not possible to give here either an architectural review or a
historical chronology of Versailles; either could be made the _raison
d'etre_ for a weighty volume.

The writer has confined himself merely to a more or less correlated
series of patent facts and incidents which, of itself, shows well the
futility of any other treatment being given of a subject so vast within
the single chapter of a book.

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, after its completion, became the perfect expression of the
decadence and demoralization of the old regime. It can only be compared
to the relations between du Barry and the young Marie Antoinette, who
was all that was contrary to all for which the former stood.

That the court of Louis XV was artificially brilliant there is no doubt.
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._"

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.

The story of the palace, the park, the king and his court are so
interwoven that no _resume_ 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 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 th