A taste for order and regularity was natural to Louis XIV., and he soon made it apparent in his councils.  “Under Cardinal Mazarin, there was literally nothing but disorder and confusion; he had the council held whilst he was being shaved and dressed, without ever giving anybody a seat, not even the chancellor or Marshal Villeroy, and he was often chattering with his linnet and his monkey all the time he was being talked to about business.  After Mazarin’s death the king’s council assumed a more decent form.  The king alone was seated, all the others remained standing, the chancellor leaned against the bedrail, and M. de Lionne upon the edge of the chimney-piece.  He who was making a report placed himself opposite the king, and, if he had to write, sat down on a stool which was at the end of the table where there was a writing-desk and paper.” [Histoire de France, by Le P. Daniel, t. xvi. p. 89.] " I will settle this matter with your Majesty’s ministers,” said the Portuguese ambassador one day to the young king.  “I have no ministers, Mr. Ambassador,” replied Louis XIV.; “you mean to say my men of business.”

Long habituation to the office of king was not destined to wear out, to exhaust, the youthful ardor of King Louis XIV.  He had been for a long while governing, when he wrote, “You must not imagine, my son, that affairs of state are like those obscure and thorny passages in the sciences which you will perhaps have found fatiguing, at which the mind strives to raise itself, by an effort, beyond itself, and which repel us quite as much by their, at any rate apparent, uselessness as by their difficulty.  The function of kings consists principally in leaving good sense to act, which always acts naturally without any trouble.  All that is most necessary in this kind of work is at the same time agreeable; for it is, in a word, my son, to keep an open eye over all the world, to be continually learning news from all the provinces and all nations, the secrets of all courts, the temper and the foible of all foreign princes and ministers, to be informed about an infinite number of things of which we are supposed to be ignorant, to see in our own circle that which is most carefully hidden from us, to discover the most distant views of our own courtiers and their most darkly cherished interests which come to us through contrary interests, and, in fact, I know not what other pleasure we would not give up for this, even if it were curiosity alone that caused us to feel it.” [Memoires de Louis XIV., t. ii. p. 428.]

At twenty-two years of age, no more than during the rest of his life, was Louis XIV. disposed to sacrifice business to pleasure, but he did not sacrifice pleasure to business.  It was on a taste so natural to a young prince, for the first time free to do as he pleased, that Superintendent Fouquet counted to increase his influence and probably his power with the king.  “The attorney-general [Fouquet was attorney-general in the Parliament of Paris], though a great thief, will remain master of the others,” the queen-mother had said to Madame de Motteville at the time of Mazarin’s death.  Fouquet’s hopes led him to think of nothing less than to take the minister’s place.