"Other Lights Fade"

Chastelet dedicated his political treatise and its exceptional binding to Louis XIV, “the Sun King.” The motto across the cover, Vanescunt aliae luces (Other lights fade), was likely invented by Chastelet to reflect Louis’s grandeur more appropriately, since the text makes a point of criticizing the king’s traditional motto, Nec pluribus impar (translated literally, “Not unequal to many”)—a head-scratching double negative that many found obscure. Despite Chastelet’s
attempts at flattery, the treatise landed him in jail for suggesting several social and economic reforms to address the growing ills that he had observed in prerevolutionary France.