Wit, humor, vitriol and pageantry—the necessary hallmarks for a peer at the French court also deliver a great reading experience. Saint-Simon regales us with an irreverent insider's view of his more than 30 years at court, from the later days of Louis XIV to the ascension of Louis XV. All the plays for power, sex, position and money by friends, enemies, nobles and others are here, with Saint-Simon's fascinating, and brutally honest, assessment of any situation.

The Duc de Saint-Simon was at the very center of Louis XIV's court at Versailles, a hotbed of intrigue, passion, jealousy, and political skullduggery. He was a genuinely pious and honest man whose unblinking record of the court-his eye-witness testimony of wars, intrigues, and royal visits-make this a supreme work of art. These memoirs were the literary inspiration for Marcel Proust's own masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past.