s days; as though we were
prematurely gathering the fruit of the tree, which it shall itself
still find barren until many a storm has passed.

95. Last night, re-reading Saint-Simon--with whom we seem to ascend a
lofty tower, whence our gaze rests on hundreds of human destinies,
astir in the valley below--I understood what a beautiful destiny meant
to the instinct of man. It would doubtless have puzzled Saint-Simon
himself to have told what it was that he loved and admired in some of
his heroes, whom he enwraps in a sort of resigned, and almost
unconscious, respect. Thousands of virtues that he esteemed highly have
ceased to exist to-day, and many a quality now seems petty indeed that
he commended in some of his great ones. And yet are there, unperceived
as it were by him, four or five men in the midst of the glittering
crowd hard by the monarch's throne, four or five earnest benevolent
faces on whom our eye still rests gladly; though Saint-Simon gives them
no special attention or thought, for in his heart he looks with
disfavour on the ideas that govern their life. Fenelon is there; the
Dukes of Chevreuse and Beauvilliers; there is Monsieur le Dauphin.
Their happiness is no greater than that of the rest of mankind. They
achieve no marked success, they gain no resplendent victory, They live
as the others live--in the fret and expectation of the thing that we
choose to call happiness, because it has yet to come. Fenelon incurs
the displeasure of the crafty, bigoted king, who, for all his pride,
would resent the most trivial offence with the humbleness of humblest
vanity; who was great in small things, and petty in all that was
great--for such was Louis XIV. Fenelon is condemned, persecuted,
exiled. The Dukes of Chevreuse and Beauvilliers continue to hold
important office at Court, but none the less deem it prudent to live in
a kind of voluntary retirement. The Dauphin is not in favour with the
King; a powerful, envious clique are for ever intriguing against him,
and they finally succeed in crushing his youthful military glory. He
lives in the midst of disgrace, misadventure, disaster, that seem
irreparable in the eyes of that vain and servile Court; for disgrace
and disaster assume the proportions the manners of the day accord.
Finally he dies, a few days after the death of the wife he had loved so
tenderly. He dies--poisoned, perhaps, as she too; the thunderbolt
falling just as the very first rays of kingly favour, wher