It is not every lover of French literature who has the leisure or
the courage to read the whole of Saint-Simon’s _Mémoires_, the text
of which fills eighteen and a half volumes of the edition of MM.
Chéruel and Ad. Régnier _fils_. Nor is it all of equal interest. I
thought, therefore, that a selection might prove acceptable to the
busy or faint-hearted reader, and perhaps even whet his appetite for
the work itself. In making the selection I have practically confined
myself to the first two-thirds of the _Mémoires_, that is to say, to
the reign of Louis XIV, and I have chosen the passages with a view to
illustrating that reign during the period of its declining splendour.
In the first four chapters we have the Roi-Soleil and Mme de Maintenon
presented to us in their daily life. There follows the account of the
review at Compiègne, which gives us some measure of Louis’s boundless
extravagance, and the greater part of the famous chapters on the death
of Monseigneur, surely one of the greatest things in literature. Lastly
there are thirteen portraits, including such masterpieces as Conti,
Cardinal d’Estrées, Fénelon, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, and
the Duke of Orléans. In my notes I have confined myself to the modest
task of illustrating Saint-Simon from himself, and of supplying such
other biographical details as seemed necessary. No one can annotate
Saint-Simon without being indebted to M. de Boislisle’s masterly
edition now in progress, but for my purpose the full and careful index
of MM. Chéruel and Régnier has been of even greater service. The index
to vols. I.-XXVIII. of M. de Boislisle’s edition appeared after my work
was practically finished.