Palace of Versailles

“ There were, however, Revolutionaries that so despised the relics of royalty that they continued to urge from time to time the complete demolition of the palace and park--chief works of Louis XIV's reign. The most diligent defenders of the chateau were the inhabitants of the town of Versailles, who were keenly aware that the continued existence of the palace would insure a measure of prosperity to the community. They protested, that, just object of the people's venom as the edifice was, it nevertheless stood as a monument to the arts and crafts of France during two centuries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To-day Versailles is lonely; one is haunted by the silence and the bareness, if not actual emptiness. Only once in seven years does the old palace take on any air of the official life of the Republic, and that is when the two legislative bodies join forces and come to Versailles to vote for the new president. ”

“ The Ambassadors' Staircase, across the court, was of the richest possible decoration, but like the glory of the Kings of France, it has passed into oblivion. Louis commanded that it be paved and walled in marble from the choicest quarries, vaulted with bronze, graced by fountains. Amazing frescoes representing a brilliant assemblage of people of all nations adorned the walls. Of this staircase a reporter of the epoch wrote, "When full of light it vies in magnificence with the richest apartments of the most beautiful palace in the world." Which palace was, of course, Versailles. ”

“ GARDEN AND FOUNTAINS, VERSAILLES, FRANCE. The Palace of Versailles is in the town of the same name, ten miles from Paris, was built by Louis XIV in 1661, and became a royal residence in 1681. As such it has held a great place in the history of France. It is now used as a historical museum. The garden which surrounds it is justly celebrated for its extreme beauty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The palace has two voices, one grave and one gay and trifling. It is full of truths and fictions, tears and smiles. The personages of its drama are as various as life itself; kings, poets, ministers, courtiers, confessors, courtesans, queens without power, and queens with too much power; ambassadors, generals, little abbés and great ladies; nobles, clergy, even the people. For two centuries did this crowd continue to pass and re-pass over these marble floors and under these gilded vaults ”

“ We drove to the Hôtel de Bourbon, an excellent, clean mansion, close to the very façade of the palace, after passing the Hôtel de Ville; and from whence you have an undisturbed view of the broad, wide, direct road to Paris. I bespoke dinner, and prepared to lounge. The palace--of which I purposely declined visiting the interior--reserving Versailles for a future and entire day's gratification--is doubtless an immense fabric--of which the façade just mentioned is composed of brick, and assumes any thing but a grand and imposing air: merely because it wants simplicity and uniformity of design. ”

“ Versailles, the City of the Court, was then in the height of its splendour, gay and triumphant. Everything in it looked towards the Palace of the King, the long and lordly façade of which, with its three concentric courtyards, faced the great square of the town, the Place d'Armes; and behind lay those delicious gardens, groves and waters, the mere remains of which, such as the Tapis Vert, the Basins of Neptune and Enceladus, the Trianons, and the Orangerie, are marvels even to our day. Thousands of costumes and equipages made the town a panorama of luxury ”

“ Versailles can never again be filled as it has been. It is no longer a regal palace. It is a museum of art, opened freely to all the people. No longer will the blooded Arabians of a proud monarch fill those stables. One has already been converted into cavalry barracks, and the other into an agricultural school. It is to be hoped that the soldiers will soon follow the horses, and that the sciences of peace will eject those of war.
LOUIS XIV. HUNTING.
What tongue can tell the heart-crushing dramas of real life which have been enacted in this palace. ”

“ Of all the monuments in Versailles, that old, plain, unfurnished Tennis Court is the most interesting. The Englishman visiting Versailles should not forget that the immense palace is but a monument of despotism;—that its grandeur, such as it is, cries aloud of a pride and selfishness so alarming, that Louis XIV burnt the bills for its erection, not venturing to allow them to be seen, whilst France was starving and sinking under a load of debt ”

“ Versailles arose,--at a cost, some affirm, of a thousand millions of livres,--unrivalled for magnificence since the fall of the Caesars. In this vast palace did he live, more after the fashion of an Oriental than an Occidental monarch, having enriched and furnished it with the wonders of the world, surrounded with princes, marshals, nobles, judges, bishops, ambassadors, poets, artists, philosophers, and scholars, all of whom rendered to him perpetual incense. ”

“ The Emperor was also much interested in the restoration of the palace of Versailles. M. Fontaine had submitted to his Majesty a plan for the first repairs, by the terms of which, for the sum of six millions, the Emperor and Empress would have had a comfortable dwelling. His Majesty, who liked everything grand, handsome, superb, but at the same time economical, wrote at the bottom of this estimate the following note, which M. de Bausset reports thus in his Memoirs:—
"The plans in regard to Versailles must be carefully considered. ”

“ The drive perhaps pleased us better than the palace, which is a prodigious mass of building indeed, and to my eye appears to cover more space than proud Versailles itself; court within court, and quadrangle within quadrangle; it is an enormous bulk to be sure—not pile—for it is not high in proportion to the surrounding objects somehow; and being composed all of brick, presents ideas rather of squat solidity, than of princely magnificence. Ostentation is expected always to strike, as elegance is known to charm, the beholder; and space seldom fails in its immediate effect upon the mind ”

