M. F. Mansfield

“ With the Louvre and the Tuileries the Palais Royal shares the popular interest of the traveller among all the monuments of Paris. No other edifice evokes more vivid souvenirs of its historic past than this hybrid palace of Richelieu. One dreams even to-day, of its sumptuousness, its legends, its amusing and extravagant incidents which cast a halo of romantic interest over so many illustrious personages. So thoroughly Parisian is the Palais Royal in all things that it has been called "the Capital of Paris." ”

“ Of the great city beyond (the Paris of to-day, whose myriad glow-worm lights actually do lend an additional charm) not a vestige is to be seen. Scarcely a lantern marks the existence of a living soul in the vast expanse below, but the moon, high in the heavens, plots out the entire landscape with a wonderful impressiveness, and the stars topping the forest trees to the rear and the heights which rise on the distant horizon lend their quota of romanticism, and, as if by their scintillations, mark the almost indiscernible towers of the old Abbey of Saint Denis to the left. ”

“ The cascades are for the masses the chief sight of Saint Cloud to-day. Historical souvenir plays little part in the minds of those who only visit a monumental shrine to be amused, and so the falling waters of Saint Cloud's cascade, like the gushing torrents of Versailles' fountains, are the chief incentives to a holiday for tens of thousands of small Paris shopkeepers who do not know that a royal palace was ever here, much less that it had a history. ”

“ After this the moyen-age Louvre, attributable to Saint Louis and Charles V, with its great tower, its thick walls of stone and its deep-dug moats, came into being. With Francis I came a more sympathetic, a more subtle era of architectural display, a softening of outlines and an interpolation of flowering gables. It was thus that was born that noble monument known as the New Louvre, which combined all the arts and graces of a fastidious ambition. ”

“ The intricacies of the etiquette of the daily life of the king, his follies and fancies, made the history of Versailles the most brilliant of that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—certainly it was the most opulent. The manners of the time were better than the morals, and if good taste in art and architecture had somewhat fallen there is no doubt but that a charming fantasy often made up for a lack of estheticism. ”

“ It was this that made it stand out from the sombre background of the masses of the time. It was a dazzling, human spectacle, and Versailles, with its extravagant, superficial charms, carried it very near to the brink of ruin, though even in its most banal vulgarities there was a certain sense of ambitious sincerity. The people of the peasant class lived as animals, "black, livid and scorched by the sun." The sense of all this penetrated readily even to Versailles, so that La Pompadour or Louis, one or the other of them, or was it both together, cried out instinctively: "Apres nous le deluge." ”

“ A hundred thousand curiosity seekers had come out from Paris and filled the alleys of the park to overflowing. Music and dancing were on every hand. Mingled with the crowd were soldiers of all ranks brilliantly clad in red, blue and gold. "These warriors were a picturesque, obtrusive lot," said a chronicler; "after having invaded Austria they acclaim the Austrian."
In 1815 the capitulation of Paris was signed at Saint Cloud. The gardens were invaded by a throng which gave them more the aspect of an intrenched camp than a playground of princes. ”

“ Even to-day, in modern France, where an old dwelling of the period of Henri IV, François I, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, or Louis XV still exists with its garden, the latter is more often than not on the classically pure French lines, while that of a modern cottage, villa or chateau is often a poor, variegated thing, fantastic to distraction.
Turning back the pages of history one finds that each people, each century, possessed its own specious variety of garden; a species which responded sufficiently to the tastes and necessities of the people, to their habits and their aspirations. ”

“ It was his Versailles!
The palace of Compiègne as seen to-day presents all the classic coldness of construction of the reign of Louis XV. Its lines were severe and that the building was inspired by a genius is hard to believe, though in general it is undeniably impressive. Frankly, it is a mocking, decadent eighteenth century architecture that presents itself, but of such vast proportions that one sets it down as something grand if not actually of surpassing good taste. ”

“ He was restless and wished to move on to Saint Germain, but his condition made that impossible. After a feeble attempt to rouse himself for a hunt in the forest, he took to his bed again, with the admonition to his friend d'Angennes, who never left him: "I am dying, send for my son, Henri."
The prince joined the mourners around the royal bedside and heard his father's confession thus: "My son, I have sinned greatly; I have been led away by my passions; follow that which I have done that is accredited good, and ignore the evil; above all, cherish France; be good to my people." ”

“ The park of Maintenon is in every way admirable, with its pelouse, its great border of trees, its waterways and more than thirty bridges. Jean Cottereau himself planned the first vegetable and fruit garden, or potager, the same whose successor is the delight of the dwellers at Maintenon to-day.
The parterre, the Grand Canal and the two avenues of majestic trees were due to the conception of Le Notre, and their effect, as set off by the alleyed forest background and the pillars of the aqueduct of Louis XIV, is something unique. ”

“ The gardens of the Gothic era seldom surpassed the enclos with a rivulet passing through it, a spring, a pine tree giving a welcome shade, some simple flowers and a verger of fruit trees.
The neighbours of France were often warring among themselves but the Grand Seigneur here was settling down to beautifying his surround [Pg 24] ings and framing his chateaux, manors and country-seats in dignified and most appealing pictures. Grass-plots appeared in dooryards, flowers climbed up along castle walls and shrubs and trees came to play a genuinely esthetic rôle in the life of the times. ”

