Saint-Simon was a nobleman who led a somewhat dissolute, adventurous life. At the early age of sixteen he took part in the American War of Independence. The Revolution witnessed the abandonment of his claim to nobility, but by successful speculation in national property he was enabled to retrieve his fortune to some extent. Imprisoned as a suspect at Sainte-Pélagie, set free on the 9th Thermidor, he attained a certain notoriety as a man of affairs interested chiefly in travels and amusements and as a dilettante student of the sciences. From the moment of his release he began to regard himself as a kind of Messiah.[437] He was profoundly impressed by what seemed to him to be the birth of a new society at which he had himself assisted, in which the moral and political and even physical conditions of life were suddenly torn up by the roots, when ancient beliefs disappeared and nothing seemed ready to take their place. He himself was to be the evangelist of the new gospel, and with this object in view on the 4th Messidor, An. VI, he called together the capitalists who were already associated with him and, pointing out the great necessity for restoring public confidence, proposed the establishment of a gigantic bank whose funds might be employed in setting up works of public utility—a proof of the curious way in which economic and philosophic considerations were already linked together in his thoughts.[438] An ill-considered marriage which was hastily broken off, however, was followed by a period of much extravagance and great misery. By the year 1805 so reduced were his circumstances that he was glad to avail himself of the generosity of one of his old servants. After her death he lived partly upon the modest pension provided him by his family and partly upon the contributions of a few tradesmen, but he was again so miserable that in 1823 he attempted suicide. A banker of the name of Olinde Rodrigues came to the rescue this time and supplied him with the necessary means of support. He died in 1825, surrounded by a number of his disciples who had watched over the last moments of his earthly life. During all these years, haunted as he was by the need for giving to the new century the doctrine it so much required, he was constantly engaged in publishing brochures, new works, or selections from his earlier publications, sometimes alone and sometimes in collaboration with others,[439] in which the same suggestions are always revived and the same ideas keep recurring, but in slightly different forms.