II. MME DE MAINTENON 42 III. THE DAILY LIFE OF LOUIS XIV 69 IV. MADAME AND MME DE MAINTENON 90 V. THE REVIEW AT COMPIÈGNE 93 VI. THE DEATH OF MONSEIGNEUR 106 VII. PORTRAITS: 1. ACHILLE DE HARLAY 140 2. MME DE CASTRIES 142 3. LE NOSTRE 143 4. VENDÔME 144 5. VAUBAN 146 6. D’ANTIN 152 7. LE PRINCE DE CONTI 157 8. LE DUC ET LA DUCHESSE DE BOURGOGNE 160 9. CARDINAL D’ESTRÉES 172 10. BEAUVILLIER 177 11. FÉNELON 180 12. VILLEROY 189 13. LE DUC D’ORLÉANS 191 VIII. THE ABBÉ DUBOIS AND THE SEE OF CAMBRAI 210 APPENDIX A. THE COUNCILS AND THE SECRETARIES OF STATE 215 APPENDIX B. EXTRACTS FROM VAUBAN, _Projet d’une dîme royale_ 217 INDEX OF PERSONS MENTIONED IN THE NOTES 219 PLAN OF THE CHÂTEAU DE VERSAILLES 66 INTRODUCTION “People who are old enough to write memoirs have usually lost their memory.” This epigrammatic remark with which a recent writer, not old enough to have lost his memory, opens his reminiscences, has considerable truth in it. Historians now recognise that “memoirs do not supply the certainty of history,” for if the writers have dim memories, they have also lively imaginations. Saint-Simon, the prince of memoir-writers, did not, it is true, begin to transcribe his memoirs till he was well past sixty, but from the age of twenty he had collected materials and made systematic notes. His memoirs were not merely the pastime of his old age but the serious business of his whole life. The result is that he has left us a picture of the Court of Versailles at the close of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth which is unsurpassed in interest. This interest is above all things human. The men and women who fill his canvas are vividly alive. With a few powerful and incisive strokes he first sketches their lineaments and then with merciless penetration proceeds to lay bare their souls. But his memoirs are also coloured by his own alert and energetic personality. They not only portray his age, but they reveal himself; to judge of the fidelity of the picture, we must know something of the man.