PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 What Norbert Elias Leaves out and Saint-Simon Took into Account: The Horizontal Social Bonds at the Court of Louis XIV M ALINA S TEFANOVSKA (U NIVERSITY OF C ALIFORNIA , L OS A NGELES ) As my title indicates, I am making two related claims: first, that in his seminal study The Court Society 1 Norbert Elias neglected to develop a particular aspect of Louis XIV’s court - personal and group ties cultivated within it - and, second, that such horizontal exchanges within the hierarchical social structure of the court created political alliances based on common interests and ideas, and, to a degree, independent from the monarch. The bonds within such groups were rooted in traditional aristocratic values, but they also constituted a type of informal political opposition to the King’s absolute power. As such, they were a limited manifestation of what was later to become known as “civil society.” My contention is that horizontal social bonds within a particular interest group at the court, were created in structural opposition to its dominant hierarchical structure and helped conceptualize other types of social and political bonding. In mapping out group dynamics at the court of Louis XIV I will be using Saint-Simon’s Mémoires, 2 as did Elias, but will read them in a slightly different perspective. This, however, is not meant to invalidate his eminently pertinent interpretation of the courtiers’ individual and specific rationality, but rather to enhance this interpretation with its additional and opposite facet: group interaction. Thus, while Elias draws a clear picture of the courtiers' incessant competition among themselves, I want to highlight their sense of community, however limited and fragile. And while Elias insists on the distancing function Norbert Elias, The Court Society (New York, Pantheon Books, 1983). Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, Mémoires (Paris, Gallimard, 1981-86), vol. I- VII. Quotations translated by M. Stefanovska and marked in the text by the volume and page. Malina Stefanovska PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 178 of etiquette, I hope to show that it also played an opposite role, that of constructing mutual bonds. Before approaching Saint-Simon’s writing, I shall briefly recapitulate pertinent points in Norbert Elias’s study. The German historian describes the Court as a strictly hierarchized social configuration in which it was necessary to dislodge someone of superior ranking in order to advance socially. Its members were ranked according to strict criteria such as the title and the antiquity of their family line, on the one hand, and more fluctuating criteria such as the King’s favor, or public opinion, on the other. The fixed nature of the first type of criteria privileged the second, fluctuating type when it came to efforts to achieve upward mobility. Because of a lack of distinction between the private and the public sphere, society had a grip on the courtiers’ whole being, by definition a public being constantly on representation and imbued by its rank and status. This explained their inability to leave the court and live a “private” life. The high nobility’s “caste ethos” rested entirely on the need to maintain distance from other social orders, and that need was formative of their identity. It was on such distance, according to Elias, that “their spiritual salvation, their prestige as court aristocrats, in short, their social existence and their personal identity depended” (99). Life at the court was thus constantly and carefully balanced between maintaining one's own psychological reserve and penetrating that of others: “this measured calculation of one’s position in relation to others, this characteristic restraint of the affects, is typical of the attitude of the king and of court people in general,” writes Elias (90). In etiquette, which he defines as the “representation of one’s rank through form,” Elias saw the main instrument of the nobility’s social strategy, the cohesive element of court society and the privileged mode of its “self-representation.” As a formative part of noble identity, etiquette was also used by the monarch to maintain competition between his subjects and to ensure a precarious balance between the sword nobility and the “robe” or bourgeoisie. With time, etiquette became an end in itself and, under Louis XVI, turned into a ghostly perpetuum mobile. The stage was set for its elimination. Elias’s chapters show that he views court society as a sum total of the ruler and the individual courtiers whose ideal type he delineates. He examines the vertical bond between the king and the court members, as well the horizontal competition between the latter. The picture that he draws is that of a society racked by a bitter competition in vying for the king’s favors. Jeroen Duindam designates this eminently Hobbesian vision as “a battle of each against all.” 3 3 Jeroen Duindam, Myths of Power. Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court (Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 1995), p. 32. What Norbert Elias Leaves out and Saint-Simon Took into Account PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 179 Elias recognizes the specificity of the court ethos, namely that it did not measure success in terms of money, but of reputation, honor or what he terms “prestige fetishes” bestowed by the king. He constantly contrasts it to our own “bourgeois” values. However, when he compares the court to the stock exchange, Elias implies that the courtiers’ strategy was identical and defined by an individual goal. In that, he actually grants absolutism a position that it claimed in theory, but could not achieve in reality: that of ruling over identical (and equally powerless) subjects. Historically, such individualism was later presupposed and developed by the market mechanism. But, in the Old Regime, individual social strategies were conceived and devised within a framework that Elias does not take into account: that of the group and its cosmology. The group, a primary constitutive unit of the Old Regime, was an intermediate level between the individual and society, or between the subject and the Monarch. It could consist of an extended family, or of members of a particular peer group (eg. the Archbishops, the “Peers of France,” the members of the Parlement de Paris, etc.). What I call a cosmology is an implicit, collective set of representations concerning the sacred, political, and ethical realms and one’s own place within the universe thus ordered. Although a cosmology expresses itself through the individual, it always belongs to the entire community, or a group. 4 These two aspects will be my point of interest in Saint-Simon. At the court of Louis XIV, as well as in the society of that period at large, groups, circles and alliances were the social environment in which individuals existed. It is therefore not surprising that its principal chronicler and historian, the Duke de Saint-Simon, attached great importance to the themes of friendship, family ties and political alliances. In fact, as much as it draws individual portraits and lives, his narrative traces the dynamics of various institutionalized or informal groups at the court. One could cite his analyses of Parlement de Paris as an institutional body endowed with its own collective personality, his fascination with informal social circles, factions or cabals. 5 His insights on collective behavior are as penetrating as those of his predecessor, the famous faction leader of the Fronde and memoir author, See for example Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols. Explorations in Cosmology (New York, Pantheon Books, 1982), and the explanation given by Vincent Descombes in Proust: la philosophie du roman (Paris, Minuit, 1987). Among authors who develop a similar concept without using this term are Louis Dumont, Homo hierarchicus. Essai sur le système des castes (Paris, Gallimard, 1966), and Clifford Geertz, Negara. The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton/ New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1980). 5 For a detailed discussion see my Saint-Simon, un historien dans les marges (Paris, Honoré Champion, 1998). Malina Stefanovska PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 180 cardinal de Retz. The historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie who draws a political map of Versailles based on Saint-Simon’s Mémoires, points to the fact that his use of the term “cabal” comes closest to designating a political party, indistinguishable from a social circle at the court. In this respect, the lexical abundance of seventeenth-century French confirms the importance assigned to such informal and fluctuating nuclei of influence: cabale, faction, complot, conspiration. These almost synonymous nouns were accompanied by at least one verb, and one agent term, each. But not satisfied with it, Saint-Simon uses many other terms as well: the latin “parvulo,” for a closed circle, the “secret Sanhedrin” [sanhédrin secret] from Jewish history for the Jesuit leadership, etc. He is also preoccupied with differentiating between all of them as an observer. Thus, before launching into an extended analysis of the three dominant, informal, loosely connected interest groups at the court, in 1709, he observes that he reverted to the term “cabal” for lack of a better word, as he felt unable to define their true consistency. Although stressing conflict as the prevailing mode of their interaction, Saint-Simon also underscores the closely knit ties within each of these “parties,” as he calls them. These ties range from intimate friendships to family alliances or interest lobbying, and