Books: Le Grand Siecle

THE SPLENDID CENTURY (306 pp.)—W. H. Lewis—Sloane ($5).

Little Louis Dieudonne de Bourbon, at the age of six, was taught an amusing game. Every morning, on awakening, he was to tell himself he was about to act God: every night, on going to bed, he was to ask himself how close he had come to the Original. Little Louis liked the game so much that as King Louis XIV of France (which he became at the age of four), he played it for keeps. He had been named Dieudonne—God-given—and believed it. In The Splendid...