“People who are old enough to write memoirs have usually lost their memory.” This epigrammatic remark with which a recent writer, not old enough to have lost his memory, opens his reminiscences, has considerable truth in it. Historians now recognise that “memoirs do not supply the certainty of history,” for if the writers have dim memories, they have also lively imaginations. Saint-Simon, the prince of memoir-writers, did not, it is true, begin to transcribe his memoirs till he was well past sixty, but from the age of twenty he had collected materials and made systematic notes. His memoirs were not merely the pastime of his old age but the serious business of his whole life. The result is that he has left us a picture of the Court of Versailles at the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth which is unsurpassed in interest. This interest is above all things human. The men and women who fill his canvas are vividly alive. With a few powerful and incisive strokes he first sketches their lineaments and then with merciless penetration proceeds to lay bare their souls. But his memoirs are also coloured by his own alert and energetic personality. They not only portray his age, but they reveal himself; to judge of the fidelity of the picture, we must know something of the man.

Saint-Simon came of an ancient stock, being descended in the direct male line from Matthieu de Rouvroy, surnamed Le Borgne, who fought at CrÉcy and Poitiers, and Marguerite de Saint-Simon. His immediate ancestors, a branch of the family which dropped the name of Rouvroy for that of Saint-Simon, if not exactly illustrious, followed their monarchs loyally in war and administered their estates successfully in peace. His father, Claude de Saint-Simon, who was born in 1607, chiefly owing to his address in the hunting field rose into high favour with LouisXIII, who created him a duc et pair in 1636. But he fell into disgrace soon afterwards and was ordered by Richelieu to retire from the Court to the fortress of Blaye on the Gironde, of which he was governor. His vacillating attitude on the outbreak of the Fronde made him acceptable neither to Mazarin nor to the rebellious princes, and he did not return to Paris till after the troubles were over. In 1672 he married as his second wife Charlotte de l’Aubespine, by whom he had an only son, born on January 16, 1675, and christened Louis after his royal godfather. At the age of seven, the young Vidame de Chartres, according to the custom of many noble families, was put under the charge of a governor, but his character and opinions were largely moulded by his father and mother. The latter, a highly virtuous woman of method and good sense, applied herself assiduously to the development of his mind and body. From his father he imbibed a profound antipathy for Mazarin, the families of Lorraine, Bouillon, and Rohan, and all Secretaries of State.

In December, 1691, when he was nearly seventeen, he was formally presented to the King, and enrolled as a cadet in the regiment of the Grey Musketeers. In this capacity he took part in the siege of Namur, which is the first event recorded in his memoirs. In 1693, having been given the command of a company of cavalry, he fought at Neerwinden, and at the end of the campaign bought the colonelcy of a regiment. Shortly before this he had succeeded his father as governor of Blaye and Senlis. He was only nineteen, when he gave a signal proof of his energy and of the importance which he attached to matters of precedence, by helping to organise a resistance to the claim of the MarÉchal de Luxembourg to take precedence of all ducs et pairs except the Duc d’UzÈs. The Dukes lost their case, largely, Saint-Simon alleges, owing to the partiality of the First President of the Parlement, Achille de Harlay.

In the following year (1695) he married Gabrielle de Durfort, the eldest daughter of the MarÉchal-Duc de Lorges, a nephew of Turenne. She was a blonde with a fine complexion and figure, and being a modest and excellent woman made him an admirable wife. He on his side was a devoted husband, and he always speaks of her in his Memoirs with the greatest affection and esteem.

After the Peace of Ryswick (1697) his regiment was disbanded, and, on the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, five years later, failing to receive a nomination as Brigadier, he retired from the service on the plea of ill-health. “VoilÀ encore un homme qui nous quitte,” said the King, and he looked coldly on Saint-Simon in consequence. It was characteristic of the little Duke’s overweening sense of his own importance that before taking this step he held a solemn consultation with six distinguished friends, the Chancellor Pontchartrain, and five Dukes, Lorges, Durfort-Duras, Choiseul, Beauvillier, and La Rochefoucauld, of whom the first three were Marshals of France.

The loss to the army was not irremediable, and the gain to literature was immense. Henceforth Saint-Simon could devote himself with singleness of purpose to the real business of his life. It was in July, 1694, in the camp of Germersheim on the Old Rhine, that “he began to write his memoirs,” by which expression we must understand, not that he began to write a continuous narrative, but that from this time he systematised his observations and inquiries and made careful notes of the results. We learn from a letter to his friend, M. de RancÉ, the famous reformer of La Trappe, that his original intention was to relate in detail all personal matters and merely to touch superficially on general events. But he soon abandoned this idea and in his account of the years immediately succeeding his retirement from the army there is little mention of himself.

