he Marquise
was wholly unworthy, and it soon wore itself out. Her death caused him
no regret. On the day of her funeral, during a heavy rainstorm, the
King, standing at one of the windows of Versailles, watched the
carriage bearing the body of his former favorite to Paris, and observed
carelessly: "The Marquise will not have fine weather for her journey."
Louis soon turned to Madame Dubarry--and a lower step was taken. The
prestige and dignity of the Court suffered. "Vice," as Saint-Amand
observes, "threw off all semblance of disguise" and yet, while the King
slowly submerged his nature in a slough of corruption, and his
associates made of the Court a carnival of immorality, there was still
one figure in whom the traditional morals and manners were
maintained--the Queen Marie Leczinska. She was the one pure and
virtuous figure in the Court life. "Her domestic hearth," writes
Saint-Amand, "was near the boudoir of the favorites, but it was she
that preserved for the Court the traditions of decency and decorum.

"Last of all of the women of Versailles, came Marie Antoinette, the
woman who, in the most striking and tragic of all destinies, represents
not solely the majesty and the griefs of royalty, but all the graces
and all the agonies, all the joys and all the sufferings, of her sex."

CHAPTER VIII

THE VERSAILLES OF LOUIS XV

Louis the Great, in commanding immense and costly edifices to rise out
of the earth, was moved, at least in part, by a desire to assure the
monarchy and its established ceremonial a worthy background. Louis XV,
in the numerous graceful additions to the chateau made by him, sought
only to satisfy his own caprice and convenience.

When the Court returned from Vincennes to Versailles in 1722, seven
years after the death of Louis XIV, one of the new King's first
undertakings was the construction of the Salon of Hercules, adjoining
the chapel court. This splendid hall, which to-day serves as the
entrance to the _grand appartements_, owed its design to Robert de
Cotte. As in the time of Louis XIV and Mansard, marble was chosen as
the main decorative medium. All the sculptural ornaments are in bronze
and marble. The bases of the pilasters are of gilded bronze. Carvings
in wood and stucco were contributed by a Flemish artist named
Verberckt, to whom Louis XV assigned most of the sculptural work done
at the chateau during his reign. It was he that modeled the two doors
placed on eit