Selections from Saint-Simon

by duc de Louis de Rouvroy Saint-Simon

The lack of privacy which strikes the modern reader of Saint-Simon presumably did not trouble his contemporaries, to whom it would have seemed only natural. Certainly it did not trouble Louis XIV, who suffered from it more than anybody, but who seems to have delighted in the perpetual presence of his courtiers, as giving him ample opportunity of observing their goings in and goings out. It was part of the espionnage which was one of the worst features of the ancien régime, and which shewed itself in more unpleasant forms, such as the strict police supervision exercised by that most capable of chiefs, Marc-René d’Argenson, and the habitual opening of letters, whatever the rank of the writers. An even more unpleasant sign of despotic government was the practice of granting lettres de cachet on the unsupported statement of the applicant.

Another feature of the reign which marks the semi-oriental character of the rule of Louis XIV was the cult—for it cannot be called less—of the monarch. “Qui considérera que le visage du prince fait toute la félicité du courtisan, qu’il s’occupe et se remplit pendant toute sa vie de le voir et d’en être vu, comprendra un peu comment voir Dieu peut faire toute la gloire et tout le bonheur des Saints.” So writes La Bruyère, and his commentator cites apt passages from the letters of Mme de Sévigné and her cousin Bussy-Rabutin, of the Maréchal de Villeroy and the Duc de Richelieu, to illustrate his remark. It was, indeed, literally true of such typical courtiers as Dangeau and D’Antin and La Rochefoucauld, the son of the author of the Maxims, who sometimes, says Saint-Simon, went for ten years without spending a night away from the Court, and in over forty years did not sleep twenty times at Paris. “Jamais valet ne le fut de personne avec tant d’assiduité et de bassesse, il faut lâcher le mot, avec tant d’esclavage.” As La Bruyère says without any hesitation, “Qui est plus esclave qu’un courtisan assidu, si ce n’est un courtisan plus assidu?” Nor must we forget that prince of flatterers, the Cardinal de Polignac, of whom Saint-Simon tells us that once, when it was beginning to rain at Marly and the King made a civil remark about his fine coat, he replied, “It is nothing, Sire; the rain at Marly does not wet one.” There were plenty of courtiers at Versailles who were ready to say with the fox in La Fontaine’s fable,

Eh bien! manger moutons, canaille, sotte espèce,

Est-ce un péché? non, non; vous leur fîtes, Seigneur,

En les croquant, beaucoup d’honneur.

What wonder if the Roi-Soleil, surrounded by so many adoring satellites, came almost to believe in his own divinity?

In this worship of the King Saint-Simon was very far from taking part, but on the other hand he entered with zest into all the futilities of precedence and etiquette which formed the most serious business of the Court. The right to wear one’s hat, or, in the case of a woman, to be seated in the royal presence (called le droit du tabouret), the right to be kissed by royalty, the right to a chair with arms, or merely to a folding-chair—all these were privileges which were claimed and contested with the utmost keenness, and which figure largely in the pages of our chronicler. It is with the utmost gravity that he relates the visit of the Elector of Cologne, Prince Clement of Bavaria, brother-in-law of Monseigneur, to Versailles in 1706; how the King, “standing and uncovered, received him with all the grace imaginable”; how he was presented to the Duchess of Burgundy, who received him standing, but did not kiss him, “because in the King’s presence she kisses nobody”; how he was next conducted to the bedroom of Madame, who kissed him and had a long conversation with him in German; and how finally he visited in her bed the Duchess of Orleans, who also kissed him. “Il ne s’assit nulle part.”

A good instance of the passionate tenacity with which Saint-Simon took part in controversies on the most trivial questions of etiquette is what he calls l’affaire de la quête, to which he devotes no less than ten pages. On certain great festivals of the Church, when the King attended mass or vespers, it was the practice for the Queen, or, after her death, the Dauphine, to appoint one of the court-ladies to take round the bag. But the Lorraine princesses, who, according to Saint-Simon, the life-long enemy of their house, were always trying to usurp the privileges of princesses of the blood, quietly avoided this duty. Hence a long and bitter altercation, largely fomented by Saint-Simon, which resulted in the little Duke, on the advice of his friend Chamillart, obtaining an audience with the King, at which, according to his own account, he put the matter before him with great boldness and complete success. Saint-Simon apologises for the length of his narrative, but says with perfect truth that it is from the circumstantial account of such affairs that we get a knowledge of the Court and especially of the King, "so difficult to reach, so formidable to his intimates, so full of his despotism,... and yet capable of understanding reason when it was put forcibly before him, provided only the speaker flattered his love of despotism and seasoned his remarks with the most profound respect[9]."

Other questions of privilege loom even larger in Saint-Simon’s narrative. The "monstrueuse usurpation du bonnet or the claim of Messieurs du Parlement" to address the ducs et pairs without uncovering fills two whole chapters[10], while the famous account of the lit de justice of August 26, 1718, which records the triumph of the dukes and peers over two of the chief objects of Saint-Simon’s detestation, the Parlement and the Duc du Maine, occupies from first to last more than half a volume[11]. The narrative has not the same interest as that of the death of Monseigneur, but the passage in which Saint-Simon literally gloats over his triumph is one of the most remarkable in his whole memoirs.

Ce fut là où je savourai avec tous les délices qu’on ne peut exprimer le spectacle de ces fiers légistes, qui osent nous refuser le salut, prosternés à genoux, et rendre à nos pieds un hommage au trône, tandis qu’assis et couverts, sur les hauts sièges du côté du même trône, ces situations et ces postures, si grandement disproportionnées, plaident seules avec tout le perçant de l’évidence la cause de ceux qui, véritablement et d’effet, sont laterales Regis contre ce vas electum du tiers état. Mes yeux fichés, collés sur ces bourgeois superbes, parcouroient tout ce grand banc à genoux ou debout, et les amples replis de ces fourrures ondoyantes à chaque génuflexion longue et redoublée, qui ne finissoit que par le commandement du Roi par la bouche du garde des sceaux, vil petit gris qui voudroit contrefaire l’hermine en peinture, et ces têtes découvertes et humiliés à la hauteur de nos pieds....