Royal Palaces and Parks of France Part 19

This apartment of the OEil de Boeuf was the ancient Cabi du Conseil.

It is a wonderfully decorated apartment, and its furnishings, beyond those which are actually built into the fabric, are likewise of a splendour and good taste which it is to be regretted is not everywhere to be noted in the vast palace of Louis XIV. The garnishings of the chimney-piece alone would make any great room interesting and well furnished, and the great golden clock, finely chiselled and brilliantly burnished, is about the most satisfactory French clock one ever saw, marking, as it does, in its style, the transition between that of Louis XIV and Louis XV.

Versailles, in many respects, falls far short to-day of the ideal; its very bigness and bareness greatly detract from the value of the historic souvenir which has come down to us. Changes could undoubtedly be made to advantage, and to this point much agitation has lately been directed, particularly in cutting out some of the recently grown up trees which have spoiled the cla.s.sic vistas of the park, and the removal of those ugly equestrian statues which the Monarchy of July erected.

Versailles only came under Napoleon's cursory regard for a brief moment.

He hardly knew whether he would care to make his home here or not, but ordered his architects to make estimates for certain projects which he had conceived and when he got them was so staggered at their magnitude that he at once threw over any idea that he may have had of making it his dwelling.

The Revolution had stripped the palace quite bare; no wonder that the emperor balked at the cost of putting it in order. Napoleon may have had his regrets for he made various allusions to Versailles while exiled at Saint Helena, but then it was too late.

Louis Philippe took a matter-of-fact view of the possible service that the vast pile might render to his family and accordingly spent much money in a great expanse of gaudy wall decorations which are there to-day, thinking to make of it a show place over which might preside the genius of his sons.

These acres of meaningless battle-pieces, Algerian warfare and what not are characteristic of the "Citizen-King" whose fondness for red plush, green repp and horsehair sofas was notable. What he did at Versailles was almost as great a vandalism against art as that wrought by the Revolution.

Last scene of all:--Under Lebrun's magnificent canopied ceiling, where the effigy of Louis XIV is being crowned by the G.o.ddess of Glory, and the German eagle sits on a denuded tree trunk screaming in agony and beating his wings in despair, William of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of United Germany. It was almost as great an indignity as France ever suffered; the only greater was when the Prussians marched through the Arc de Triomphe de l'etoile. That was, and is, the Frenchman's--the Parisian's, at all events--culminating grief.

The apartment referred to is the Grand Galerie des Glaces (or Galerie Louis XIV), which is accredited as one of the most magnificently appointed rooms of its cla.s.s in all the world. It is nearly two hundred and fifty feet in length, nearly forty feet in width, and forty-three feet in height. It is lighted by seventeen large arched windows, which correspond with arched niches on the opposite wall filled with mirrors--hence the name.

Sixty Corinthian columns of red marble with bases and capitals of gilt bronze fill up the intervening wall s.p.a.ces. The vaulted ceiling by Lebrun is divided into eighteen small compartments and nine of much larger dimensions, in which are allegorically represented the princ.i.p.al events in the history of Louis XIV, from the Peace of the Pyrenees to that of Nymeguen.

It was in this splendid apartment that Louis XIV displayed the grandeur of royalty in its highest phase and such was the luxury of the times, such the splendour of the court, that its immense size could hardly contain the crowd of courtiers that pressed around the monarch.

Several splendid fetes took place in this great room, of which those of the marriage of the Duc de Bourgogne in 1697 and that given on the arrival of Marie Antoinette were the most brilliant.

Following are three pen-pictures of this historic palace.

THE VERSAILLES OF LONG AGO. It was to Versailles that the _Grand Roi_ repaired after his stern chase of the Spaniards across Flanders; through the wood of Saint Germain and over those awful cobblestones which Parisians know so well to-day rolled the gilded _carrosse_ of the king.

He had already been announced by a runner who had also brought news of the latest victory. Courtiers and populace alike crowded the streets of the town in an effort to acquire a good place from which to see the arrival of the king. Intendants and servitors were giving orders on all sides, frequently contradictory, and gardeners were furbishing up the alleyed walks and flower beds in readiness for _Sa Majeste Louis Quatorze_ and all his little world of satellites. A majestic effervescence bubbled over all, and the _bourgeoisie_ enjoyed itself hugely, climbing even on roof-tops and gables in the town without the palace gates.

The _Roi Soleil_ came at last to his "well-beloved city of Versailles."

