All through those finely printed volumes are his commentaries, sometimes no more than a word, sometimes a filled, closely written margin. He found little to admire in the human nature of Saint-Simon's period —little to approve in Saint-Simon himself beyond his unrestrained frankness, which he admired without stint, and in one paragraph where the details of that early period are set down with startling fidelity he wrote: "Oh, incomparable Saint-Simon!"
Saint-Simon is always frank, and Mark Twain was equally so. Where the former tells one of the unspeakable compulsions of Louis XIV., the latter has commented:
We have to grant that God made this royal hog; we may also be permitted to believe that it was a crime to do so.
And on another page:
In her memories of this period the Duchesse de St. Clair makes this striking remark: "Sometimes one could tell a gentleman, but it was only by his manner of using his fork."
His comments on the orthodox religion of Saint-Simon's period are not marked by gentleness. Of the author's reference to the Edict of Nantes, which he says depopulated half of the realm, ruined its commerce, and "authorized torments and punishments by which so many innocent people of both sexes were killed by thousands," Clemens writes:
So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.
In the place where Saint-Simon describes the death of Monseigneur, son of the king, and the court hypocrites are wailing their extravagantly pretended sorrow, Clemens wrote:
It is all so true, all so human. God made these animals. He must have noticed this scene; I wish I knew how it struck Him.
There were not many notes in the Suetonius, nor in the Carlyle Revolution, though these were among the volumes he read oftenest. Perhaps they expressed for him too completely and too richly their subject-matter to require anything at his hand. Here and there are marked passages and occasional cross-references to related history and circumstance.