"The French people were quick to realize the deep significance of the King's ideas, or rather, perhaps, it was the King who grasped what it was that France required. France gave him a free hand and thus enabled him to abolish the final vestiges of ancient wrongs, and to display to the world the inspiring picture of a prince and his people working harmoniously to a common end, for the like of which we should search through history in vain. We know what came of it—the "pré carré" all but completed; in Europe, the prestige of France raised to a height that has never been surpassed; amazing prosperity at home; literature and the arts flourishing as never before; our frontiers inviolate for a century—in a word the Age of Louis XIV!"