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Memoirs
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General SummaryThe duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755) was the son of a duke and peer of France. As a young man he entered the army and served as an officer in more than one campaign. He passed most of his active career as a courtier and diplomat during the last twenty years of the reign of Louis XIV and then during the eight years of the Orléans regency. His position gave him an excellent opportunity to observe at first hand the pomps and vanities, the ceremonies, intrigues, petty tragedies, and petty comedies of what was the most splendid of European courts. Everything he saw or learned at this time he set down in his Memoirs. For sprightliness of style, satirical power, and ability to delineate character the work is almost unique. It occupies a very high place in French literature. Saint-Simon, in writing his reminiscences, addressed posterity rather than his own age. The work was not published until many years after his death, and it was not till 1829 that anything like a complete edition of it appeared in print.
CHAPTER V
Louis XIV and His Court1
24. Louis XIV2
Louis XIV was made for a brilliant court. In the midst of
other men his figure, his courage, his grace, his beauty, his grand
bearing, even the tone of his voice and the majestic and natural
charm of all his person, distinguished him till his death, and
showed that if he had only been born a simple private gentleman,
he would equally have excelled in fêtes, pleasures, and
gallantry. . . .
But Louis XIV reigned in little things; the great he could
never reach; even in the former, too, he was often governed.
The superior ability of his early ministers and his early generals
soon wearied him. He liked nobody to be in any way superior
to him. Thus he chose his ministers, not for their knowledge,
but for their ignorance; not for their capacity, but for their
want of it. He liked to form them, as he said; liked to teach
them even the most trifling things. It was the same with his
generals. He took credit to himself for instructing them;
wished it to be thought that from his cabinet he commanded and
directed all his armies. Naturally fond of trifles, he unceasingly
occupied himself with the most petty details of his troops, his
household, his mansions; would even instruct his cooks, who
received, like novices, lessons they had known by heart for years.
This vanity, this unmeasured and unreasonable love of admiration,
was his ruin. His ministers, his generals, his courtiers, soon
perceived his weakness. They praised him with emulation and
spoiled him.
He was exceedingly jealous of the attention paid him. Not
only did he notice the presence of the most distinguished courtiers,
but those of inferior degree also. He looked to the right
and to the left, not only upon rising but upon going to bed, at his
meals, in passing through his apartments, or his gardens of Versailles,
where alone the courtiers were allowed to follow him; he
saw and noticed everybody; not one escaped him, not even those
who hoped to remain unnoticed. He marked well all absentees
from the court, found out the reason of their absence, and never
lost an opportunity of acting toward them as the occasion might
seem to justify. With some of the courtiers (the most distinguished),
it was a demerit not to make the court their ordinary
abode; with others it was a fault to come but rarely; for those
who never or scarcely ever came it was certain disgrace. When
their names were in any way mentioned, "I do not know them,"
the king would reply haughtily. . . .
Louis XIV took great pains to be well informed of all that
passed everywhere; in the public places, in the private houses,
in society and familiar intercourse. His spies and tell-tales
were very numerous. He had them of all kinds: many who
were ignorant that their information reached him; others who
knew it; others who wrote to him direct, sending their letters
through channels he indicated; and all these letters were seen
by him alone, and always before everything else. There were
other spies who sometimes spoke to him secretly in his cabinet,
entering by the back stairs. These unknown means ruined a
great number of people of all classes, who never could discover
the cause; often ruined them very unjustly; for the king, once
prejudiced, never altered his opinion, or so rarely that nothing
was more rare. He had, too, another fault, very dangerous for
others and often for himself, since it deprived him of good subjects.
He had an excellent memory; and if he saw a man who,
twenty years before, perhaps, had in some manner offended him,
he did not forget the man, though he might forget the offense.
This was enough, however, to exclude the person from all favor.
The entreaties of a minister, of a general, of his confessor even,
could not move the king. He would not yield.
The most cruel means by which the king was informed of
what was passing — for many years before anybody knew it — was
that of opening letters. The promptness and dexterity
with which they were opened passes understanding. He saw
extracts from all the letters in which there were passages that
the chiefs of the post office, and then the minister who governed
it, thought ought to go before him; entire letters, too, were sent
to him, when their contents seemed to justify the sending. Thus
the chiefs of the post, nay, the principal clerks, were in a position
to suppose what they pleased and against whom they pleased.
A word of contempt against the king or the government, a joke,
a detached phrase, was enough. It is incredible how many
people, justly or unjustly, were more or less ruined, always without
resource, without trial, and without knowing why. The
secret was impenetrable; for nothing ever cost the king less than
profound silence and dissimulation. . . .
Never did man give with better grace than Louis XIV, or
augmented so much, in this way, the price of his benefits. Never
did man sell to better profit his words, even his smiles, nay, his
looks. Never did disobliging words escape him; and, if he had
to blame, to reprimand, or correct, which was very rare, it was
nearly always with mildness, never with anger or severity.
Never was man so naturally polite, or of a politeness so measured,
so graduated, so adapted to person, time, and place. Toward
women his politeness was without parallel. Never did he pass
the humblest petticoat without raising his hat; even to chambermaids
that he knew to be such, as often happened at Marly.
For ladies he took his hat off completely, but to a greater or less
extent; for titled people half off, holding it in his hand or against
his ear for a moment. For the nobility he contented himself by
putting his hand to his hat. He took it off for the princes of the
blood, as for the ladies. If he accosted ladies, he did not cover
himself until he had quitted them. All this was out of doors, for
in the house he was never covered. His reverences were incomparable
for their grace and manner; even his mode of half
raising himself at supper for each lady who arrived at table.
Though at last this fatigued him, yet he never ceased it; the
ladies who were to sit down, however, took care not to enter
after supper had commenced.
1 , translated by Bayle St. John. 3 vols. London, 1883. Bickers and Son.
2 Saint-Simon, , vol. ii, pp. 357–358, 364–368.
Contents:
Chicago: Bayle St. John, trans., "Louis XIV," Memoirs in Readings in Modern European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1926), 37–39. Original Sources, accessed November 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=5M77IK75CIFZLU3.
MLA: . "Louis XIV." Memoirs, translted by Bayle St. John, Vol. ii, in Readings in Modern European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, D.C. Heath, 1926, pp. 37–39. Original Sources. 21 Nov. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=5M77IK75CIFZLU3.
Harvard: (trans.), 'Louis XIV' in Memoirs. cited in 1926, Readings in Modern European History, ed. , D.C. Heath, Boston, pp.37–39. Original Sources, retrieved 21 November 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=5M77IK75CIFZLU3.
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