Louis XIV at Versailles

This is a selection from the memoirs Saint-Simon wrote about the court of Louis XIV, concentrating on life at Versailles in the king's later decades. The duke records the daily ritual of rising, mass, council, and supper; the ranks and claims of dukes and peers; and the factions around Mme de Maintenon, the royal bastards, and the legitimate grandsons. He draws portraits of ministers, mistresses, and visiting princes, and he follows illness, marriages, and deaths that rearrange the succession. The tone is that of a well-placed observer with scores to settle. The volume is court chronicle and character sketch, not a military history of the reign.

Bound in blue cloth with a design in silver by John Westwood. White dust-jacket printed in blue and black.