A word or two about Saint-Simon and his youth.  At nineteen he was destined by his mother to be married.  Now every one knows how marriages are managed in France, not only in the time of Saint-Simon, but even to the present day.  A mother or an aunt, or a grandmother, or an experienced friend, looks out; be it for son, be it for daughter, it is the business of her life.  She looks and she finds:  family, suitable; fortune, convenient; person, pas mal; principles, Catholic, with a due abhorrence of heretics, especially English ones.  After a time, the lady is to be looked at by the unhappy pretendu; a church, a mass, or vespers, being very often the opportunity agreed.  The victim thinks she will do.  The proposal is discussed by the two mammas; relatives are called in; all goes well; the contract is signed; then, a measured acquaintance is allowed:  but no tete-a-tetes; no idea of love.  ’What! so indelicate a sentiment before marriage!  Let me not hear of it,’ cries mamma, in a sanctimonious panic.  ‘Love! Quelle betise!’ adds mon pere.

But Saint-Simon, it seems, had the folly to wish to make a marriage of inclination.  Rich, pair de France, his father—­an old roue, who had been page to Louis XIII.—­dead, he felt extremely alone in the world.  He cast about to see whom he could select.  The Duc de Beauvilliers had eight daughters; a misfortune, it may be thought, in France or anywhere else.  Not at all:  three of the young ladies were kept at home, to be married; the other five were at once disposed of, as they passed the unconscious age of infancy, in convents.  Saint-Simon was, however, disappointed.  He offered, indeed; first for the eldest, who was not then fifteen years old; and finding that she had a vocation for a conventual life, went on to the third, and was going through the whole family, when he was convinced that his suit was impossible.  The eldest daughter happened to be a disciple of Fenelon’s, and was on the very eve of being vowed to heaven.

Saint-Simon went off to La Trappe, to console himself for his disappointment.  There had been an old intimacy between Monsieur La Trappe and the father of Saint-Simon; and this friendship had induced him to buy an estate close to the ancient abbey where La Trappe still existed.  The friendship became hereditary; and Saint-Simon, though still a youth, revered and loved the penitent recluse of Ferte au Vidame, of which Lamartine has written so grand and so poetical a description.

Let us hasten over his marriage with Mademoiselle de Lorges, who proved a good wife.  It was this time a grandmother, the Marechale de Lorges, who managed the treaty; and Saint-Simon became the happy husband of an innocent blonde, with a majestic air, though only fifteen years of age.  Let us hasten on, passing over his presents; his six hundred louis, given in a corbeille full of what he styles ‘gallantries;’ his mother’s donation of jewellery; the midnight mass, by which he was linked to the child who scarcely knew him; let us lay all that aside, and turn to his court life.