consist of exchanging information, providing political and moral support, using the king's favor for the benefit of other members, plotting against a rival group, defending other members against their gossip, or informing them about it. Belonging to a cabale necessitated an impressive amount of interaction and Saint-Simon himself, who claimed he did not belong to any, conferred with a multitude of friends and allies every day, often in private. He records his almost daily exchanges with the duc de Chevreuse with whom he was on intimate terms and from whom he hid nothing (II: 417); the regular correspondence he carried on with another “intimate friend,” the duc de Montfort, when they were separated (II: 495); his quotidian private talks with the duc de Beauvilliers and the Chancellor Pontchartrain; the ciphered letters he exchanged on a weekly basis with the papal nonce Gualterio over a period of many years; the long conversations with the duc d’Orléans whom he saw “almost every day after diner at Versailles, alone in his cabinet” (II: 753), etc. And I am omitting here the regular dinners that he mentions having with close friends, at Versailles or in their country homes, the hours spent talking to his various informers ranging from servants to ministers, etc. One could only infer that in spite of the regular waiting upon the King to whom the court members were bound by etiquette and ceremony, and of forced interaction with rivals, the focus of their activity lay with their allies. Saint-Simon’s own primary allegiance to a collective - crucial for his identity - was formed in his first year at the court, when he got involved with his natural peer group, the “ducs et pairs de France.” The occasion was that of What Norbert Elias Leaves out and Saint-Simon Took into Account PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 181 a legal battle for precedence, waged by the group against one of its members. To be more precise, sixteen of the “ducs et pairs de France” took to court the duc de Luxembourg who claimed he was entitled to the second rank, from the seventeenth rank where he was previously placed. The trial was possible because the rank of a particular duc et pair de France was not determined by the king’s decision to grant him the title, but by the date this title was registered with the Parliament, a procedure which had to be initiated by each newly named dignitary. And the living duc de Luxembourg had failed to do it at the time his title was granted. Although primarily an internal conflict, this occasion also asserted the tradition and the group's unity over the arbitrary will of one of its members. It was thus, as we shall see, an assertion of its members’ very identity. Several senior ducs et pairs approached Saint-Simon to seek his support, which they obtained easily. From that time on, the young man not only took on, what Jeroen Duindam calls “the role of figure-head of the ducal flagship,” 6 but also started cultivating political alliance-making in his life, and developing it as a crucial theme in his Mémoires. Although still unknown among the ducs et pairs, Saint-Simon endeavored to promote the fragile unity of their group which he called “a community of people with identical interests” [communauté de gens en même intérêt] (I: 137). So actively did he work to produce a common stand in this legal matter, threatened by the various dukes’ concurrent alliances with the Luxembourg family or their allies, that he was soon appointed as the group's “syndic,” or legal representative. When some members refused to pursue the matter in court, Saint- Simon did his best to bring them back to the common cause because he deemed that the biggest evil that could befall the group was a lack of union (I: 142). In this dispute of principles, he went directly against his immediate interests since the duc et maréchal de Luxembourg was his army commander and stopped speaking to him as the dispute flared up. Saint-Simon had to beg the king to transfer him to another unit. Moreover, he was also knowingly endangering his general standing with the king who, according to him, “feared and loathed all that resembled a corps” [craignait et haïssait tout ce qui sentait un corps] (I: 583). What motivated Saint-Simon to take such a stance? The answer may lie in the particular significance that this group, defined by it double status - a title (duke) and a function (peerdom) - carried for him. In the pyramidal structure of the French Kingdom, the dukes and peers of France were placed immediately below the royal princes (princes du sang) followed by the rest of the nobility. They were ranked above the simple duke, or “duc à brevet” 6 Duindam, p. 61. Malina Stefanovska PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 182 whose title was personally granted to him with no inheritance right, and alongside the ecclesiastical peers who belonged to the first estate. Historians estimate the number of the lay “duchés pairies” at less than fifty throughout the century. 