ants of these first Paris gardens show plainly how thoroughly
good they were in design and execution.

The majority of professional gardeners of renown in France made their
first successes with the gardens of the city of Paris, reproducing the
best of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century work, which
had endured without the competition of later years having dulled its
beauty, though perhaps the _parterres_ of to-day are rather more warm in
colouring, even cruder, than those of a former time.

The _jardin fleuriste_ and the _parterre horticole_ of the nineteenth
century appealed however quite as much in their general arrangement and
the modification of their details and their rainbow colours, as any
since the time of Louis XVI. According to the expert definition the
_jardin fleuriste_ was a "garden reserved exclusively to the culture and
ornamental disposition of plants giving forth rich leaves and beautiful
flowers." The above quoted description is decidedly apt.

The seventeenth century French garden formed a superb framing for the
animated fetes and reunions in which took part such a brilliant array of
lords and ladies of the court as may have been invited to taste the
delicacies of a fete amid such luxurious appointments.

The fashionable and courtly life of the day, so far as its open-air
aspect was concerned, centered around these gardens and parks of the
great houses of royalty and the nobility. The costume of the folk of the
time, with cloak and sword and robes of silk and velvet and gilded
carriages and _chaises-a-porteurs_, had little in common with the
out-of-door garden-party life of to-day, where the guests arrive in
automobiles, be-rugged and be-goggled and somewhat the worse for a dusty
journey. It is for this reason that Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte, in
spite of the suggestion of sumptuousness which they still retain, are,
from all points of view, more or less out of scale with the life of our
times.

The modern garden, whether laid out in regular lines, or on an
ornamental scale, as a flower garden purely, or in a composite style, is
usually but an adjunct to the modern chateau, villa or cottage. It is
more intimate than the vast, more theatrically disposed area of old, and
is more nearly an indication of the personal tastes of the owner because
of its restrained proportions.

[Illustration: _Bassin de la Couronne, Vaux-le-Vicomte_]

CHAPTER III

THE ROYAL HUNT IN FRANCE