nd any one having experience of Versailles
winter streets can fully sympathise with their trust; for even in dry
sunny weather mud seems a spontaneous production that renders goloshes a
necessity. And when frost holds the high-standing city in its frigid
grasp the extreme cold forbids any idea of coquetry, and thickly lined
boots with cloth uppers--a species of foot-gear that in grace of outline
is decidedly suggestive of "arctics"--become the only comfortable wear.

[Illustration: Snow in the Park]

After a few days of thought-congealing cold--a cold so intense that
sundry country people who had left their homes before dawn to drive into
Paris with farm produce were taken dead from their market-carts at the
end of the journey--the weather mercifully changed. A heavy snowfall now
tempered the inclement air, and turned the leafless park into a fairy
vision.

The nights were still cold, but during the day the sun glinted warmly on
the frozen waters of the gilded fountains and sparkled on the facets of
the crisp snow. The marble benches in the sheltered nooks of the snug
Chateau gardens were occupied by little groups, which usually consisted
of a _bonne_ and a baby, or of a chevalier and a hopelessly unclassable
dog; for the dogs of Versailles belong to breeds that no man living
could classify, the most prevalent type in clumsiness of contour and
astonishing shagginess of coat resembling nothing more natural than
those human travesties of the canine race familiar to us in pantomime.

Along the snow-covered paths under the leafless trees, on whose branches
close-wreathed mistletoe hangs like rooks' nests, the statues stood like
guardian angels of the scene. They had lost their air of aloofness and
were at one with the white earth, just as the forest trees in their
autumn dress of brown and russet appear more in unison with their parent
soil than when decked in their bravery of summer greenery.

CHAPTER VII

THE HAUNTED CHATEAU

[Illustration: A Veteran of the Chateau]

The Chateau of Versailles, like the town, dozes through the winter, only
half awakening on Sunday afternoons when the townsfolk make it their
meeting-place. Then conscripts, in clumsy, ill-fitting uniforms, tread
noisily over the shining _parqueterie_ floors, and burgesses gossip
amicably in the dazzling _Galerie des Glaces_, where each morning
courtiers were wont to await the uprising of their king. But on the
weekdays visitors are of the ra