7 As dukes, they were ranked by seniority, which determined their placement in ceremonial processions as well as at the king’s Lit de justice or other important State ceremonies. The legal regulation of the ranks made them independent of a particular king’s will. In a way, the monarch’s relationship to their rank was similar to that of the Cartesian God to the universe: he would set the initial motion by creating a particular title, but did not control its further movement. Their internal ranking depended, indeed, on history, and on the title holders’ initiation of the registration procedure. In the legal terminology of the period, these titles were an “emanation” of the crown, but not of the “royal person,” who could not interfere with their order. Louis XIV, when he wanted to place his illegitimate sons before other ducs et pairs, had to declare them princes of the Bourbon blood, a decision which created a scandal and was repealed soon after his death. Whereas the title of duke was ranked, the peerdom, on the other hand, had a different significance: it was a function, which, as the expression “primus inter pares” indicates, involved a fundamental equality among the peers and between them and the monarch. According to interpretations common in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the peers descended from the immemorial “council under the oak” which advised Charlemagne on crucial State matters. They were generally attributed the status of a supreme constitutional court, derived from this medieval curia regis. Saint-Simon's contemporaries shared his opinion. The seventeenth-century historian Le Laboureur affirmed for example that in the past the peers, alone with the king, could “endow their decisions with the force of Law” [donner force de Loi à ce qu'ils avoient délibérés]. He quoted Charles V’s declaration that “a Peer of France is the first person of the State after the King, by whom he is constituted and strictly established as the natural Judge of the crown’s succession ... and a born counsellor to His Majesty ... singly necessary to promulgate and reform State Laws.” 8 Saint-Simon reported an instance when Louis XIV, although 7 The first editor of the Mémoires, Boislile, mentions 34 lay duchés-pairies in 1686 (quoted in Georges Poisson, Monsieur de Saint-Simon, (Paris, 1973), while Jean- Pierre Labatut, in Les ducs et pairs de France au XVII e siècle (Paris, 1972), counts 48 in 1715. 8 Le Laboureur, Histoire de la Pairie de France et du Parlement de Paris (Londres, Samuel Harding, 1740), p. 9: “un Pair de France est la première personne de l’Etat après le Roi, par lui constituée et nécessairement établie pour Juge naturel de la succession de la couronne, [...] et pour Conseiller né de Sa Majesté, [...] seul nécessaire pour la promulgation, et pour la Réformation des Loix de l’Etat.” What Norbert Elias Leaves out and Saint-Simon Took into Account PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 183 usually hostile to the dukes’ and peers’ rights, recognized that this dignity was the crown’s support and “touched it most closely” (III: 29). Even Boulainvilliers - a spokesman for middle and lower nobility whose views were diametrically opposed to Saint-Simon’s - wrote that peerdom, originally founded on the Franks’ mutual equality, was “less a granted title than the real jurisdiction of high Nobility in all matters of government.” 9 Being the first rank in the State which did not belong to the king's family (as did the princes of blood), the peers were considered a crucial part of the system of checks and balances to counterbalance arbitrary royal authority, in other terms despotism. Speaking of the coronation, Saint-Simon, as well as Le Laboureur, compared them to the Imperial Electors, and interpreted their presence at this ceremony as a symbol of the king’s free election. He deplored the lack of solidity of a coronation led only by the king’s blood relatives and affirmed that the peers embodied the approval of the “body of the nation.” In the political structure of the Old Regime, such a group was supposed to stand above the interests of its own estate, and constitute the heart of the political sphere. It is obvious that for Saint-Simon’s contemporaries, they represented a global principle of justice in State matters rather than a particularistic interest. Their function did not preclude belief in the sacred character of kingship, but rather carried on a sentiment of partaking in it. The peers of France held solely an advisory, symbolic authority, helping the king make his decisions. Here, it is important to differentiate between power and authority: the peers claimed authority rather than power, a principle Saint-Simon as well sought within the group and in life in general. 