Statistics of the index

What the analytical index reveals when taken in bulk: who counts and who lasts, of what dignities this court population is made, and how the chronicle fills up from one year to the next. Everything is recomputed on every visit over the 2,262 persons the index cites at least once — 90 other person entries carry no reference — and their 12,737 references, each located down to the chapter. Names are those of Chéruel's index; each leads to its record.

The figures

The chronicle, year by year

Each reference is dated by the years its chapter covers: the index becomes a chronicle of presences, from 1691 to 1723. A chapter straddling two years counts for both.

All these figures bear only on what the index records: they measure the attention of the 1858 indexer as much as that of the memorialist. Only entries of the person type appear here — places, institutions and subjects are set aside. The years come from the chapter in which each reference falls: a retrospective digression is therefore dated to the year in which Saint-Simon writes it into his chronicle, not to the time it speaks of.