By the time he had completed his first decade of personal rule the administrative talents of his ministers and his own gift for governing had indeed raised Louis to a pinnacle of glory and of reputation far exceeding all other sovereigns of his time. His court was the most splendid and the most polished in Europe. Round it were gathered the genius of Turenne, the brilliance of Condé, the dignity of Corneille, the wit of Molière, the finish of Boileau, the art of Racine. From Italy Bernini brought his solid if too dramatic talent for the embellishment of Paris, while the sweetness of Claude and the breadth of Le Brun were called upon to minister to the greatness of the greatest of European sovereigns. In sharp contrast to all this magnificence and grace stood the minister without whom it could not have existed. Dour, grim, and harsh, Colbert moved through the world without a friend, a man to whom ambition was life, and business pleasure. Scrupulously honest, severely conscientious, strictly just, painfully accurate, sincerely religious, he was wanting in humanity. He was absolutely without heart and without sympathy. A man of religion, he angered the clergy by trying to reduce the number of ‘religious’ because they did not make wealth; a man of the people, he offended the populace by reducing the number of holidays; a zealous Catholic, he displeased the orthodox by the favour he extended to the Huguenot craftsmen, while he made himself unpopular with the Huguenots because he deserted them in the hour of their need, when the king turned against them. A man of conscientious probity, he had no scruples in directing the judges to convict strong and powerful prisoners who were accused of crime, in order that the king’s galleys might be well manned, and even prevented galley slaves who had served their time from being set free if they were still useful for the king’s service. Less and more than human no wonder that men felt instinctively that he was their enemy, however great the blessings of good government which he had conferred upon them, and followed his coffin to the grave with execrations in 1683.