10 Unlike power, authority is indexed on a notion of higher values, or of the sacred. In this cosmology, the pairs de France, as much as the monarch, constituted and ensured the sacred order of the Kingdom. Moreover, in helping shape the prince’s informed opinion, they played a role identical to the one later attributed to “civil society.” Hence, the title of “duc et pair de France” meant to Saint-Simon not only a source of personal pride but also the high political responsibility to ensure the proper running of the kingdom. If one defines the highest common good as order and unity, Saint-Simon’s involvement as the legal representative of the group is defined by his vision of the highest political good, i.e. a 9 Henri, comte de Boulainvilliers, Essais sur la noblesse de France contenant une dissertation sur son origine et abaissement (Amsterdam, 1732), p. 247: “moins un titre accordé, que la juridiction réelle de la haute Noblesse dans toutes manières du gouvernement.” 10 See Louis Dumont, op. cit, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du Pouvoir (Paris, Hachette, 1972) and Myriam Revault d’Allones, Le pouvoir des commencements. Essai sur l’autorité, Seuil, 2006. Malina Stefanovska PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 184 harmonious hierarchy of the kingdom. One can speculate that, even though the Parliament’s interpretations differed from his, the group was viewed similarly by most of its other members, as well as by others courtiers. And although their ranking was an internal issue, the will to preserve established precedence symbolized their respect of law as embedded in tradition, as well as their independence from a particular ruler’s whims. The ceremonial forms due to their rank were not empty “prestige fetishes,” but rather material symbols of the “Great State machinery.” I explained the status of this group at some length in order to show that what can be seen as a particularistic interest appears different when seen in the light of a collective self-representation embedded in a particular cosmology. Mutual relationships of men are always indexed on their understanding of the highest moral and political values, as well as of the sacred. To that extent, no other social figuration can be likened to a stock exchange, unless the latter is, itself, understood within its own cosmology. However, since a cosmology is generally enacted rather than expressed in abstract terms, I now want to examine the bonding rituals that Saint-Simon carried on and described. Most of his close friendships were of a political nature; they involved either State or court politics, and were shrouded in secrecy. His longterm intimate friendship and political alliance with the duc de Beauvillier, one of a series of such pacts described in the Mémoires, will provide an example. Saint-Simon’s friendship with Beauvilliers started when, as a young man, he unsuccessfully sought the latter’s daughter in marriage. He provides a detailed narrative of the initial encounter. Feeling isolated at the court after his father's death, Saint-Simon openly admits that his matrimonial strategy mainly consisted of a search for the ideal family alliance. Beauvilliers was chosen as the perfect father-in-law: a former friend of his father whom he held in high esteem, he was also a minister of State in the King’s favor and a well-established court figure with an unblemished reputation. Moreover, he had eight daughters any of whom Saint-Simon was determined to marry. After a first formal proposal, followed by several other attempts, Beauvilliers ended up refusing the young man's hand, as all of his daughters were either determined to take the veil or too young to consider matrimony. However, the two men - although they did not enter a family alliance - promised to consider each other “as a father-in-law and a son-in-law joined in the most indissoluble union” [comme un beau-père et un gendre dans la plus indissoluble union] (I: 121). Their close friendship and political alliance indeed lasted more than twenty years, until Beauvillier’s death. As for the matrimonial issue, Saint-Simon settled it later by marrying the daughter of another reputable courtier, the Maréchal de Lorges. What Norbert Elias Leaves out and Saint-Simon Took into Account PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 185 Although this series of exchanges between the two dukes seems to be of an entirely private nature, a close reading of its staging in the Mémoires will allow me to highlight its socio-political implications. In the narrative of an initial interview, in which Saint-Simon presented his formal proposal to Beauvilliers, their highly ritualized exchanges are systematically likened to a knightly combat. Thus, the memoirist notes that he was placed directly facing his interlocutor, with a desk between them, that he kept his eyes