Another harbinger for the future were Cordemoy’s remarks on the layout of towns. Alberti had dealt with town planning in his "De re aedificatoria", but the subject was not to the fore in French architectural treatises. Cordemoy, unusually, concluded his with twenty or so pages on public spaces in cities. Though Jean-Baptiste Colbert, famously, was concerned with “embellissement” and the ordering of cities, the spur might have been Fénelon’s, in particular his account of the rebuilding of the state of Salenta in that most political of his writings, "Les Aventures de Télémaque", of 1699. Fénelon, again and again, in his writings, promoted architecture of the practical and simple kind, and on two occasions, even, as a proof of the existence of god. Fénelon, however, was repelled by Gothic architecture, which he regarded as evidence of the decline of the church. Bossuet too, seems to have shared such sentiments. He referred to bad writing as “barbare, comme une église gothique” (barbaric, like a Gothic church).