Volume 1, Number 5 · October 31, 1963
The King and I
By John Weightman
The Age of Magnificence: Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV
by the Duc de Saint-Simon, selected, edited, and translated by Sanche de Gramont
Putnam, 315 pp., $5.95
There have been many strange and exemplary periods in French history, but none more puzzling and fascinating than the reign of Louis XIV, the Roi-Soleil. It is referred to as le grand siècle, although the expression is not appropriate to the whole of the seventeenth century, nor even to the total span of Louis XIV's reign, but only to the comparatively short period of his heyday. It has remained in the national consciousness as the time when French culture achieved its most characteristic expression, when French literature and styles of living were at once so universal and so profoundly idiomatic that they were to leave a permanent mark on the mind of Europe. Yet the French themselves have never really decided whether it was the best of times or the worst of times. Scratch almost any Frenchman—including General de Gaulle, if you dare—and you will find that he has an equal respect for Louis XIV and for the Revolution, in spite of the fact that the Revolution aimed to destroy all those features which Louis had brought to their highest point.
Review, 1456 words
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