There were many negative comments and many positive comments about Louis XIV and his court. In the court of Louis XIV, the closer a person was to the king, or the more they did for a person, the more that person appreciated them. The more distant you were from the king, the more you hated him. The people furthest from the king disliked him the most. Madame de Motteville's account of the Paris riots (which was a second-hand account) painted a positive picture of the court. Madame de Motteville was a person closest to the king. She painted a positive picture because she liked the king due to his good position at court. “And without considering the duty they had towards Marshal La Meilleraye, they threw stones at him.” (I, 24) The quote reflects the fact that she thinks the nobles and upper classes are better and assumes that they are right, while the peasants are inferior and wrong. In the above quote he states that the farmers threw stones without thinking about the duty they owed to the marshal. He ignored the reasons why farmers should throw stones and went straight to why farmers should not throw stones. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who was a French minister, held the king in high esteem because he had a good position in the royal courts. “He [Colbert] also thought that it would be necessary to mint a large number of medals, to consecrate to posterity the memory of the great deeds which the king had already accomplished and which he foresaw would be followed by even greater and more noteworthy deeds. .” (VIII, 200) Colbert held the king in such high regard that he assumed the above quote. He had a high opinion of the king because of the good position he had and how much he liked it.The first Viscontis, w...... middle of paper ......have the feeling that the heart belongs to another creature [ Madame de Montespan] when God would have her. How difficult it must be to get out of this agreement! However, it must be done, Sire, otherwise there is no hope of salvation." (VII, 171) Bossuet tells this to Louis XIV without underlining that he will lose his popularity with the king and therefore his power and influence over other important people because Bossuet is a bishop, so the king cannot simply despise him, as he does with nobles, the more positive things Louis XIV could do for a person, the more he liked (or at least pretended to like) that person, like those of Madame de Motteville. and Jean-Baptiste Colbert. On the contrary, if Louis XIV had a negative effect on a person's life, he liked it less, like the peasants and the Esprit Fléchier.