His chief friends and allies at this period were all men considerably older than himself—the two inseparables, the Duc de Beauvillier and the Duc de Chevreuse, who had both married daughters of Colbert, the MarÉchal de Boufflers, the Chancellor Pontchartrain, and Chamillart, the Secretary of State for War. It was through the good offices of Chamillart and MarÉchal, the King’s surgeon, that “he became reconciled,” as he characteristically expresses it, with LouisXIV. But he had his enemies as well as his friends, and chief among them were the members of the coterie which, as so often happens towards the end of a long reign, the common hope of favours to come had attracted round the heir to the throne. An important member of this “Cabale de Meudon,” as Saint-Simon calls it, was the Duc de VendÔme, and when in 1708 LouisXIV made the mistake of associating his grandson, the Duc de Bourgogne, with him in the command of the army of Flanders, and dissensions arose between the two commanders, the Cabal warmly espoused VendÔme’s cause. Their unscrupulous intrigues against the Duc de Bourgogne roused the wrath of Saint-Simon, who as the ally of M. de Beauvillier, the young Prince’s former governor, was well disposed in his favour. Throughout the years 1708 and 1709 he threw himself into the contest with his accustomed vigour, and in the following year he helped to achieve a notable victory over the hated Cabal in another field, that of the marriage of the Duc de Berry, Monseigneur’s youngest son. The candidate of Monseigneur’s party was Mlle de Bourbon, while the Duchesse de Bourgogne, well served by Saint-Simon and his friends, favoured the daughter of the Duc d’OrlÉans. Saint-Simon’s organisation of the “Cabale de Mademoiselle” was a masterpiece of skilful intrigue, and he conducted the campaign with a passionate energy which is faithfully reflected in his narrative. When, however, the coarse and depraved character of the new Duchess revealed itself he bitterly regretted his success.

But the marriage had one beneficial, if unlooked for, result. The Duchesse de Saint-Simon, greatly against her inclination and that of her husband, was appointed lady-in-waiting to the new Duchess, and had assigned to her a set of apartments at Versailles, consisting of an antechamber and five rooms, each with a dark little cabinet opening out of it. In one of these Saint-Simon established himself with his books and his bureau de travail. It was an unrivalled post of observation, which his friends christened appropriately “his workshop.” Meanwhile his intimacy with Beauvillier and Chevreuse brought him into relations with the Duc de Bourgogne, and the only thorn in his felicity was the Cabale de Meudon, which he believed to be bent on his destruction. But from this he was delivered by the Dauphin’s death from small-pox in April, 1711. The next ten months were the happiest of his whole life at Court. His relations with the new Dauphin became more intimate, and in numerous private conversations he discussed with him projects of political reform. Then in 1712 the French Marcellus, the star of noble hopes and aspirations, followed his father to the grave. The blow hit Saint-Simon almost as hard as it did FÉnelon. “The sense of my personal loss, the immeasurably greater loss of France, and above all the vanished figure of that incomparable Dauphin pierced my heart and paralysed my faculties.”

Two years later he refers in melancholy accents to his changed position. Chevreuse, Beauvillier, and Boufflers were dead, Pontchartrain had retired from office, Chamillart was in disgrace. The one link left to him with the Court was the Duc d’OrlÉans, who by the death of the Duc de Berry in May, 1714, was marked out as the future regent of the kingdom. In spite of his unpopularity Saint-Simon, who had for some years now been on friendly terms with him, drew to him more closely. He reprobated his licentious and scandalous life, but he defended him against the false accusations of his enemies, and effectively countermined the intrigues of the party that was plotting against him in favour of the Duc du Maine.

On LouisXIV’s death it was partly owing to Saint-Simon’s vehement and energetic insistence that OrlÉans roused himself from his habitual indolence and persuaded the Parlement to set aside the testament of the late King, which, while it conferred on him the Regency, had put the real power in the hands of the Duc du Maine. Saint-Simon was made a member of the Council of Regency, and the introduction of departmental Councils, in place of the Secretaries of State, was more or less in accord with his own proposals.

The new form of administration, however, was not a success and after a trial of two years was abandoned. Nor did Saint-Simon himself shew any political capacity. He was wanting in tact and adaptability, and worse than this he frittered away on futile questions of precedence and etiquette the time and energy that might have been given to really important matters. Such influence as he had with the Regent came to an end with the rise to power of Dubois, who gladly furthered his request to be sent on a special mission to Spain (1721).

