This claim is made in all good faith, and as far as the sources of information go it is not far from the truth. But when one goes on to inquire how Saint-Simon has dealt with his sources, the result is not quite so satisfactory. For he suffers from the three failings which are the chief sources of error in a historian. Firstly, he is careless--chiefly, indeed, about figures and dates, but he sometimes copies Dangeau incorrectly. Secondly, he is uncritical. Though he does not retail mere gossip, he readily believes current stories. The ministers, the court-ladies, the valets from whom he obtained his information may have told him what they believed to be the truth, but Saint-Simon did not cross-examine them or otherwise control their statements. Moreover, some of his witnesses are evidently untrustworthy, whether from self-interest, or whether, like Lauzun, they were given to drawing upon their own invention. Thus Saint-Simon’s account of some of the events narrated in his _Memoirs_ has been disproved by modern criticism. The death, for instance, of Monsieur’s first wife, Henrietta of England, was certainly due to natural causes, and not, as Saint-Simon says, to poison. The third and chief disturbing element which must be taken into account in judging of Saint-Simon’s veracity is prejudice--and that no mere ordinary prejudice, but rather a bundle of prejudices, all intensified to the height of passion. As we have seen, his father had instilled into him the dislike of certain families and of all Secretaries of State. It was probably too his father who implanted in him that excessive estimate of his importance as a _duc et pair_ from which sprang his contempt for the whole _bourgeoisie_, including the _noblesse de robe_, and his prejudice against the monarch who chose his ministers almost exclusively from that class. It was the same aristocratic prejudice which inspired his hatred of “the widow Scarron,” and his dislike of Villars, whom as the great-grandson of a _greffier_ he could not forgive for being made a Duke. Some, however, of his prejudices were due to nobler motives. It was Vendôme’s sloth and debauchery that blinded him to that commander’s high qualities in the field. It was his righteous indignation at the “double adultery” of Louis XIV and Mme de Montespan that filled him with hatred against their bastards. It was the scandal of the official recognition of the royal harem that still further prejudiced him against the King.