Women of Versailles the Court of Louis XIV-Arthur-Léon Imbert de Saint-Amand

When he acted on his own initiative, he was always good and generous.

To him, pleasure was merely an accessory.

Throughout his entire reign, he never ceased to work eight hours every day.

He wrote in his memoirs intended for his son's instruction that for a king not to work was ingratitude and audacity towards God and injustice and tyranny towards men.

These conditions of royalty, he added, which may sometimes appear to you hard and vexatious in so high a place, you would find sweet and easy were it a question of arriving thither.

Nothing will be more fatiguing to you than great idleness should you have the misfortune of falling into it.

Disgusted with affairs in the first place, next with pleasures, you will at last be disgusted with idleness itself.

Work, that is to say duty, was a source of incessant satisfaction for the great king.

To have one's eyes open over all the earth, he wrote in his memoirs, to learn incessantly the news of all the provinces and all the nations, the secrets of all courts, the dispositions and the weak points of all princes and all foreign ministers, to be informed about an infinity of things of which we are supposed to be ignorant, to see all around us what people are endeavoring to their utmost to conceal, to discover the most remote views of our own courtiers, I know not what other pleasure would not be abandoned for this one, even if solely moved by curiosity.

Louis XIV was a supreme artist who played his part of king with facility and conviction.

He was also a poet in action, whose existence, formed to strike the imagination of his subjects, unrolled itself in an uninterrupted series of grand and marvelous deeds, a sovereign enamored of glory and the ideal, who took a delighted admiration in great battles, in acts of heroism and courage, in warlike preparations, in the skillfully combined operation of a siege, in the terrible affrays of battle, and in the depths of forests in the noisy tumult of great hunting exploits.

On his deathbed, Louis XIV accused himself of having been too fond of war.

He might also have accused himself of having been too fond of women.

Yet he had certain illusions respecting them, and sincerely believed that they had never ruled him.

He boasts as much, wrongly as we believe, in the memoirs he addressed to the Dauphin.

In abandoning our hearts, he wrote, we must remain absolute masters of our minds.

We must make a distinction between the tenderness of a lover and the resolutions of a sovereign, so that the beauty who makes our pleasures shall not be free to speak to us concerning our affairs.

You know what I have said to you many times about the influence of favorites.

That of a mistress is far more dangerous.

As the prince ought always to be a perfect model of virtue, it would be well for him to avoid the frailties common to the rest of mankind, the more so because he is sure that they cannot remain hidden.

Louis XIV did not always succeed in putting these beautiful and prudent maxims into practice, but culpable as they were, his amours at all times preserved a certain poetic quality.

In the midst of his splendors, the great king thought the joy of loving and of being loved was the supreme happiness.

Far from wishing to say, when he weedy weedy, he courted his mistresses patiently.

He comprehended their scruples.

He esteemed their resistance.

When he acted on his own initiative, he was always good and generous.

To him, pleasure was merely an accessory.

Throughout his entire reign, he never ceased to work eight hours every day.

He wrote in his memoirs intended for his son's instruction that for a king not to work was ingratitude and audacity towards God and injustice and tyranny towards men.

These conditions of royalty, he added, which may sometimes appear to you hard and vexatious in so high a place, you would find sweet and easy were it a question of arriving thither.

Nothing will be more fatiguing to you than great idleness should you have the misfortune of falling into it.

Disgusted with affairs in the first place, next with pleasures, you will at last be disgusted with idleness itself.

Work, that is to say duty, was a source of incessant satisfaction for the great king.

To have one's eyes open over all the earth, he wrote in his memoirs, to learn incessantly the news of all the provinces and all the nations, the secrets of all courts, the dispositions and the weak points of all princes and all foreign ministers, to be informed about an infinity of things of which we are supposed to be ignorant, to see all around us what people are endeavoring to their utmost to conceal, to discover the most remote views of our own courtiers, I know not what other pleasure would not be abandoned for this one, even if solely moved by curiosity.

Louis XIV was a supreme artist who played his part of king with facility and conviction.

He was also a poet in action, whose existence, formed to strike the imagination of his subjects, unrolled itself in an uninterrupted series of grand and marvelous deeds, a sovereign enamored of glory and the ideal, who took a delighted admiration in great battles, in acts of heroism and courage, in warlike preparations, in the skillfully combined operation of a siege, in the terrible affrays of battle, and in the depths of forests in the noisy tumult of great hunting exploits.

On his deathbed, Louis XIV accused himself of having been too fond of war.

He might also have accused himself of having been too fond of women.

Yet he had certain illusions respecting them, and sincerely believed that they had never ruled him.

He boasts as much, wrongly as we believe, in the memoirs he addressed to the Dauphin.

In abandoning our hearts, he wrote, we must remain absolute masters of our minds.

We must make a distinction between the tenderness of a lover and the resolutions of a sovereign, so that the beauty who makes our pleasures shall not be free to speak to us concerning our affairs.

You know what I have said to you many times about the influence of favorites.

That of a mistress is far more dangerous.

As the prince ought always to be a perfect model of virtue, it would be well for him to avoid the frailties common to the rest of mankind, the more so because he is sure that they cannot remain hidden.

Louis XIV did not always succeed in putting these beautiful and prudent maxims into practice, but culpable as they were, his amours at all times preserved a certain poetic quality.

In the midst of his splendors, the great king thought the joy of loving and of being loved was the supreme happiness.

Far from wishing to say, when he weedy weedy, he courted his mistresses patiently.

He comprehended their scruples.

He esteemed their resistance.