On the death of the Regent (1722) he left the Court and lived for some time with his family in a house which he rented in the Rue Saint-Dominique. But after the marriage of his two sons he resided for at least half the year at his chÂteau of La FertÉ-Vidame, about 30 miles north-west of Chartres. The chÂteau itself, which, as we know from engravings, had the air of a feudal fortress, and in every room of which hung a portrait of LouisXIII, no longer exists. But the park, enclosed by a wall of nearly nine miles, and the forest beyond have preserved their original character.

Here Saint-Simon began and completed the definitive version of his Memoirs, and here in 1743, to his overwhelming grief, he lost his wife, his faithful companion of nearly fifty years. Other misfortunes followed; his two sons preceded him to the grave, and he was driven by his debts to make over the whole of his property to his creditors. He died at Paris in 1755 at the age of eighty. The lives of his father and himself cover between them nearly a century and a half.

Saint-Simon, as we see him in Rigaud’s portrait, was small and delicate—a typical old man’s child—with an extremely alert and eager face. It has been observed that he is seldom mentioned in contemporary memoirs, but these are not numerous for the latter part of the reign of LouisXIV, while three of the chief memoir-writers of the Regency, when Saint-Simon was most prominent, Barbier, Buvat, and Marais, did not belong to Court circles. When he is mentioned it is in no complimentary terms. D’Argenson attacks him for advocating severe measures against the Duc du Maine after the conspiracy of Cellamare. “Mark,” he says, "the odious and bloodthirsty character (anthropophage) of this little saint without genius." But then Saint-Simon in his on the whole highly favourable portrait of D’Argenson’s father, the celebrated head of the Paris police, had said that his character was supple, and that his terrifying appearance resembled that of the three judges of Hades.

It was inevitable that Saint-Simon’s irascibility, intractability, and aristocratic pretensions should arouse considerable enmity, and in the songs and satires of the day he is attacked under the name of boudrillon (bout d’homme) and petit furibond. Mme de Maintenon declared that he was “glorieux, frondeur et plein de vues,” and we have an interesting commentary on this remark in his report of a conversation which took place between the Duchesse de Bourgogne and his wife. The Duchess told her that he had many powerful enemies and that the King had conceived a strong prejudice against him. His intelligence, she said, and his knowledge and capacity for ideas were recognised as far above the ordinary, but everybody was afraid of him, and they could not endure his arrogance and his outspoken criticisms on persons and institutions.

These criticisms would have been more valuable if they had been less concerned with futilities, and less biased by aristocratic prejudices. But Saint-Simon was at heart a true patriot, and was keenly alive to the evils which were sapping the forces of his country. He agreed with reformers like FÉnelon and Chevreuse and the AbbÉ de Saint-Pierre in regarding the absolutism of the King as the chief source of danger, and he shared their dislike of the Controller-General and the four Secretaries of State as the agents of this absolutism. He strongly reprobated the King’s love of war and glory, and the boundless extravagance, which he not only practised himself but encouraged in others. Like La BruyÈre and FÉnelon, Saint-Simon saw with a compassionate eye the wide-spread misery by which all this glory and magnificence was purchased. He has drawn a moving picture of the terrible winter of 1708-1709, when famine stalked through the land and crushing taxation on the top of high prices “completed the devastation of France.”

Mme de Maintenon further complained that he was “plein de vues,” by which she doubtless meant much the same thing as LouisXIV, when he called FÉnelon chimerical. For in Saint-Simon’s schemes for reform, as in FÉnelon’s, there was a strong Utopian element, which did not sufficiently take into account the hard facts of political life and the shortcomings of human nature. They both looked back too fondly on the past, they both exaggerated the value of the nobles and the Estates General—Saint-Simon laying more stress on the former, FÉnelon on the latter—as checks to absolutism. That there should be a certain similarity between their ideas is only to be expected, for though they were not personally acquainted, they had a common link in the Duc de Bourgogne, and it was just at the time that Saint-Simon was having frequent conferences with the latter that his two great friends, the Duc de Beauvillier and the Duc de Chevreuse, held long conversations on affairs of state with FÉnelon at Chaulnes (November, 1711). From the conferences of Saint-Simon and the Duc de Bourgogne sprang the Projets de gouvernement, the manuscript of which was found among Saint-Simon’s papers, and which is undoubtedly from his pen. The conversations at Chaulnes were summarised in the series of short maxims, known as the Tables de Chaulnes, which represent FÉnelon’s nearest approach to practical politics.