“ Immense structures arose, and once again artists flocked to Versailles. Inside the palace and in the park they wrought an elaborate scheme of decoration that made this the most sumptuous dwelling of the monarchy. In the words of Madame Scudery, an annalist of that epoch, Versailles, under the new orders of the King, became "incomparably more beautiful." Another Versailles was born; at the same time there was created a town on the vast acres purchased by the King, in the midst of which three great avenues were built, converging toward the chateau. ”

“ Architects busied themselves with innumerable plans for re-making the shabby pile. Some would have torn down the Council Hall, the bed-chamber of Louis XIV, the antechamber of the Bull's Eye, and all the rest of the palace except the apartments of the King and Queen, the Gallery with the salons at either end, the Chapel and the Opera House. Napoleon was willing to spend 6,000 francs on the construction of suites for himself and his family "and fifty others." "Then," said he, "we could perhaps come to Versailles to pass a summer." ”

“ You, my lord, who raise your eyebrows interrogatingly, and you, my lady, who flick your fan so carelessly, will some day behold your grandchildren paying humble and obsequious court to the reigning favorites at Versailles--yes, out there on this very moorland where you see nothing but marshy hollows and ruined walls, there will your lord and master, your glorious Sun King, the Grand Monarch, Louis the Fourteenth, build a palace home that Belshazzar might justly have envied: there will he hold high court and set the whole world agape at his prodigal outlay and magnificent festivities. ”

“ The palace is open to the public, and besides its splendid apartments, and numerous buildings, there is a valuable collection of pictures, which are too celebrated to need enumeration. A curious change has taken place in the occupancy of some apartments—many rooms originally intended for domestic offices being now tenanted by gentry. The whole is a vast assemblage of art, and reminds us of the palace of Versailles, which is about the same distance from Paris as Hampton Court from London. ”

“ The history of Versailles is a story of the people and events that reflected the glory and grandeur of the Grand Monarque of the Bourbons and made his palace and its environs a more sublime expression of earthly pomp than anything which had gone before, or has come to pass since. ”

“ Versailles is a striking monument of the selfish profligacy of King-craft and the long-suffering patience of Nations. Hundreds of thousands of laborers' children must have gone hungry to their straw pallets in order that their needy parents might pay the inexorable taxes levied to build this Palace. ”

“ We saw the little balcony where the doomed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette showed themselves to the mob—the "deluge" which the greater Louis had once predicted.
The palace at Versailles is like other royal palaces of France—a fine show place, an excellent museum, but never in its day of purest domesticity could it have been called "a happy little home." Everything [Pg 245] is on too extended a scale. Its garden was a tract of marshy land sixty miles in circumference until Louis XIV set thirty-six thousand men at it, turning it into fairyland. ”

“ The tame and spiritless palace of Versailles was designed by François Mansard, who invented the Mansard roofs which have been used together with this style for nearly all the palatial buildings of Europe. The purity of the Italian Renaissance was forgotten or ignored by the nations of Europe, and the stiff and pompous buildings of Louis XIV. were accepted as the patterns that all civilization was eager to copy. ”

“ What setting, then, could have been more appropriate to the life of the times?
Versailles, the town, had never prospered, [Pg 261] and has never proved sufficiently attractive to become a popular suburb; and, though to-day it passed 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 ”

“ At midnight the King and his family led a procession through the galleries of the palace, lighted by footmen carrying torches. At two o'clock in the morning the festivities were at an end and the royal party left for Trianon.
Says a French author, writing two years after the opening of the museum. "When Louis Philippe first cast his eye upon Versailles, he saw at once the impiety of allowing such a monument to sink into utter ruin. . . . He determined that the palace of Louis XIV, without losing its individuality, should become a palace of the entire people ”

“ It is in vain to attempt a description of Versailles. The main palace contains five hundred rooms. We passed the long hours of a long day in rapidly passing through them. The mind becomes bewildered with the magnificence. Here is the chapel where an offended God was to be appeased by gilding his altar with gold, and where regal sinners cheaply purchased pardon for the past and indulgence for the future. It is one of the essentials of luxurious iniquity to be furnished with facile appliances to silence the reproaches of the soul ”

“ Everything is on so gigantic a scale. Nothing is small—nothing is cheap. The statues are all large; the palace is grand; the park covers a fair-sized county; the avenues are interminable. All the distances and all the dimensions about Versailles are vast. I used to think the pictures exaggerated these distances and these dimensions beyond all reason, and that they made Versailles more beautiful than it was possible for any place in the world to be. ”

“ The Class made two excursions from Paris, one to Versailles and the other to Fontainebleau.
Versailles, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, which has grown up around one of the finest palaces and parks of Europe, was originally the hunting-lodge of Louis XIII. Louis XIV. chose the place for a palace, and employed almost an army of men for eleven years upon the structure. He spent upon this palace nearly £40,000,000 sterling. Thither in 1680 he removed his gay court, and here he passed in gloomy grandeur his melancholy old age. ”