fixed on him and that, after he argued his case with utmost passion and eloquence, Beauvilliers sighed, lifted his eyes to the sky and said he wished he could surrender in such a fierce combat. After refusing, however, he embraced Saint-Simon “as a son” (I: 117) and implored him to consider him from then on as his father. Beauvilliers also declared that by this act, the young man had accrued from him an obligation to give him his utmost service and advice. The relationship of indebtedness, underscored here by the legal vocabulary [l’obligation que j’acquérais sur lui] (I: 117), grounds their everlasting friendship and inscribes it, as a literary topos, into an inherited mental framework, that of an indissoluble bond formed after a knightly combat. By its ritualized conflict and its ostentatious manifestations of civility, this ceremony is not without resemblances to the manner in which the “potlatch” studied by the anthropologists grounds the protagonists’ symbolic power. The ritual is crucial for asserting both the interlocutors’ individual identities and their mutual bond. The form of this alliance seems to be a matrix for all Saint-Simon’s ulterior friendships. The one with the future Chancellor Pontchartrain was sworn in the same manner, as an a priori pact, rather than being gradually established. Indeed, Saint-Simon reports that Pontchartrain, whom he barely knew at that time, called upon him one day, and declared that he “ardently desired his friendship.” He writes: “we pledged it to each other. We held the given word in full; our friendship lasted until his death, in utmost intimacy and in complete trust” [Nous nous promîmes [l’amitié] l’un à l’autre. Nous nous sommes réciproquement tenu parole plénièrement; elle a réciproquement duré jusqu'à sa mort, dans la plus grande intimité et dans la confiance la plus entière] (I: 547- 548). An almost identical ritual is later repeated in a similar scene which cements Saint-Simon’ alliance with Chamillart, another minister of State. The bond is described by the same solemn and somewhat impersonal formula: “we vowed [friendship] to each other and we always tenderly and faithfully kept our promise at all times until his death” [nous nous la promîmes et nous nous la sommes toujours tendrement et fidèlement tenue dans tous les temps jusqu'à sa mort] (II: 287). Even if these bonds are eminently close and affectionate, they are far from the elective affinities of the Romantic era: they involve a political aspect, a hierarchy tempered by affection, a pact of allegiance. The Malina Stefanovska PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 186 repetition of ritualized formulas shows that such relationships were conceived according to preestablished mental schemes: they stage the imagined social bond between the nobles, one in which honor is not indexed on the King’s favor, and which creates, at the heart of the court, a somewhat clandestine political sphere autonomous from him. 11 In that respect, it is significant that the secret bonding rituals in the failed matrimonial exchange between Saint-Simon and Beauvilliers went far beyond their actual content, giving it the appearance of a faction, or even a conspiracy. The entire series of encounters, held over several days, was marked by utmost secrecy: the two men whispered to each other about where to meet; they took deserted hallways on their way to see each other so as to avoid spies [des fâcheux]; Beauvilliers posted trusted servants in his antechamber, instructing them not to let anyone else in but Saint-Simon (I: 117). Likewise, Saint-Simon, after a first refusal, asked Louville, whom he trusted, to act as a go-between and to procure him another interview in a “little salon where nobody ever went” (I: 118); in order to conduct that interview, both men surreptitiously fled a public concert after exchanging secret signals. Saint-Simon writes: We had agreed upon complete secrecy, which made us hide and mask our conversations; consequently, that day, I told M. de Beauvilliers, before starting, that I had run into two people on my way to see him; and as he recommended increased secrecy, I hid our second interview from Louville, although he knew about the first one and was one of the two men I had run into on my way. The next day, at the King’s lever, M. de Beauvilliers whispered to my ear that, upon second thoughts, Louville was a man of confidence and an intimate friend of both, and that if I was willing to confide my secret to him, he would become a very convenient and hidden channel of communication. Nous étions convenus d’un secret entier, qui nous faisait cacher nos conversations et les dépayser, de sorte que, ce jour-là, j’avais conté à M. de Beauvilliers, avant d’entrer en matière, les deux rencontres que j’avais faites; et sur ce qu’il me recommanda de plus en plus le secret, je donnai le change à Louville de ce