However deserving of consideration Saint-Simon’s views may have been, his insistence on them in season and out of season cannot have helped to commend them or to make him popular at Court. In his old age he is said to have been a delightful talker, but at Versailles he must have sometimes proved an intolerable bore. “Il faut tenir votre langue,” said LouisXIV to him when he accepted the appointment for his wife. One wonders at the patience with which the Duke of Orleans endured his moral lectures and political disquisitions. But the Duke was too indolent to escape them, and while he must have derived considerable amusement from the peculiarities of his friend’s character he evidently appreciated his transparent honesty. For with all his faults and prejudices, his vanity, his hate, and his vindictiveness, Saint-Simon was essentially honest. It is true that in his intercourse with some men, as for instance PÈre Tellier, the Duc de Noailles, and Cardinal Dubois, he did not act up to the character which he claims for himself of “droit, franc, libre, naturel, et beaucoup trop simple,” but if his curiosity and thirst for information led him sometimes to assume a friendliness which he did not feel, or if in the slippery days of the Regency he had to meet duplicity with duplicity, he was honest at heart, and he had no lack of moral courage.

He carried this sincerity into his religion. D’Argenson may sneer at him as a petit dÉvot, but his piety was at any rate perfectly genuine. It was the fruit, partly of a careful religious education, and partly of the influence of the AbbÉ de RancÉ. For the monastery of La Trappe was only fifteen miles from La FertÉ-Vidame and Saint-Simon often visited it as a child in company with his father. When he came to man’s estate he regarded his father’s friend with that deep and whole-hearted admiration which was one of the finer traits of his character. Every year during the AbbÉ’s life-time—he died in 1700—Saint-Simon went into retreat at the monastery during Passion-week, and he often consulted the AbbÉ on matters of conscience. From the AbbÉ he learnt to look with disfavour on Jansenism, but, as he came to judge more for himself, he was impressed by the noble lives of “Les Messieurs de Port-Royal,” and he declared that recent centuries had produced nothing more saintly, more pure, more learned, more practical, and more elevated, than that famous society. With the Jesuits he was on good terms all his life, and his portrait of PÈre La Chaise is kindly and appreciative. But in his later volumes he often speaks of them in a hostile spirit, and though he was outwardly on good terms with PÈre Tellier he cordially disliked him, and his portrait of him is one of the most unflattering in his gallery. In questions of ecclesiastical policy he was, as might be expected from one who was a patriot before he was a Churchman and who did not pretend to theological learning, a convinced Gallican. It was as such, and not as an upholder of Jansenism, that he was strongly opposed to the bull Unigenitus.

We have seen that Saint-Simon began to make notes for his Memoirs in July, 1694. Probably these took more or less the form of a diary and consisted of personal impressions, information that he had picked up from various sources, and so forth. Then in 1729 his friend the Duc de Luynes procured for him the journal which the Duke’s grandfather, the Marquis de Dangeau, had kept with extraordinary regularity and accuracy from 1684 down to his death in 1720. Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau, had come to the Court of LouisXIV with no particular advantages of birth, or wealth, or interest. But by his readiness to oblige, his adaptability, and his honesty he made himself indispensable. Among his accomplishments was that of writing vers de sociÉtÉ with great facility, which procured his election to the AcadÉmie franÇaise at the age of thirty. But his chief passport to favour and fortune was his skill and success, coupled with perfect probity, in all kinds of card-games. This is Mme de SÉvignÉ’s account of a game of reversi at Versailles in 1676, in which the King, the Queen, Mme de Montespan, Mme de Soubise, Dangeau, and others took part:

Dangeau’s memoirs are little more than a Court journal, in which he seldom allows himself a comment. But the regularity with which it is noted up day by day, the accuracy of its information, and the multitude of small details in which it abounds, make it a useful and valuable authority, as Sainte-Beuve has shewn in the five causeries which he devoted to it[1]. A couple of citations from the year 1688, complete for the day to which they refer, will give an idea of its character:

It is but fair to add that the average entry for the day is rather longer than this, and not so wholly devoid of interest. Saint-Simon is superb in his contempt:

But Saint-Simon recognised that this commonplace and uncritical Journal, with its accurate chronology and its orderly arrangement, could be of great service to anyone who wished to write true memoirs[2]. Accordingly he had a copy made of the work and during the years 1729-1738 busied himself with adding notes. Some of these were of considerable length, such as the original draft of the tableau or long digression on the character of LouisXIV and his reign, and an elaborate portrait of Louvois, which was not inserted in the Memoirs. About the year 1739 he began to arrange his materials which consisted of the Journal with the notes, other notes which he had accumulated during the last forty-five years, portraits, detailed descriptions, and various essays on the history and genealogy of certain families. He was now able to begin writing out his Memoirs in full. In 1740 he was dealing with the events of 1701. In 1741 or 1742 he had reached the year 1709. By September, 1745, he had come to the end of the reign of LouisXIV, and the tableau in its final form was written between that date and March, 1746. The whole work, which ends with the death of the Regent, was completed in 1751.

