Richelieu has gone to his fathers. Mazarin comes on the scene; the wily,
grasping Italian. He too vanishes; and forth, radiant in youth, and
strong in power, comes Louis, and the reign of politeness and periwigs
begins.
The Duc de Saint-Simon, perhaps the greatest portrait-painter of any
time, has familiarized us with the greatness, the littleness, the
graces, the defects of that royal actor on the stage of Europe, whom his
own age entitled Louis the Great. A wit, in his writings, of the first
order--if we comprise under the head of wit the deepest discernment, the
most penetrating satire--Saint-Simon was also a soldier, philosopher, a
reformer, a Trappist, and, eventually, a devotee. Like all young men who
wished for court favour, he began by fighting: Louis cared little for
carpet knights. He entered, however, into a scene which he has
chronicled with as much fidelity as our journalists do a police report,
and sat quietly down to gather observations--not for his own fame, not
even for the amusement of his children or grandchildren--but for the
edification of posterity yet a century afar off his own time. The
treasures were buried until 1829.
A word or two about Saint-Simon and his youth.
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