second entretien, quoiqu’il sût le premier, et qu’il était un des deux hommes que j’avais rencontrés. Le lendemain matin, au lever du Roi, M. de Beauvillier me dit à l’oreille qu’il avait fait réflexion que Louville était homme très sûr et notre ami intime à tous deux, et que, si je voulais lui 11 On the theme of friendship, prominent in Saint-Simon’s writing, see M. Stefanovska, “Sensible à l’amitié et très fidèle. Saint-Simon mémorialiste.” in Saint-Simon ou le sens de l’intrigue, Eds. Jacques Berchtold and Marc Hersant (Paris, Garnier, 2014), pp. 255-273. What Norbert Elias Leaves out and Saint-Simon Took into Account PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 187 confier notre secret, il nous deviendrait un canal très commode et très caché. (I: 118) Although this episode involves only three people, one could interpret it in the light of Georg Simmel’s reflections on Secret Societies. 12 From a sociological point of view, writes Simmel, the nature of a secret is secondary to its primary social function, that of creating a relationship between the group who shares it and others. The German sociologist describes the general traits of groups formed by a shared secret: 1. the revelation of the secret in them is oral and very gradual; 2. shared secrecy, through teaching group members solidarity and silence, constructs mutual trust between them; 3. the possession and gradual revelation of a secret creates a strict internal hierarchy which can become entirely detached from reality; 4. the elaborate rituals used to communicate and transmit the secret involve the whole individual. According to Simmel, a secret eventually tends to become an end in itself, a means of individualizing the group, isolating it from other groups and ensuring an efficient socialization within it. It is easy to detect the structural similarities between secrecy and etiquette as Elias saw it. Simmel also notes that a secret society does not necessitate more than two people who share a secret. He links secrecy to aristocratic political movements, especially those in decline, and to periods of conflictual political values, among which he particularly stresses the eighteenth century. It is obvious that the mechanisms described by Simmel characterize Saint- Simon’s bonding with Beauvilliers, as well as Louville’s status in it. The point of their exchanges (the marriage) becomes secondary to their highly ritualized and ceremonial staging. An alliance emerges out of these encounters, even if their initial purpose has been lost. Louville’s exclusion and subsequent inclusion, crucial for the constitution of the bond, merits a closer examination. Another important author on secret, Andreas Zempleni, 13 points out that a secret as a social fact necessitates, apart from a possessor and a depository to whom it is revealed, a crucial, “third excluded party” (un tiers exclu). This person must be aware that there is a secret from which he or she is excluded. Through their desire to access it, this “excluded party” maintains the secret’s importance but also tends to help its gradual dissemination. In fact, if admitted to the secret, this previously excluded individual acknowledges its power and thus increases the psychological bond of the group he or she has thus joined. This person in turn serves to signify to others that they 12 Georg Simmel, La société secrète, text published in French in the Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, n o 14, 1976, Gallimard, p. 281-305. 13 Andras Zempléni, “La chaîne du secret,” Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse, n o 14, 1976, Gallimard, p. 313-324. Malina Stefanovska PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 188 are excluded from something and to arouse their interest. All these elements are apparent in Saint-Simon’s staging: Louville, who at the outset has no personal interest in the matter, desires to participate in a secret to which he is not privy. Soon, the two dukes confide in him and thus make him a faithful member of the newly created little group. A simple marriage proposal, which customarily commands no more than a basic discretion at the court, becomes a Secret constitutive of a clandestine society of a kind. The rituals elaborated in the exchanges override the secret’s content and ensure complicity. Secrecy, as much as ceremony and etiquette, serves to tighten the group’s internal bonds and to distance it from others. One can only assume that all these subtle winks, whispers and signals exchanged in public show the rest of the courtiers that there is a mystery from which they are all excluded. And in a society where possessing information unavailable to others is sign as well as a basis of power, such behavior can only serve to discreetly increase the agents’ “prestige fetishes” in the eyes of the others. It is not insignificant that this circuit, like many others later created and staged by Saint-Simon, is entirely independent of the king. As Louis Marin rightly observes, ostentatious staging of secrecy in baroque politics simultaneously represents and enacts power. 