On Saint-Simon’s death his Memoirs with his other papers were claimed by his creditors, but the Government took possession of them, and they were read in manuscript by various persons, including Mme du Deffand, who recognised their remarkable merit. Extracts were printed by the AbbÉ de Voisnenon, and incomplete editions appeared in 1788, 1791, and 1818. But it was not till 1829-1830 that the first authentic and complete edition was published in 21 volumes by General de Saint-Simon. It was, however, badly edited and in 1856-1858, the manuscript having been sold by the General to MM. Hachette for 100,000 francs, ChÉruel published a new edition in 20 volumes. This was followed by another edition under the same editorship, with the assistance of Ad. RÉgnier fils (23 vols. 1873-1886). Neither of these editions was furnished with notes, and before the later one was completed M. de Boislisle had begun to edit for the same firm a noble annotated edition, which is now in progress. The first volume appeared in 1879 and it has now reached the thirtieth. The twenty-eighth contains the famous tableau of the reign of LouisXIV, and the twenty-ninth (1918) consists of an index to all the previous volumes.

The materials which Saint-Simon had accumulated for his great design were derived from many sources, written and oral. His written sources included, besides the Journal of Dangeau, numerous memoirs and histories which were his favourite reading, the great genealogical work of PÈre Anselme, published in 1674, the Grand Dictionnaire Historique of Moreri, which appeared in the same year, and the work of the German genealogist Imhof, Excellentium in Gallia Familiarum Genealogiae (1687), all of which no doubt had a place in his own library of 6000 volumes.

His oral sources are fairly well known to us, for he generally indicates the quarter from which he derives his information. First in importance were the three ministers, Pontchartrain, Chamillart, and Beauvillier, with all of whom he was very intimate. But both Beauvillier and Chevreuse knew how to be reticent with their young friend when occasion required, and he says that they gave him much less information than either Pontchartrain or the MarÉchal de Boufflers. Another useful liaison—to use his favourite term—was that with the Duc and Duchesse de Villeroy, both of whom were great friends of Mme de Caylus, Mme de Maintenon’s cousin. The Duc was a son of the MarÉchal de Villeroy and the Duchesse was a daughter of Louvois. Mme de Levis, a daughter of the Duc de Chevreuse, was also of some service, for she was intimate with Mme de Maintenon. The young Duchesse de Lorges, Mme de Saint-Simon’s sister-in-law, was a daughter of Chamillart, and her sister was married to that ardent courtier, the Duc de La Feuillade. Saint-Simon tells us that he generally ended his day with a visit to these ladies, from whom he often learnt something. More suspicious sources of information were the MarÉchale de Rochefort, bedchamber-woman to the Dauphine, and friend in succession to all the royal favourites-in-chief; her daughter, Mme de Blansac; and the celebrated Lauzun who married another sister-in-law of Saint-Simon. A Gascon by birth and a farceur by temperament, he evidently enjoyed pulling his brother-in-law’s leg, and the long chapter which Saint-Simon devotes to him just before the close of the Memoirs, though full of amusing and interesting matter, must not be accepted as gospel truth.

One of the most curious figures at the Court was Mme de La Chausseraye, at one time lady-in-waiting to Madame. Thanks to her esprit and her talent for intrigue, she acquired great influence with various ministers and became very rich, losing large sums at cards, but recouping herself by the good things which the King and the Controller-General put in her way. The King was much diverted by her amusing conversation, and she declared that she had won and kept his favour by the sole method of hiding her intelligence and leaving him with a sense of his intellectual superiority. When it is added that she had also great credit with the royal valets, it may be imagined how useful she was to Saint-Simon, and how eagerly he cultivated her society. "J’Étois sur elle sur un pied d’amitiÉ et de recherche[3]." One can also imagine his feelings when many years after her death he learnt from her confessor that she had written “very curious” memoirs, but that by his advice she had committed them to the flames.

Saint-Simon’s curiosity was unbounded and he left no channel of information untapped. "Je me suis toujours instruit journellement de toutes choses par des canaux purs, directs et certains, et de toutes choses grandes et petites[4]." And among his more lowly channels were the royal valets. For, as he says, “le hasard apprend souvent par les valets les choses qu’on croit bien cachÉes.” He was on excellent terms with Bontemps, the King’s chief valet, who died in 1701 at the age of eighty, a man of high character, thoroughly honest and disinterested, and with Bloin, who was in the King’s service at the time of his death. Another serviceable informant, in a somewhat higher position, was Georges MarÉchal, who was appointed first royal surgeon in 1703, “l’honneur et la probitÉ mÊme.”

