I was born on the night of the 15th of January, 1675, of Claude Duc de Saint-Simon, Peer of France, and of his second wife Charlotte de l’Aubepine.  I was the only child of that marriage.  By his first wife, Diana de Budos, my father had had only a daughter.  He married her to the Duc de Brissac, Peer of France, only brother of the Duchesse de Villeroy.  She died in 1684, without children,—­having been long before separated from a husband who was unworthy of her—­leaving me heir of all her property.

I bore the name of the Vidame de Chartres; and was educated with great care and attention.  My mother, who was remarkable for virtue, perseverance, and sense, busied herself continually in forming my mind and body.  She feared for me the usual fate of young men, who believe their fortunes made, and who find themselves their own masters early in life.  It was not likely that my father, born in 1606, would live long enough to ward off from me this danger; and my mother repeatedly impressed on, me how necessary it was for a young man, the son of the favourite of a King long dead,—­with no new friends at Court,—­to acquire some personal value of his own.  She succeeded in stimulating my courage; and in exciting in me the desire to make the acquisitions she laid stress on; but my aptitude for study and the sciences did not come up to my desire to succeed in them.  However, I had an innate inclination for reading, especially works of history; and thus was inspired with ambition to emulate the examples presented to my imagination,—­to do something and become somebody, which partly made amends for my coldness for letters.  In fact, I have always thought that if I had been allowed to read history more constantly, instead of losing my time in studies for which I had no aptness, I might have made some figure in the world.

What I read of my own accord, of history, and, above all, of the personal memoirs of the times since Francis I., bred in me the desire to write down what I might myself see.  The hope of advancement, and of becoming familiar with the affairs of my time, stirred me.  The annoyances I might thus bring upon myself did not fail to present themselves to my mind; but the firm resolution I made to keep my writings secret from everybody, appeared to me to remedy all evils.  I commenced my memoirs then in July, 1694, being at that time colonel of a cavalry regiment bearing my name, in the camp of Guinsheim, upon the old Rhine, in the army commanded by the Marechal Duc de Lorges.

In 1691 I was studying my philosophy and beginning to learn to ride at an academy at Rochefort, getting mightily tired of masters and books, and anxious to join the army.  The siege of Mons, formed by the King in person, at the commencement of the spring, had drawn away all the young men of my age to commence their first campaign; and, what piqued me most, the Duc de Chartres was there, too.  I had been, as it were, educated with him.  I was younger than