"He arrived in a cloud of golden dust," said a writer of the time, and any who have seen Versailles blazing and treeless in the middle of a long, hot summer, will know what it was like on that occasion.

Cannons roared, and the sound of revelry and welcoming joy was everywhere to be heard.

THE VERSAILLES OF YESTERDAY. The lugubrious booming of cannons came rolling over the meanderings of the Seine from the capital. The hard-heads of Paris would understand nothing; they would make flow never-ceasing rivers of blood. The national troops were well-nigh impotent; it was difficult to shoot down your own flesh and blood at any time; doubly so when your native land has not yet been evacuated by a venturesome enemy. It was the time of the Commune. Traffic at Versailles was of that intensity that circulation was almost impossible.

In spite of a dismal April rain the town was full of all sorts and conditions of men. The animation of the crowd was feverish, but it was without joy. A convoy of prisoners pa.s.sed between two lines of soldiers with drawn bayonets. They were Frenchmen, but they were Communards. It was but a moment before they were behind the barred doors of the barracks which was to be their prison, packed like a troop of sheep for the slaughter. Versailles itself, the palace and the town, were still sad. The rain still fell in torrents.

THE VERSAILLES OF TO-DAY. Roses, begonias, geraniums, the last of a long hot summer, still shed their fragrant memories over the park of Versailles. In the long, sober alleys a few leaves had already dropped from the trees above, marking the greensward and the gravel like a _tapis d'orient_, red and green and gold.

Flora and Bacchus in their fountains seemed less real than ever before, more sombre under the pale, trickling light through the trees. A few scattered visitors were about, sidling furtively around the Trianon, the Colonnade and the _Bosquet d'Apollon_; and the birds of the wood were even now bethinking of their winter pilgrimage. Versailles was still sad. The last rays of the setting sun shot forth reflected gold from the windows of the chateau and soon the silver blue veil of a September twilight came down like a curtain of gauze.

Versailles, the Versailles of other days, is gone forever. Who will awaken its echoes in after years? When will the Trianon again awake with the coquetries of a queen? When will the city of the _Roi Soleil_ come again into its own proud splendour?

The sun has set, the great iron gates of the courtyard are closed, the palace and all therein sleeps.

"_Allon nous en d'ici: laissons la place aux ombres._"

CHAPTER XVI

THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES AND THE TRIANONS

Versailles without its court of marble, its fountains, its gardens and its park, and the attendant Grand and Pet.i.t Trianons, would hardly have the attraction that it has to-day.

The ensemble is something of more vast and varied extent than is to be seen elsewhere, though its aspect has somewhat changed from what it was of old, and the crowds of Sunday and holiday visitors give the courts and alleyed walks somewhat the aspect of a modern amus.e.m.e.nt resort.

The gardens of Versailles were but the framing of a princely dwelling created to respond to the requirements of a court which was attempting to do things on a grand scale. Everything was designed with most magnificent outlines; everything was royal, in all verity--architecture, garden-making, fetes, receptions and promenades. What setting, then, could have been more appropriate to the life of the times?

Versailles, the town, had never prospered, and has never proved sufficiently attractive to become a popular suburb; and, though to-day it pa.s.sed the mark of half a hundred thousand population, it never would have existed at all had it not been for the palace of Louis XIV.

Were it not for the palace and its attributes, Versailles would have absolutely no memories for visitors, except such as may have lunched well at the Hotel des Reservoirs or the Hotel du Trianon. That is not everything, to be sure; but it is something, even when one is on an historic pilgrimage.

Even in the day of Louis XVI the popular taste was changing and Versailles was contemptuously referred to as a world of automota, of cold, unfeeling statuary and of Noah's Ark trees and forests. There was always a certain air of self-satisfaction about it, as there is, to-day, when the Parisian hordes come out to see the waters play, and the sight-seers marvel at the mock splendour and the sc.r.a.ps of history doled out for their delectation by none-too-painstaking guardians.

In spite of all this, no sober-minded student of art or history will ever consider Versailles, the palace and the park, as other than a superb and a spectacular demonstration of the taste of the times in which it was planned, built and lived in.

Versailles was begun in 1624 by Louis XIII, who built here a humble hunting-lodge for the disciples of Saint Hubert of whom he was the royal head. So humble an erection was it that the monarch referred to it simply as a "_pet.i.te maison_" and paid for it out of his own pocket, a rare enough proceeding at that epoch.

