Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon

The power of his pretensions led to the building of Versailles.

As from 1661, the young monarch contemplated transforming what was a small stately house of cards according to the Duc de Saint-Simon, a chronicler of Versailles under Louis XIV, to an imposing palace.

Inside as outside, nothing was left to random.

With its buildings and gardens, Versailles combines perfect geometry and the art of symmetry, even when hundreds of guests invade the grounds.

But in spite of everything, the legitimations are monstrous actions, unjustifiable attacks upon morality, society, and religion, and on this head Saint-Simon's wrath is only too just.

But does not the responsibility fall in part at least on those detestable flatterers of whom Racine speaks who are the panders and slaves of royal vices? Does not one recall these curious remarks of the austere Duc de Saint-Simon concerning his own father? Louis XIII was really enamoured of Mademoiselle de Hautefort.

My father was young and gallant, and he could not understand a king so amorous and so little able to conceal it, who did not go any further.

He thought it was timidity, and on this principle, when the king was once speaking to him passionately about this girl, my father proposed to him to become his ambassador and bring the affair to a speedy conclusion.

An old potentate kept in leading-strings by a bigoted and intriguing old woman; such is the image it would delineate, the characteristics it wishes to hand down to posterity as those of him who to his last hour, his latest breath, remained what he had been throughout his life, the very type of royalty, the sovereign by excellence.

To dishonor Louis XIV in the woman whom he chose among all others as the companion of his maturity and his old age, such has been and still is the thing aimed at by writers of this school.

They have based their judgments on those of the Duchess of Orleans, the Princess Palatine, whose portrait we have just essayed to trace, and on those of another equally objectionable witness, the Duc de Saint-Simon.

It ought not to be forgotten that this hot-headed duke and peer, who often talked like Philinte if he always thought like Alceste, was at least frank enough to say of himself, 'A Stoic is a fine and noble chimera.

But in spite of everything, the legitimations are monstrous actions, unjustifiable attacks upon morality, society, and religion, and on this head Saint-Simon's wrath is only too just.

But does not the responsibility fall, in part at least, on those detestable flatterers of whom Racine speaks who are the panders and slaves of royal vices? Does not one recall these curious remarks of the austere Duc de Saint-Simon concerning his own father? Louis XIII was really enamored of Mademoiselle de Hautefort.

My father was young and gallant, and he could not understand a king so amorous and so little able to conceal it, who did not go any further.

He thought it was timidity, and on this principle, when the king was once speaking to him passionately about this girl, my father proposed to him to become his ambassador and bring the affair to a speedy conclusion.

The letters of the Princess Palatine lose much of their savor when translated into French.

It is only in German that they have that smack of terror, that impulsiveness, that tone now cynical, now burlesque, which is their chief merit.

Exaggerated and passionate as they are, they are worth consulting even after the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon.

Doubtless Madame has none of the genius of this French Tacitus, but there is more than one analogy in their styles and their destinies.

At the time that Fenelon undertook the direction of him, it must be acknowledged that the preponderance turned towards all that was unpromising.

The Duke of Burgundy, says the Duke de Saint-Simon in his memoirs, was born terrible, and during his first years continued to be an object of terror to those around him.

Hard-hearted, angry to the extreme of passion, even against inanimate objects, impetuous to a degree of fury, incapable of bearing the least opposition to his wishes, even from time or climate, without putting himself into paroxysms of rage that made one tremble for his existence, a condition in which I have often seen him, stubborn in the highest degree, insatiable in the pursuit of every kind of pleasure, addicted to the gratifications of the table and violent hunting, delighted to a degree of ecstasy with music and with deep play in which, however, he could not bear to lose, and by his violence made it dangerous to anyone to engage with him.

In fine, abandoned to all the passions, and transported by every kind of enjoyment, often ferocious, naturally cruel, barbarous in his raillery, seizing the ridiculous with astonishing justness, high as the clouds in his own opinion, considering other men as atoms to which he bore no resemblance, and regarding even his brothers, though educated on an equality with himself, only as intermediate beings between him and the rest of the human race.

In these short visits the people breathed in peace, so that his pastoral visits might be termed the truce of God.

The afflictions inseparable from war called forth the exercise of all Fénelon's noblest qualities.

Charity, says the Duke de Saint-Simon, was among his most striking virtues.

It embraced equally the rich and the poor, his friends and his enemies.

At the time that Fénelon undertook the direction of him, it must be acknowledged that the preponderance turned towards all that was unpromising.

The Duke of Burgundy, says the Duke de Saint-Simon in his memoirs, was born terrible, and during his first years continued to be an object of terror to those around him.

Hard-hearted, angry to the extreme of passion, even against inanimate objects, impetuous to a degree of fury, incapable of bearing the least opposition to his wishes, even from time or climate, without putting himself into paroxysms of rage that made one tremble for his existence, a condition in which I have often seen him, stubborn in the highest degree, insatiable in the pursuit of every kind of pleasure, addicted to the gratifications of the table and violent hunting, delighted to a degree of ecstasy with music and with deep play in which, however, he could not bear to lose, and by his violence made it dangerous to anyone to engage with him.

In fine, abandoned to all the passions, and transported by every kind of enjoyment, often ferocious, naturally cruel, barbarous in his raillery, seizing the ridiculous with astonishing justness, high as the clouds in his own opinion, considering other men as atoms to which he bore no resemblance, and regarding even his brothers, though educated on an equality with himself, only as intermediate beings between him and the rest of the human race.

In these short visits the people breathed in peace, so that his pastoral visits might be termed the truce of God.

The afflictions inseparable from war called forth the exercise of all Fénelon's noblest qualities.

Charity, says the Duke de Saint-Simon, was among his most striking virtues.

It embraced equally the rich and the poor, his friends and his enemies.