replied, “It is nothing, Sire; the rain at Marly does not wet one.” There were plenty of courtiers at Versailles who were ready to say with the fox in La Fontaine’s fable, Eh bien! manger moutons, canaille, sotte espèce, Est-ce un péché? non, non; vous leur fîtes, Seigneur, En les croquant, beaucoup d’honneur. What wonder if the Roi-Soleil, surrounded by so many adoring satellites, came almost to believe in his own divinity?