Produced by Claudine Corbasson, Al Haines, Hans Pieterse & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, MANAGER LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS BOMBAY } CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. MADRAS } TORONTO: J. M. DENT AND SONS, LTD. TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SELECTIONS FROM SAINT-SIMON EDITED BY ARTHUR TILLEY, M.A. FELLOW AND LECTURER OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1920 PREFACE It is not every lover of French literature who has the leisure or the courage to read the whole of Saint-Simon’s _Mémoires_, the text of which fills eighteen and a half volumes of the edition of MM. Chéruel and Ad. Régnier _fils_. Nor is it all of equal interest. I thought, therefore, that a selection might prove acceptable to the busy or faint-hearted reader, and perhaps even whet his appetite for the work itself. In making the selection I have practically confined myself to the first two-thirds of the _Mémoires_, that is to say, to the reign of Louis XIV, and I have chosen the passages with a view to illustrating that reign during the period of its declining splendour. In the first four chapters we have the Roi-Soleil and Mme de Maintenon presented to us in their daily life. There follows the account of the review at Compiègne, which gives us some measure of Louis’s boundless extravagance, and the greater part of the famous chapters on the death of Monseigneur, surely one of the greatest things in literature. Lastly there are thirteen portraits, including such masterpieces as Conti, Cardinal d’Estrées, Fénelon, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, and the Duke of Orléans. In my notes I have confined myself to the modest task of illustrating Saint-Simon from himself, and of supplying such other biographical details as seemed necessary. No one can annotate Saint-Simon without being indebted to M. de Boislisle’s masterly edition now in progress, but for my purpose the full and careful index of MM. Chéruel and Régnier has been of even greater service. The index to vols. I.-XXVIII. of M. de Boislisle’s edition appeared after my work was practically finished. A. T. CAMBRIDGE, _December, 1919_. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION ix I. LOUIS XIV 1