14 One shouldn't be surprised that Saint-Simon - in a project made after the Jesuits' internal organization - favored the same utmost secrecy for the ducs et pairs de France: he wanted their leadership [syndicat] for matters concerning the ducal dignity to be “so secret that even most of the Peers wouldn't know who are its representatives.” 15 In spite of all these secret rituals, it would hardly be justified to seek a political conspiracy in the exchanges conducted in 1693 between Saint-Simon and Beauvilliers around a strictly personal issue. Later, it is true, things became less innocent. Beauvilliers was part of a semi-secret circle established around the duc de Bourgogne and Fénelon, with definite aspirations to overturn Louis XIV’s political legacy, and Saint-Simon participated in it, elaborating a new government with the Dauphin. There is no doubt that Louis XIV, whose successor held political ideas in direct opposition to his own, would have disapproved of such meetings. Their organization, involving both Beauvilliers and Saint-Simon, was therefore conducted in utmost secrecy and with all the previously described strategies: locked doors, bolted papers, secret cabinets, etc. At that time, however, the needless secrecy of the early exchanges between the two dukes had become a necessary strategy. One could say that the conspiratorial bond rehearsed in the episode narrated was 14 Louis Marin, “Pour une théorie baroque de l’action politique,” in Preface to Gabriel Naudé, Considérations politiques sur les coups d’État (Paris, Éditions de Paris, 1988). 15 Saint-Simon, Brouillons des projets..., in Papiers en marge des Mémoires (Paris, Le club français du livre, 1954) edited by François-Régis Bastide, p. 265. What Norbert Elias Leaves out and Saint-Simon Took into Account PFSCL XLVIII, 94 (2021) DOI 10.2357/ PFSCL-2021-0011 189 endowed with a political content only later, in 1711. The bond between the two dukes which drew its authority from the traditional models of family ties and knightly combat after which it was patterned, was now infused with a more ideological content. And while even then, their encounters with the legitimate heir to the throne can hardly be called a conspiracy, the formalization of secret bonding and communication represented a threat to the political system. In that respect, Reinhart Koselleck demonstrates in his Kritik und Krise, 16 that at the outset of the Enlightenment, secrecy was the single common strategy used by otherwise very heterogeneous groups opposed to absolutist power - the Republic of Letters, the Masonic Lodges and a great part of the nobility, among others Saint-Simon, Boulainvilliers and Montesquieu. The elaboration of secret networks propitious to opposition, though not necessarily political in nature - such as those described here - was, according to Koselleck, a counterpart and a necessary condition of their later infusion with a political (public) content. This study has shown, I hope, that the horizontal bonds Saint-Simon cultivated within the group of ducs et pairs or otherwise at the court, were influenced by a holistic shared cosmology. Within it, Saint-Simon conceived of the State - and not only of the King - as having a sacred character, willed by God as a hierarchical unity of horizontal ranks and bonds. He patterned group bonds on what he considered to be historical tradition, and endowed them with a form (secrecy) that could acquire political connotations. Although such collective bonds were certainly representative of the court, Elias did not stress them. In my conclusion, I can only sketchily indicate why Elias saw court rationality as individual, if not economic, rather than influenced by the group. In view of the later work done by anthropologists such as Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz or Louis Dumont, it seems to me that a sociological perspective informed by Weber would be less useful in thinking the importance of group views and their influence on individual acts, than that provided by the father of the French School of sociology, Durkheim. Had Durkheim influenced Elias more, he might have given him a better perspective in that respect, since he affirmed that a collective is always more than the sum of its members, and attributed the “effervescence” elicited by the group to its sentiment of the sacred. He was thus closer to formulating a historical cosmology as a collective worldview of which “rationality” is only one subsystem. 16 Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der Bürgerlichen Welt. Translated as Critique and Crisis. Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Hamburg and New York, Berg, 1988).