Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon on the times of Louis XIVand the regencyTranslated and abridged by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, from the edcollated with the original manuscript by MChéruelIllustrated with portsFrom the original . afternoon, butalways for many hours together, generally without a book,for he read only fancy things without any purpose, and verylittle of them; so that he knew almost nothing of what hehad seen, and to the very last busied himself only about theCourt and the gossip of society. I have regretted a thousandtimes his radical incapacity for writing down what he hadseen
Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon on the times of Louis XIVand the regencyTranslated and abridged by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, from the edcollated with the original manuscript by MChéruelIllustrated with portsFrom the original . afternoon, butalways for many hours together, generally without a book,for he read only fancy things without any purpose, and verylittle of them; so that he knew almost nothing of what hehad seen, and to the very last busied himself only about theCourt and the gossip of society. I have regretted a thousandtimes his radical incapacity for writing down what he hadseen and done. It would have been a treasury of the mostcurious anecdotes ; but he had no continuity and no applica-tion. I often tried to draw out of him a few provoking thing! He would begin to relate; inthe tale came names of people who played a part in what hewas telling; instantly he quitted the principal object of histale to attach himself to one of these persons, and soon afterto some other person connected with the first, and then to athird, after the manner of novels. He would meander thusthrough a dozen histories at a time, which made him loseground, chasing from one to the other and never finishing. _^<« ^i7rf^if:^i€ 1695] MEMOIRS OF THE DUG DE SAINT-SIMON. 119 any, and with it all, a very confused style of speech, so thatit was not possible to learn anything clearly from him orretain what he said. Moreover, his conversation was alwayshampered by temper or by policy (it was pleasant only byfits and starts), and by the spiteful shafts which dartedfrom him. A few months before his death, when he was overnmety, he was still breaking horses, and he passaded a colthe had just broken, or indeed only half broken, again andagain before the king on the way to La Muette, amazing thespectators by his dexterity, firmness, and grace. There is noend to what might be told of him. His last illness came upon him without warning, almost ina moment, by the most hor
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