112 MEMOIRS OF THE DUKE OF SATNT-SIMOK.

power to beat the enemies in detail, and render them unable
to undertake the siege of Mons, or any other siege. If Boufflera
was indignant at this, he was still more indignant at what hap-
pened afterwards. In the first dispatch he sent to the King
he promised to send another as soon as possible giving full
details, with propositions as to how the vacancies which had
occurred in the army might be filled up. On the very evening
he sent off his second dispatch, he received intelligence that
the King had already taken his dispositions with respect to
these vacancies, without having consulted him upon a single
point. This was the first reward Boufflers received for the
services he had just rendered, and that, too, from a Bang who
had said in public that without Bouifiers all was lost, and that
assuredly it was God who had inspired him with the idea of"
going to the army. From that time BoufBers fell into a dis-
grace from which he never recovered. He had the courage to
appear as usual at the Court; but a worm was gnawing him
within and destroyed him. Oftentimes he opened his heart to
me without rashness, and without passing the strict limits of
his virtue; but the poniard was in his heart, and neither time
nor reflection could dull its edge. He did nothing but languish
afterwards, yet without being confined to his bed or to 'his
chamber, but did not live more than two years. Villars, on
the contrary, was in greater favour than ever. He arrived
at Court triumphant. The King made him occupy an apart-
ment at Versailles, so that his wound might be well attended to.
What a contrast! What a difference between the services,
the merit, the condition, the virtue, the situation of these two
men ! What inexhaustible funds of reflection! *

* It is as well to point out that the silly and ignorant, who are unable to-
emancipate themselves from the influence of the title of Great, usually
given to Louis XTV.3 and who are yet candid enough to admit that in con-
duct and tone of thought he never rose above the level of a pious dancing-
master, or conscientious master of the ceremonies, usually fall back on his
mysterious tact in choosing men of genius ! Every page of Saint-Simon,
proves that imbecility, properly combined with dishonesty, was the true-
passport to Ms favour. literature is good enough or servile enough to be
grateful to him for not stifling its development. Is France so sure that it
might not have done better ?