Whenever any chance occasion offered of obtaining special information Saint-Simon pounced upon it with eager avidity. He describes, for instance, how he travelled from Fontainebleau to Paris with the Marquis de Louville, head of the French household of the King of Spain, and how he put so many questions to him that the poor man arrived sans voix et ne pouvant plus parler. Later he records a conversation with the Princesse des Ursins, who had also just returned from Spain. It lasted eight hours, “which seemed to him eight minutes.”

In the concluding chapter of his Memoirs he claims for them accuracy and veracity. He says that the greater part is based on his own personal experience, and that the rest comes to him at first hand from the actors in the events that he narrates. “I give their names, which, as well as my intimacy with them, are beyond all suspicion. When my information comes from a less sure source I call attention to it, and when I am ignorant, I am not ashamed to avow it.”

This claim is made in all good faith, and as far as the sources of information go it is not far from the truth. But when one goes on to inquire how Saint-Simon has dealt with his sources, the result is not quite so satisfactory. For he suffers from the three failings which are the chief sources of error in a historian. Firstly, he is careless—chiefly, indeed, about figures and dates, but he sometimes copies Dangeau incorrectly. Secondly, he is uncritical. Though he does not retail mere gossip, he readily believes current stories. The ministers, the court-ladies, the valets from whom he obtained his information may have told him what they believed to be the truth, but Saint-Simon did not cross-examine them or otherwise control their statements. Moreover, some of his witnesses are evidently untrustworthy, whether from self-interest, or whether, like Lauzun, they were given to drawing upon their own invention. Thus Saint-Simon’s account of some of the events narrated in his Memoirs has been disproved by modern criticism. The death, for instance, of Monsieur’s first wife, Henrietta of England, was certainly due to natural causes, and not, as Saint-Simon says, to poison.

The third and chief disturbing element which must be taken into account in judging of Saint-Simon’s veracity is prejudice—and that no mere ordinary prejudice, but rather a bundle of prejudices, all intensified to the height of passion. As we have seen, his father had instilled into him the dislike of certain families and of all Secretaries of State. It was probably too his father who implanted in him that excessive estimate of his importance as a duc et pair from which sprang his contempt for the whole bourgeoisie, including the noblesse de robe, and his prejudice against the monarch who chose his ministers almost exclusively from that class. It was the same aristocratic prejudice which inspired his hatred of “the widow Scarron,” and his dislike of Villars, whom as the great-grandson of a greffier he could not forgive for being made a Duke. Some, however, of his prejudices were due to nobler motives. It was VendÔme’s sloth and debauchery that blinded him to that commander’s high qualities in the field. It was his righteous indignation at the “double adultery” of LouisXIV and Mme de Montespan that filled him with hatred against their bastards. It was the scandal of the official recognition of the royal harem that still further prejudiced him against the King.

But there were also less worthy prejudices, inspired by more personal feelings. The malignant portrait of Achille de Harlay is partly a reprisal for that magistrate’s supposed partiality in the matter of Luxembourg’s dispute with his fellow dukes and peers. The estimate of the grand Dauphin might have been less contemptuous but for Saint-Simon’s enmity with that cabale de Meudon of which the Dauphin was the centre. Other portraits coloured by the passion of a strong antipathy are those of PÈre Tellier, the Cardinal de Bouillon, the Duc de Noailles, and the MarÉchal de Villars. Blackest of all is the famous portrait of Cardinal Dubois. But though it shews evident signs of personal resentment and class prejudice, and though it has been alleged on the Cardinal’s behalf that an honest woman like Madame and a saint like FÉnelon gave him their friendly esteem[5], Saint-Simon’s reading of his character may be mainly due to a deeper insight and a more searching analysis.

But Saint-Simon was a good lover as well as a good hater, and many of his portraits are coloured by the promptings of warm affection. His estimate of the Duc de Bourgogne is, as Sainte-Beuve has pointed out, more favourable than FÉnelon’s. His finished picture of Cardinal d’EstrÉes and his slighter sketch of Cardinal Janson are admirable examples of kindly portraiture. To the MarÉchal de Boufflers and to the Chancellor Pontchartrain and his wife he pays noble tributes of admiring friendship. His praise of Catinat, that able commander and disinterested patriot, reads like a page of Plutarch. Memorable too are the portraits of the two Dukes, Beauvillier and Chevreuse, for whom he reserved his deepest affection. He is not blind to their limitations or their failings, but he praises them with the sympathetic comprehension of one who, honest and high-minded himself, can appreciate these qualities to the full when they are displayed in the persons of his friends. The portrait of the Duc de Montfort, the son of his friend the Duc de Chevreuse, is a masterpiece of admiring sympathy[6].

