SAINT-SIMON, LOUIS DE ROUVROY, duca di. - Born in Paris on 15 Jan. 1675; died there on 2 March 1755. He fought in Belgium and Germany, then in 1702 abandoned his military career and, after the death of the regent duc d’Orléans, the court as well.
A peer of France, S.-S. was proud, to the point of vanity, of his birth and rank and of the feudal prestige of the nobility. As early as 1694 he began to write the Mémoires in scattered notes, which later served him for a more orderly composition (1740–50). The manuscript, however, was seized after his death; subsequently a part of it, derived from an imperfect copy, was printed, until a complete edition could be obtained (2 vols., Paris 1829–30). S.-S. wrote the Mémoires more to vent his personal nostalgias and passions than to produce a work of history; consequently, much information in them is inaccurate and many facts are even distorted. But the Mémoires have a twofold value: the skill with which he brings to life the persons he knew, and the dramatic power with which he recalls the scenes he witnessed; classical, yet unconstrained by puristic scruples, he always adapts word and construction to the thought rather than to the rules of grammar or rhetoric.
