Anne of Austria held the regency for nine years, until her son, having attained the age of fourteen, had completed his minority and assumed the crown. Under this powerful prince the monarchy of France, as an unlimited despotism, became firmly established. The nobles, though deprived of all political power, were invested with such enormous privileges, enabling them to revel in wealth and luxury, that they were ever ready to unite with the king in quelling all uprising of the people, who were equally robbed by both monarch and noble. During the long reign of this monarch, for Louis XIV. sat upon the throne for seventy-two years, if we consider his reign to have commenced when he was proclaimed king upon the death of his father, France made vast strides in power, wealth, and splendor. Palaces arose almost outvying the dreams of an Oriental imagination. The saloons of Marly, the Tuileries, the Louvre, and Versailles, were brilliant with a splendor, and polluted with debaucheries, which Babylon, in its most festering corruption, could not have rivaled. The nobles, almost entirely surrendered to enervating indulgence, were incapacitated for any post which required intellectual activity and energy. Hence originated a class of men who became teachers, editors, scientific and literary writers, jurists, and professional men. In the progress of commerce and manufactures, wealth increased with this class, and the king, to raise money, would often sell, at an enormous price, a title of nobility to some enriched tradesman. A numerous and powerful middle class, rich and highly educated, was thus gradually formed, who had emerged from the people, and whose sympathies were entirely with them. The nobles looked upon all these, however opulent, or cultivated in mind, or polished in manners, with contempt, as low-born. They refused all social intercourse with them, regarding them as a degraded caste. They looked with even peculiar contempt upon those who had purchased titles of nobility. They drew a broad line of distinction between the _nobles_ and the _ennobled_. The hereditary aristocracy, proud of a lineage which could be traced through a hundred generations, and which was lost in the haze of antiquity, exclaimed with pride, instinct to the human heart: "You may give a lucky tradesman, in exchange for money, a title of nobility, but you can not thus make him a nobleman; you can not thus constitute him a lineal descendant of the old Frank barons; you can not thus constitute him a Lorraine, a Montmorency, a Rohan. God alone can create a nobleman."