“ This noble was so enamoured of this admirable residence that he never left it from his thoughts and decorated it throughout in the most lavish taste of his time, destroying at this epoch the chateau of the moyen-age and the fortress. These were the days of gallant warriors with a taste for pretty things in art, not mere bloodthirsty slaughterers.
On the foundations of the older structures there now rose an admirable pile (not that which one sees to-day, however) , embellished by the surroundings which were evolved from the brain of the landscape gardener, Le Notre. ”

“ Never was a great river so allied with the life of a royal capital; never a stream so in harmony with other civic beauties as is the Seine with Paris. When Henri II entered Paris after his Sacrament he contemplated a water-festival on the Seine, which was to extend from the walls of the Louvre to the towers of Notre Dame, a festival with such elaborate decorations as had never been known in the French capital. ”

“ In the time of Louis XIV the Comtesse de Lude devoted herself to the hunt with a frenzy born of an inordinate enthusiasm. At the head of a pack of hounds she knew no obstacle, and, on one occasion, penetrated on horseback, followed by her dogs, into the oratory of the nuns of the Convent of Estival.
By the end of the seventeenth century the hunt in France had become no more a sport for ladies. Hunting was still a noble sport, but it was more for men than for women. ”

“ The story of the palace, the park, the king and his court are so interwoven that no résumé of the story of one can ignore that of any of the others. The king and court present themselves against this background with an intimacy and a clearness [Pg 247] which is remarkable for its appeal to one's curiosity. It is a long, long day of life which begins with the petit lever and only ends with the grand coucher.
If there was ever a Castle of Indolence and Profligacy it was Versailles, though indeed it is regarded as the monarchy's brilliant zenith. ”

“ Not all the interesting royal palaces and chateaux of France are those with the best known names. Not all front on Paris streets and quays, no more than the best glimpses of ancient or modern France are to be had from the benches of a sight-seeing automobile.
Versailles, and even Fontainebleau, are too frequently considered as but the end of a half-day pilgrimage for the tripper. It were better that one should approach them more slowly, and by easy stages, and leave them less hurriedly. ”

“ At the death of Henri II, Catherine de Médici came here to live alone, and built the great extension, which stands to-day and joins the Old Louvre with that portion along the banks of the Seine by the double arch, through which swing the autobusses coming from the Rive Gauche with such a Juggernaut grind that fears for the foundation of the palace are ever uppermost in the minds of those responsible for its preservation. ”

“ A wooded alley leading to the great park runs between the main edifice and the Chateau d'Enghien, a gentle incline descending again to the sunken gardens in a monumental stairway of easy slope, the whole a quintessence of much that is best of the art of the landscape gardener of the time. ”

“ Now commenced the political rôle of this sumptuous palace which hitherto had been but the Cardinal's caprice. Mazarin had succeeded Richelieu, and to escape the anger of the Frondeurs, he, with the regent and the two princes, Louis XIV and the Duc d'Anjou, fled to the refuge of Saint Germain-en-Laye.
In company with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who had been rudely awakened from her slumbers in the Luxembourg, they took a coach in the dead of night for Saint Germain. It was a long and weary ride; the Pavi du Roi was then, as now, the most execrable suburban highroad in existence. ”

“ The modern traveller sees something beyond mere facts. Historical material as identified with the life of some great architectural glory is something more than a mere repetition of chronologies; the sidelights and the co-related incidents, though indeed many of them may be but hearsay, are quite as interesting, quite as necessary, in fact, for the proper appreciation of a famous palace or chateau as long columns of dates, or an evolved genealogical tree which attempts to make plain that which could be better left unexplained. ”

“ Luxury in all things settled down upon all France to a greater degree than hitherto in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and almost without exception princely houses set out to rival one another in the splendour of their surroundings. Now came in the ornamental garden as distinct from the verger, and the preau became a greensward accessory, at once practical and decorative, the precursor of the pelouse and the parterre of Le Notre. ”

“ Francis I, more than any other European monarch of his time, or, indeed, before or since, left his mark as an architect of supreme tastes over every edifice with which he came into personal contact. His mania was for building—when it was not for affairs of the heart—and so daring was he that when he could not get an old fabric to remodel he would brave all, as did Louis XIV at Versailles, and erect a dream [Pg 86] palace in the midst of a desert. This he did at Chambord in the Sologne. At Paris his difficulties were perhaps no less, but he had his materials and his workmen ready at hand. ”

“ Versailles without its court of marble, its fountains, its gardens and its park, and the attendant Grand and Petit 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 amusement resort. ”

“ Under the regency of the Duc Philippe d'Orleans the various apartments of the palace were the scenes of scandalous goings-on, which were related at great length in the chronicles of the time. It was a very mixed world which now frequented the purlieus of the Palais Royal. Men and women about town jostled with men of affairs, financiers, speculators and agitators of all ranks and of questionable respectability. Milords, as strangers from across the Manche came first to be known here, delivered themselves to questionable society and still more questionable pleasures. ”

“ The record of another merry party at Saint Germain is that which recounts that summer evening when the king and court scuttled about the park enjoying themselves as only royalty can—when some one else pays the bills. The terrace, the gravelled walks and the alleyed paths of the forest all led to charming and discreet rendezvous. ”