e when finally the
French authorities made of it, if not the chief, at least the most
popular _monument historique_ of all France.

And yet the aspect of Versailles is sadly wearying. 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. For the rest of the time it is deserted, save for the
guardians and visitors, a memory only of the splendours imagined and
ordained by Louis XIV.

For nearly a century the master craftsmen of a nation conspired to its
beatification, and certainly for gorgeousness and extravagance
Versailles has merited any encomiums which have ever been expended upon
it. It was made and remade by five generations of the cleverest workers
who ever lived, until it took supreme rank as the greatest storehouse of
luxurious trifles in all the world.

One wearies though of the straight lines and long vistas of Versailles,
the endless repetition of classical motives, which, while excellent,
each in its way, do pall upon one in an inexplicable fashion. It
possesses, however, a certain dignity and grace in every line. This is a
fact which one can not deny. It is expressive of--well, of nothing but
Versailles, and the part it played in the life of its time.

The millions for Versailles were obtained in ways too devious and
lengthy to follow up here. Even Louis XIV began to see before the end
the condition into which he had led the nation, though he punished every
one who so much as hinted at his follies. Vauban, "the hero of a hundred
sieges," published a book on the relations between the king and court
and the tax-paying masses and was disgraced forever after, dying within
a few months of a broken heart that he should have been so impotent in
attempting to bring about a reform.

The life of the king at Versailles had little of privacy in it. From his
rising to his going to bed he was constantly in the hands of his valets
and courtiers, even receiving ambassadors of state while he was still
half hidden by the heavy curtains of his great four-poster. They had
probably been waiting hours in the Salon de l'OEl de Boeuf before
being admitted to the kingly presence.

It was at this period that Michael Chamillard, the Minister of War,
introduced billiards into