Every one was endeavoring to remove his goods, flinging them into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off. Poor people stayed in their houses until the very fire touched them and would then run into boats, or would clamber from one pair of stairs by the waterside to another. Among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies till some of them burned their wings and fell down. Having in an hour's time seen the fire rage every way, and nobody endeavoring to quench it, but endeavoring, instead, to remove their goods and leave all to the fire, and having seen it get as far as the Steelyard, and the wind mighty high and driving it into the City; and everything, after so long a drought, proving combustible, even the very stones of churches... I went to Whitehall, and there up to the king's closet in the chapel, where people came about me, and I did give them an account which dismayed them all, and word was carried in to the king.

So I was called for, and did tell the king and duke of York what I saw, and that unless his Majesty did command houses to be pulled down nothing could stop the fire. They seemed much troubled, and the king commanded me to go to the Lord Mayor from him, and command him to spare no house, but to pull down everything before the fire. The duke of York bid me tell him that if he would have any more soldiers he shall; and so did my Lord Arlington afterwards as a great secret. . . . I went to St. Paul's and there walked along Watling Street, as well as I could, every creature coming away loaded with goods to save, and here and there sick people carried away in beds. Many fine objects were carried in carts and on backs. At last met my Lord Mayor in Canning Street, like a man spent, with a handkerchief about his neck. To the king's message he cried, like a fainting woman, "Lord! what can I do? I am exhausted; people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses, but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." That he needed no more soldiers; and that, for himself, he must go and refresh himself, having been up all night. So he left me,

and I him, and walked home, seeing people all almost distracted, and no manner of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tar, in Thames Street, and warehouses of oil, and wines, and brandy, and other things. . . .

...

Having seen as much as I could now, I went away to Whitehall by appointment, and there walked to St. James's Park, and there met my wife and walked to my boat; and there upon the water again, and to the fire up and down, it still increasing, and the wind great. We got as near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of sparks. This is very true; for houses were burned by these sparks and flakes of fire, three or four, nay, five or six houses, one from another. When we could endure no more upon the water, we went to a little ale-house on the bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was almost dark, and saw the fire grow; and, as night came on, the fire appeared more and more, in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid, malicious, bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the conflagration as one entire arch of fire from this to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches and houses were all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin. So home with a sad heart.

CHAPTER XXVIII

LOUIS XIV AND HIS COURT1

THE Duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755) was the son of a duke and peer of France. As a young man he entered the army and served as an officer in more than one campaign. But he passed most of his active career as a courtier and diplomat during the last twenty years of the reign of Louis XIV, and then during the eight years of the Orléans regency. His position gave him an excellent opportunity to observe at first hand the pomps and vanities, the ceremonies, intrigues, petty tragedies, and petty comedies of what was the most splendid of European courts. Everything he saw or learned at this time he set down in his Memoirs. For sprightliness of style, satirical power, and ability to delineate character the work is almost unique. It occupies a very high place in French literature. Saint-Simon, in writing his reminiscences, addressed posterity rather than his own age. The work was not published until many years after his death, and it was not till 1829 that anything like a complete edition of it appeared in print. Although SaintSimon revealed in his Memoirs the almost incredible pettiness, extravagance, and immorality of the court, he did not do so as a reformer or revolutionist. No man was more an aristocrat than he. His life, however, had been embittered by royal disfavor and by the success of men whom he regarded as vulgar adventurers. Saint

1 The Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon on the Reign of Louis XIV and the Regency, translated by Bayle St. John. London, 1883. 3 vols. Bickers and Son.

Simon satirized them all in the secret pages of the Memoirs and did not spare even the "Grand Monarch" himself.

138. Louis XIV 1

Louis XIV was made for a brilliant court. In the midst of other men his figure, his courage, his grace, his beauty, his grand bearing, even the tone of his voice and the majestic and natural charm of all his person, distinguished him till his death, and showed that if he had only been born a simple private gentleman, he would equally have excelled in fêtes, pleasures, and gallantry. . . .

But Louis XIV reigned in little things; the great he could never reach; even in the former, too, he was often governed. The superior ability of his early ministers and his early generals soon wearied him. He liked nobody to be in any way superior to him. Thus he chose his ministers, not for their knowledge, but for their ignorance; not for their capacity, but for their want of it. He liked to form them, as he said; liked to teach them even the most trifling things. It was the same with his generals. He took credit to himself for instructing them; wished it to be thought that from his cabinet he commanded and directed all his armies. Naturally fond of trifles, he unceasingly occupied himself with the most petty details of his troops, his household, his mansions; would even instruct his cooks, who received, like novices, lessons they had known by heart for years. This vanity, this unmeasured and unreasonable love of admiration, was his ruin. His ministers, his generals, his courtiers, soon perceived his weakness. They praised him with emulation and spoiled him.

He was exceedingly jealous of the attention paid him. Not only did he notice the presence of the most distinguished courtiers, but those of inferior degree also. He looked to the right and to the left, not only upon rising but upon going to bed, at his meals, in passing through his apartments, or his gardens of Versailles, where alone the courtiers were allowed to follow

1 Saint-Simon, Mémoires, vol. ii, pp. 357-358, 364–368.

him; he saw and noticed everybody; not one escaped him, not even those who hoped to remain unnoticed. He marked well all absentees from the court, found out the reason of their absence, and never lost an opportunity of acting toward them as the occasion might seem to justify. With some of the courtiers (the most distinguished), it was a demerit not to make the court their ordinary abode; with others it was a fault to come but rarely; for those who never or scarcely ever came it was certain disgrace. When their names were in any way mentioned, "I do not know them," the king would reply haughtily. . . .

Louis XIV took great pains to be well informed of all that passed everywhere; in the public places, in the private houses, in society and familiar intercourse. His spies and tell-tales were very numerous. He had them of all kinds: many who were ignorant that their information reached him; others who knew it; others who wrote to him direct, sending their letters through channels he indicated; and all these letters were seen by him alone, and always before everything else. There were other spies who sometimes spoke to him secretly in his cabinet, entering by the back stairs. These unknown means ruined a great number of people of all classes, who never could discover the cause; often ruined them very unjustly; for the king, once prejudiced, never altered his opinion, or so rarely that nothing was more rare. He had, too, another fault, very dangerous for others and often for himself, since it deprived him of good subjects. He had an excellent memory; and if he saw a man who, twenty years before, perhaps, had in some manner offended him, he did not forget the man, though he might forget the offense. This was enough, however, to exclude the person from all favor. The entreaties of a minister, of a general, of his confessor even, could not move the king. He would not yield.

The most cruel means by which the king was informed of what was passing - for many years before anybody knew it was that of opening letters. The promptness and dexterity