venues the king, with his cane in his hand,
groups around him his entire retinue. Sixty ladies in brocade dresses,
expanding into skirts measuring twenty-four feet in circumference,
easily find room on the steps of the staircases.[2107] Those verdant
cabinets afford shade for a princely collation. Under that circular
portico, all the seigniors enjoying the privilege of entering it witness
together the play of a new jet d'eau. Their counterparts greet them even
in the marble and bronze figures which people the paths and basins, in
the dignified face of an Apollo, in the theatrical air of a Jupiter, in
the worldly ease or studied nonchalance of a Diana or a Venus. The
stamp of the court, deepened through the joint efforts of society for a
century, is so strong that it is graven on each detail as on the whole,
and on material objects as on matters of the intellect.

II. The King's Household.

Its officials and expenses.--His military family, his
stable, kennel, chapel, attendants, table, chamber,
wardrobe, outhouses, furniture, journeys.

The foregoing is but the framework; before 1789 it was completely filled
up. "You have seen nothing," says Chateaubriand, "if you have not
seen the pomp of Versailles, even after the disbanding of the king's
household; Louis XIV was always there."[2108] It is a swarm of liveries,
uniforms, costumes and equipages as brilliant and as varied as in a
picture. I should be glad to have lived eight days in this society.
It was made expressly to be painted, being specially designed for the
pleasure of the eye, like an operatic scene. But how can we of to day
imagine people for whom life was wholly operatic? At that time a grandee
was obliged to live in great state; his retinue and his trappings formed
a part of his personality; he fails in doing himself justice if these
are not as ample and as splendid as he can make them; he would be as
much mortified at any blank in his household as we with a hole in our
coats. Should he make any curtailment he would decline in reputation;
on Louis XVI undertaking reforms the court says that he acts like a
bourgeois. When a prince or princess becomes of age a household is
formed for them; when a prince marries, a household is formed for his
wife; and by a household it must be understood that it is a
pompous display of fifteen or twenty distinct services: stables, a
hunting-train, a chapel, a surgery, the bedchamber and the wardrobe,
a ch