hamlet where the Court ladies played at peasant life."

It is doubtful whether ten out of every hundred tourists who, Baedeker
in hand, wander conscientiously over the grand Chateau--Palace, alas! no
longer--ever notice the concluding words, or, reading its lukewarm
recommendation, deem the hamlet worthy of a visit. The Chateau is an
immense building crammed with artistic achievements, and by the time the
sightseer of ordinary capacity has seen a tenth of the pictures, a third
of the sculpture, and a half of the fountains, his endurance, if not all
his patience, is exhausted.

I must acknowledge that we, too, had visited Versailles without
discovering that the _hameau_ still existed; so to chance upon it in the
sunset glow of that winter evening seemed to carry us back to the time
when the storm-cloud of the Revolution was yet no larger than a man's
hand; to the day when Louis XVI., making for once a graceful speech,
presented the site to his wife, saying: "You love flowers. Ah! well, I
have a bouquet for you--the Petit Trianon." And his Queen, weary of the
restrictions of Court ceremony--though it must be admitted that the
willful Marie Antoinette ever declined to be hampered by
convention--experiencing in her residence in the little house freedom
from etiquette, pursued the novel pleasure to its furthest by commanding
the erection in its grounds of a village wherein she might the better
indulge her newly fledged fancy for make-believe rusticity.

About the pillars supporting the verandah-roof of the chief cottage and
that of the wide balcony above, roses and vines twined lovingly. And
though it was the first day of January, the rose foliage was yet green
and bunches of shrivelled grapes clung to the vines. It was lovely then;
yet a day or two later, when a heavy snowfall had cast a white mantle
over the village, and the little lake was frozen hard, the scene seemed
still more beautiful in its ghostly purity.

At first sight there was no sign of decay about the long-deserted
hamlet. The windows were closed, but had it been early morning, one
could easily have imagined that the pseudo villagers were asleep behind
the shuttered casements, and that soon the Queen, in some charming
_deshabille_, would come out to breathe the sweet morning air and to
inhale the perfume of the climbing roses on the balcony overlooking the
lake, wherein gold-fish darted to and fro among the water-lilies; or
expect to see the King, from th