Cet enfant de la fortune va si continuellement faire désormais un personnage si considérable qu’il est à propos de le faire connaître. J’ai parlé de sa naissance à propos de son père : on y a vu que ce n’est pas un fonds sur lequel il pût bâtir. Le bonheur et un bonheur inouï y suppléa pendant toute sa longue vie. C’était un assez grand homme, brun, bien fait, devenu gros en vieillissant, sans en être appesanti, avec une physionomie vive, ouverte, sortante, et véritablement un peu folle, à quoi la contenance et les gestes répondaient.
This child of fortune will henceforth figure continuously as a personage so considerable that it is appropriate to get acquainted with him. I spoke of his birth when I spoke of his father; we saw that this was not a foundation on which he could build. His bonheur--an unheard of bonheur--filled the lack throughout his long life. He was a big enough man, dark, handsome, become large with age without appearing weighted down, with a countenance bright, open, outgoing, and really a bit mad, in which the actions and the capacities met.
--Duc de Saint-Simon, "Portrait of the Marquis de Villars, Memoires 15
(GF Flammarion 2001) (Delphine de Garidel, ed.)
The editor quotes Marcel Proust identifying that "a bit mad" as "a mark of genius of the Saint-Simonian variety."
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