The critical Ba.s.sompierre called it a "_chetif chateau_," and Saint-Simon referred to it as a "house of cards." Manifestly, then, it was no great thing. It was, however, a comfortable country-house, surrounded by a garden and a more ample park.

It was not Lemercier, the presiding genius of the Louvre at this time, but an unknown by the name of Le Roy, whom Louis XIII chose as his architect.

Boyceau traced the original _parterres_ with a central basin at a crossroads of two wide avenues. Each of the four compartments thus made was ornamented with _broderies_ and trimmed hedges, and the open s.p.a.ces were ingeniously filled with parti-coloured sands, or earth. A _parterre_ of flowers immediately adjoined the palace and rudimentary alleys and avenues stretched off towards the wood. Although designed by Boyceau, this work was actually executed by his nephew, Jacques de Menours, who, with difficulty, collected his pay. His books of account showed that in five years, from 1631 to 1636, he had drawn but once a year a sum varying from fifteen hundred to four thousand _livres_ while in the same period the king had spent on the rest of the work at Versailles two hundred and thirty-eight thousand _livres_, thirty-two _sols_, six _deniers_, nearly one million one hundred thousand francs of the money of to-day.

The first of the outdoor embellishments of the palace at Versailles is the great Cour Royale, or the Cour d'Honneur, which opens out behind the long range of iron gates facing upon the Place d'Armes. At the foot of this entrance court is an extension called the Cour de Marbre. This Cour de Marbre, on January 5, 1757, was the scene of the infamous attack on Louis XV by Damiens, just as the king was starting out for the Trianon.

A thick redingote saved the king's life; but for "this mere pin-p.r.i.c.k,"

according to Voltaire, the monarch went immediately to bed, and five times in succession sought absolution for his sins. Sins lay heavy even on royal heads in those days.

Damiens was but a thick-witted, superst.i.tious valet, who, more or less persecuted by the n.o.ble employers with whom he had been in service at various times, sought to avenge himself, not on them, but on their king, as the figurehead of all that was rotten in the social hierarchy. Louis, heretofore known as the "Bien Aime," had become suddenly unpopular because of the disastrous war against England and Germany, and his prodigal dissipation of public moneys.

Stretching out behind the palace are the famous gardens, the _parterres_, the _tapis vert_, the fountains and the grand ca.n.a.l, with the park of the Trianons off to the right.

Good fortune came to Louis XIV when he found Andre Le Notre, for it was he and no other who traced the general lines of the garden of the Versailles which was to be. He laid a generous hand upon the park and forest which had surrounded the manor of Louis XIII, and extended the garden to the furthermost limits of his ingenuity. Modifications were rapid, and from 1664 the _parterres_ and the greensward took on entirely new forms and effects. The Parterre des Reservoirs became the Parterre du Nord, and an alley of four rows of lindens enclosed the park on all sides. The Parterre a Fleurs, or the Jardin du Roy, between the chateau and the Orangerie, was laid out anew.

By the following year the park began to take on the h.o.m.ogeneity which it had hitherto lacked. The great Rondeau, as it was called, and which became later the Ba.s.sin du Dragon, was excavated, and the Jardin Bas, or the Nouveau Parterre, with an oval depression, was also planned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Cour de Marbre, Versailles_]

At one end of the park was the celebrated Menagerie du Roy, where the rare and exotic animals collected by the monarch had "a palace more magnificent than the home of any other dumb animals in the world." This was the first period of formal garden construction at Versailles, and it was also the period when the first great impetus was given to sculptural decoration.

In 1679, following a journey in Italy, Le Notre took up again the work on the gardens at Versailles, devoting himself to the region south of the palace which hitherto had been ignored. This was Le Notre's most prolific period.

The creations at Versailles can be divided into two distinct epochs, that before 1670 and that coming after. After Le Notre's generous design, the king and queen were seemingly never satisfied with the endless plotting and planting which was carried on beneath the windows of the palace, and in many instances changed the colour schemes and even the outlines of Le Notre's original conceptions.

The Versailles of to-day is no longer the Versailles of Louis XIII, so far as the actual disposition of details goes. Then there was very little green gra.s.s and much sand and gravel, a scheme of decoration which entered largely into the seventeenth century garden. This refers princ.i.p.ally to the general effect, for Le Notre made much use of the enclosing battery of lindens, chestnuts and elms of a majestic and patriarchal grandeur which have since been cut and replaced by smaller species of trees, or not replaced at all.