[9] Mémoires, IV. 42-52.
[10] Mémoires, XI. 1-54.
[11] XV. 336-473; XVI. 1-96.
[12] VIII. 32-34.
[13] ib. 214-217.
[14] Ed. Chéruel, XII. cc. I and IV; ed. Boislisle, XXVIII. 1-53, 126-175. This digression on the character and reign of Louis XIV was written in September, 1745, but it reproduces almost textually the long note which Saint-Simon added to the Memoirs of Dangeau ten years earlier. It should be compared with his Parallèle des trois premiers rois Bourbon (Écrits inédits, I.) and with the Relation de la Cour de France en 1690 of Ezekiel Spanheim (ed. E. Bourgeois, 1900), the envoy of the Great Elector of Brandenburg.
[15] This is a mistake. Louis XIV had common sense, prudence, and sagacity, and, if he lacked initiative and originality, he could understand what was explained to him.
[16] Olympe Mancini, who married the Comte de Soissons of the royal house of Savoy. She was the mother of Prince Eugène.
[17] Nicolas Fouquet (1615-1680), the well-known surintendant des finances, aspired to succeed Mazarin, but his ambitions were thwarted by Louis announcing his intention to be his own chief minister. He was arrested on September 5, 1661, and his trial for malversation of the finances began in the following November. The verdict was not given till December, 1664, when the majority of the judges condemned him to perpetual banishment with confiscation of his property. This was changed by Louis with extrême dureté to imprisonment for life. (See J. Lair, Nicolas Fouquet, 2 vols. 1890, and Mme de Sévigné’s letters.)
[18] This episode, in which the Spanish ambassador was clearly in the wrong, took place in 1661. The last act of the Maréchal d’Estrades’s long and successful diplomatic career was the Treaty of Nymegen (1678). He died in 1685, leaving memoirs (9 vols. 1743) which Saint-Simon qualifies as “excellent.”