aces, they form a
crown of architectural flowers, from which daily issue as many gilded
wasps to shine and buzz about Versailles, the center of all luster and
affluence. About a hundred of these are "presented each year, men and
women, which makes about 2 or 3,000 in all;[2104] this forms the king's
society, the ladies who courtesy before him, and the seigniors who
accompany him in his carriage; their hotels are near by, or within
reach, ready to fill his drawing room or his antechamber at all hours.

A drawing room like this calls for proportionate dependencies; the
hotels and buildings at Versailles devoted to the private service of the
king and his attendants count by hundreds. No human existence since that
of the Caesars has so spread itself out in the sunshine. In the Rue
des Reservoirs we have the old hotel and the new one of the governor
of Versailles, the hotel of the tutor to the children of the
Comte d'Artois, the ward-robe of the crown, the building for the
dressing-rooms and green-rooms of the actors who perform at the palace,
with the stables belonging to Monsieur.--In the Rue des Bon-Enfants
are the hotel of the keeper of the wardrobe, the lodgings for the
fountain-men, the hotel of the officers of the Comtesse de Provence.
In the Rue de la Pompe, the hotel of the grand-provost, the Duke of
Orleans's stables, the hotel of the Comte d'Artois's guardsmen, the
queen's stables, the pavilion des Sources.--In the Rue Satory the
Comtesse d'Artois's stables, Monsieur's English garden, the king's
ice-houses, the riding-hall of the king's light-horse-guards, the garden
belonging to the hotel of the treasurers of the buildings.--Judge of
other streets by these four. One cannot take a hundred steps without
encountering some accessory of the palace: the hotel of the staff of the
body-guard, the hotel of the staff of light-horse-guards, the immense
hotel of the body-guard itself, the hotel of the gendarmes of the guard,
the hotel of the grand wolf-huntsman, of the grand falconer, of the
grand huntsman, of the grand-master, of the commandant of the canal, of
the comptroller-general, of the superintendent of the buildings, and of
the chancellor; buildings devoted to falconry, and the vol de cabinet,
to boar-hunting, to the grand kennel, to the dauphin kennel, to
the kennel for untrained dogs, to the court carriages, to shops and
storehouses connected with amusements, to the great stable and the
little stables, to other st