plane of
excellence.

One of the facades is nearly six hundred feet in length, with forty-nine
windows stretching out in a single range. It might be the front of an
automobile factory if it were less ornate, or that of an exposition
building were it more beautiful. In some respects it is reminiscent of
the Palais Royal at Paris, particularly as to the entrance colonnade and
gallery facing the Louvre.

The chief beauty within is undoubtedly the magnificent stairway, with
its balustrade of wrought iron of the period of Louis XVI. The Salle de
Spectacle is of a certain Third Empire-Louis Napoleon distinction, which
is saying that it is neither very lovely nor particularly plain, simply
ordinary, or, to give it a French turn of phrase, vulgar.

One of the most remarkable apartments is the Salle des Cartes, the old
salon of the Aides de Camp, whose walls are ornamented with three great
plans showing the roads and by-paths of the forest, and other decorative
panels representing the hunt of the time of Louis XV.

The Chambre a Coucher of the great Napoleon is perhaps the most
interesting of all the smaller apartments, with its strange bed, which
in form more nearly resembles an oriental divan than anything European.
Doubtless it is not uncomfortable as a bed, but it looks more like a
tent, or camp, in the open, than anything essentially intended for
domestic use within doors. After the great Napoleon, his nephew Napoleon
III was its most notable occupant, though it was last slept in by the
Tzar Nicholas II, when he visited France in 1901.

The sleeping-room of the Empress Eugenie is fitted up after the style of
the early Empire with certain interpolations of the mid-nineteenth
century. The most distinct feature here is the battery of linen coffers
which Marie Louise had had especially designed and built. The Salon des
Dames d'Honneur, with its double rank of nine "scissors chairs," the
famous _tabourets de cour_, lined up rigidly before the _canape_ on
which the empress rested, is certainly a remarkable apartment. This
was the _decor_ of convention that Madame Sans Gene rendered classic.

[Illustration: _Napoleon's Bedchamber, Compiegne_]

Like all the French national palaces Compiegne has a too abundant
collection of Sevres vases set about in awkward corners which could not
otherwise be filled, and, beginning with the vestibule, this thing is
painfully apparent.

The apartments showing best the Napoleonic style in de