To these two classes of favourable and unfavourable portraits, the former softened by affection, the latter exaggerated by hate, must be added a large number of portraits in which good and bad are intermingled, and which bear throughout the stamp of an impartial estimate. One of the finest of these is the Prince de Conti; less elaborate but hardly less skilful is the Cardinal de Rohan. But the palm for this class of portrait must be awarded to that of the Duke of Orleans. As one of the protagonists in Saint-Simon’s drama he is naturally a prominent figure and the general impression that we get of his character is deepened by numerous touches. But just before the close of LouisXIV’s reign he is presented in a long and leisurely digression, which forms one of the great chapters in Saint-Simon’s narrative. At the other end of the scale to this full-length and elaborately drawn portrait are the little miniatures of minor personages with which the work is interspersed. Among the most notable are Mme de Castries, the Duchesse de Gesvres, M. du Guet, Le Haquais, Toussaint Rose, one of the King’s secretaries, and Bontemps, his chief valet.

But whether the portraits are finished works of art or mere sketches, whether they are inspired by hatred or by admiration, whether they are partial or impartial, they all alike have this virtue that they are intensely alive. We know the originals both in their outward semblance and in their inmost being. While Racine is concerned only with souls, while La BruyÈre’s main interest is in habits and manners as an index to character, Saint-Simon, who began his survey of humanity just before his two older contemporaries finished theirs, gives us body and soul alike. In this he resembles Balzac, but he has this advantage over the great novelist that dealing with real men and women, and not with the creatures of his imagination, he is never tempted to make the outward appearance match the inner character. Nor, as superficial judges are apt to do in real life, does he hastily infer the character from the outward appearance. He deals with both on their merits; he first calls up before us the outward man, and then he gives us his character from an independent study of his idiosyncrasies and actions. “The features of the portrait,” to borrow Montaigne’s phrase, “may go astray,” but we have before us a living man, drawn by a supreme artist. Thus the whole work, if not like Balzac’s, a complete comÉdie humaine, may be fitly called the ComÉdie de Versailles.

For Saint-Simon does not merely give us living men and women, he shews them to us in action, he reproduces their movements, their gestures, their tricks of speech. There is nothing more wonderful in the whole of French literature than his account of the spectacle de Versailles after the death of Monseigneur. It is not in the literal sense a drama, for it lacks a plot to give it unity, but it is a superb dramatic tableau, glowing with life and throbbing with a passionate intensity.

The best commentary on this comedy is La BruyÈre’s chapter On the Court, the essence of which is distilled in the following passage:

When La BruyÈre printed this remarque in the first edition of Les CaractÈres (1688), the Court of LouisXIV, partly under the influence of Mme de Maintenon and partly as the result of the King’s serious illness in 1686, had begun to wear that aspect of seriousness and gloom which overshadowed it during the remaining years of the reign. The conversion of the King to the regular observance of Catholic practices, and the general atmosphere of piety which this conversion diffused shewed itself in various ways, and amongst others in the repression of pleasures to which with advancing years he was becoming less inclined. In the very year 1694 in which Saint-Simon began to make notes for his Memoirs Bossuet attacked the stage in his well-known Maximes et RÉflexions sur la ComÉdie. In 1696 the police made a sudden descent on the HÔtel de Bourgogne and summarily suppressed the Italian actors. From this time for many years the only theatre in Paris was the ComÉdie FranÇaise.

Versailles became more and more serious and gloomy. “La vie de la cour est un jeu sÉrieux, mÉlancolique,” says La BruyÈre in the remarque which follows that quoted above. A far worse feature was the inevitable growth of hypocrisy. “Un (faux) dÉvot est celui qui, sous un roi athÉe, serait athÉe.” A good story in illustration of this hypocrisy is told by Saint-Simon. On Thursday and Sunday evenings during the winter it was the King’s habit to attend the service of benediction in the chapel at Versailles, which in consequence was always filled with the ladies of the Court. But, if it became known that the King was not going to attend, the chapel was nearly empty. One evening M. de Brissac, major of the body-guard, an honest man who hated shams, came into the chapel just before the service and announced that His Majesty was not coming, whereupon all the ladies except three or four quietly withdrew, and when the King arrived he was much surprised to find the chapel empty. On Brissac’s telling him after the service what had happened, he laughed heartily, but the ladies, says Saint-Simon, would gladly have strangled Brissac. This anecdote well illustrates the hypocrisy of the age. Beneath the outward veneer of piety free thought and immorality reigned unchecked. Memoirs, letters, and sermons all confirm the truth of Saint-Simon’s picture. In his funeral oration on the Prince de Conti, who died in 1707, Massillon speaks of “un siÈcle, oÙ la religion est devenue le jouet, ou de la dÉbauche, ou d’une fausse science.” In a well-known letter written by Mme de Maintenon to the Princesse des Ursins in the same year she says, “Je vous avoue, Madame, que les femmes de ce temps-ci me sont insupportables: leur habillement insensÉ et immodeste, leur tabac, leur vin, leur gourmandise, leur grossiÈretÉ, leur paresse, tout cela est si opposÉ À mon goÛt, et, ce me semble, À la raison, que je ne puis le souffrir.” There was no worse specimen of her sex than the Duchesse de Berry, whose marriage Saint-Simon had done so much to promote, and of whom he says in his portrait of her, drawn at the close of Louis XIV’s reign, that "except for avarice, she was a model of all the vices[7]."

