Voltaire lived long enough to see some of his long-term legacies start to concretize. With the ascension of Louis XVI in 1774 and the appointment of Turgot as Controller-General, the French establishment began to embrace the philosophes and their agenda in a new way. Critics of Voltaire and his program for philosophie remained powerful, however, and they would continue to survive as the necessary backdrop to the positive image of the Enlightenment philosophe as a modernizer, progressive reformer, and courageous scourge against traditional authority that Voltaire bequeathed to later generations. During Voltaire’s lifetime, this new acceptance translated into a final return to Paris in early 1778. Here, as a frail and sickly octogenarian, Voltaire was welcomed by the city as the hero of the Enlightenment that he now personified. A statue was commissioned as a permanent shrine to his legacy, and a public performance of his play Irène was performed in a way that allowed its author to be celebrated as a national hero. Voltaire died several weeks after these events, but the canonization that they initiated has continued right up until the present.