of persons, calling up before the imagination not only
the details of their physical appearance, but the more recondite effects
of their manner and their bearing, so that, when he has finished, one
almost feels that one has met the man. But his excellence does not stop
there. It is upon the inward creature that he expends his most lavish
care--upon the soul that sits behind the eyelids, upon the purpose and
the passion that linger in a gesture or betray themselves in a word. The
joy that he takes in such descriptions soon infects the reader, who
finds before long that he is being carried away by the ardour of the
chase, and that at last he seizes upon the quivering quarry with all the
excitement and all the fury of Saint-Simon himself. Though it would,
indeed, be a mistake to suppose that Saint-Simon was always furious--the
wonderful portraits of the Duchesse de Bourgogne and the Prince de Conti
are in themselves sufficient to disprove that--yet there can be no doubt
that his hatreds exceeded his loves, and that, in his character-drawing,
he was, as it were, more at home when he detested. Then the victim is
indeed dissected with a loving hand; then the details of incrimination
pour out in a multitudinous stream; then the indefatigable brush of the
master darkens the deepest shadows and throws the most glaring
deformities into still bolder relief; then disgust, horror, pity, and
ridicule finish the work which scorn and indignation had begun. Nor, in
spite of the virulence of his method, do his portraits ever sink to the
level of caricatures. His most malevolent exaggerations are yet so
realistic that they carry conviction. When he had fashioned to his
liking his terrific images--his Vendome, his Noailles, his
Pontchartrain, his Duchesse de Berry, and a hundred more--he never
forgot, in the extremity of his ferocity, to commit the last insult, and
to breathe into their nostrils the fatal breath of life.

And it is not simply in detached portraits that Saint-Simon's
descriptive powers show themselves; they are no less remarkable in the
evocation of crowded and elaborate scenes. He is a master of movement;
he can make great groups of persons flow and dispose themselves and
disperse again; he can produce the effect of a multitude under the
dominion of some common agitation, the waves of excitement spreading in
widening circles, amid the conflicting currents of curiosity and
suspicion, fear and hope. He is assiduous in his de