The men were naturally no better than the women, and at the hÔtel in the Temple of the Grand Prior of VendÔme he and his brother, the Duc de VendÔme, especially during the years between the Peace of Ryswick (1697) and the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701), gave cynical displays of drunkenness and debauchery.

A less vicious characteristic of the society of Versailles, but one greatly at variance with the refinement which we associate with the age of LouisXIV, was the love of brutal and even cruel horse-play. We read in Saint-Simon of a poor old woman named Mme Panache, whose pockets the princes and princesses used to fill with roast and stewed meat, till the sauce ran down her petticoats. Or they would fillip her face and laugh at her fury, at not being able to tell who had struck her—for she could not see beyond the end of her nose. Another butt was the Princesse d’Harcourt, ugly, dirty, greedy, malicious, dishonest. She never missed a religious service, and was a constant communicant, generally after having played at cards—and openly cheated—till four in the morning. She certainly did not deserve much consideration, but her character hardly justified the Duchess of Burgundy and her ladies in making their way into her bedroom and pelting her with snowballs for half-an-hour[8].

Practical joking, even when it was more or less friendly, often took a brutal or disgusting form. LouisXIV himself, that model of dignity and high-breeding, used to amuse himself with putting hair into the butter and tarts destined for Mlle de Montpensier and Mme de Thianges (the sister of Mme de Montespan), both of whom were very particular about their food. The Duc de Bourbon, La BruyÈre’s pupil, and his Duchess especially distinguished themselves in this unpleasant fashion. The Duchess once flung a glass of water in the face of Santeul, the distinguished Latin poet, who was their habitual guest at Chantilly, and the Duke nearly killed him by emptying his snuff-box into his glass of champagne. On a par with these elementary notions of social merriment was the complete want of privacy and the lack of even ordinary decency. It is not too much to say that the standard of comfort at the Court of Versailles in the days of the grand monarque was lower than that of an English labourer at the present day.

The lack of privacy which strikes the modern reader of Saint-Simon presumably did not trouble his contemporaries, to whom it would have seemed only natural. Certainly it did not trouble LouisXIV, who suffered from it more than anybody, but who seems to have delighted in the perpetual presence of his courtiers, as giving him ample opportunity of observing their goings in and goings out. It was part of the espionnage which was one of the worst features of the ancien rÉgime, and which shewed itself in more unpleasant forms, such as the strict police supervision exercised by that most capable of chiefs, Marc-RenÉ d’Argenson, and the habitual opening of letters, whatever the rank of the writers. An even more unpleasant sign of despotic government was the practice of granting lettres de cachet on the unsupported statement of the applicant.

Another feature of the reign which marks the semi-oriental character of the rule of LouisXIV was the cult—for it cannot be called less—of the monarch. “Qui considÉrera que le visage du prince fait toute la fÉlicitÉ du courtisan, qu’il s’occupe et se remplit pendant toute sa vie de le voir et d’en Être vu, comprendra un peu comment voir Dieu peut faire toute la gloire et tout le bonheur des Saints.” So writes La BruyÈre, and his commentator cites apt passages from the letters of Mme de SÉvignÉ and her cousin Bussy-Rabutin, of the MarÉchal de Villeroy and the Duc de Richelieu, to illustrate his remark. It was, indeed, literally true of such typical courtiers as Dangeau and D’Antin and La Rochefoucauld, the son of the author of the Maxims, who sometimes, says Saint-Simon, went for ten years without spending a night away from the Court, and in over forty years did not sleep twenty times at Paris. “Jamais valet ne le fut de personne avec tant d’assiduitÉ et de bassesse, il faut lÂcher le mot, avec tant d’esclavage.” As La BruyÈre says without any hesitation, “Qui est plus esclave qu’un courtisan assidu, si ce n’est un courtisan plus assidu?” Nor must we forget that prince of flatterers, the Cardinal de Polignac, of whom Saint-Simon tells us that once, when it was beginning to rain at Marly and the King made a civil remark about his fine coat, he replied, “It is nothing, Sire; the rain at Marly does not wet one.” There were plenty of courtiers at Versailles who were ready to say with the fox in La Fontaine’s fable,