Mme de Maintenon further complained that he was “plein de vues,” by which she doubtless meant much the same thing as Louis XIV, when he called Fénelon chimerical. For in Saint-Simon’s schemes for reform, as in Fénelon’s, there was a strong Utopian element, which did not sufficiently take into account the hard facts of political life and the shortcomings of human nature. They both looked back too fondly on the past, they both exaggerated the value of the nobles and the Estates General--Saint-Simon laying more stress on the former, Fénelon on the latter--as checks to absolutism. That there should be a certain similarity between their ideas is only to be expected, for though they were not personally acquainted, they had a common link in the Duc de Bourgogne, and it was just at the time that Saint-Simon was having frequent conferences with the latter that his two great friends, the Duc de Beauvillier and the Duc de Chevreuse, held long conversations on affairs of state with Fénelon at Chaulnes (November, 1711). From the conferences of Saint-Simon and the Duc de Bourgogne sprang the _Projets de gouvernement_, the manuscript of which was found among Saint-Simon’s papers, and which is undoubtedly from his pen. The conversations at Chaulnes were summarised in the series of short maxims, known as the _Tables de Chaulnes_, which represent Fénelon’s nearest approach to practical politics. However deserving of consideration Saint-Simon’s views may have been, his insistence on them in season and out of season cannot have helped to commend them or to make him popular at Court. In his old age he is said to have been a delightful talker, but at Versailles he must have sometimes proved an intolerable bore. “Il faut tenir votre langue,” said Louis XIV to him when he accepted the appointment for his wife. One wonders at the patience with which the Duke of Orleans endured his moral lectures and political disquisitions. But the Duke was too indolent to escape them, and while he must have derived considerable amusement from the peculiarities of his friend’s character he evidently appreciated his transparent honesty. For with all his faults and prejudices, his vanity, his hate, and his vindictiveness, Saint-Simon was essentially honest. It is true that in his intercourse with some men, as for instance Père Tellier, the Duc de Noailles, and Cardinal Dubois, he did not act up to the character which he claims for himself of “droit, franc, libre, naturel, et beaucoup trop simple,” but if his curiosity and thirst for information led him sometimes to assume a friendliness which he did not feel, or if in the slippery days of the Regency he had to meet duplicity with duplicity, he was honest at heart, and he had no lack of moral courage.