rest. Sometimes a few half-frozen people
who have rashly automobiled thither from Paris alight at the Chateau
gates, and take a hurried walk through the empty galleries to restore
the circulation to their stiffened limbs before venturing to set forth
on the return journey.

Every weekday in the Place d'Armes, squads of conscripts are busily
drilling, running hither and thither with unflagging energy, and the air
resounds with the hoarse staccato cries of "Un! Deux! Trois!" wherewith
they accompany their movements, cries that, heard from a short distance,
exactly resemble the harsh barking of a legion of dogs.

[Illustration: Un--Deux--Trois]

Within the gates there is a sense of leisure: even the officials have
ceased to anticipate visitors. In the _Cour Royale_ two little girls
have cajoled an old guide into playing a game of ball. A custodian dozes
by the great log fire in the bedroom of Louis XIV., where the warm
firelight playing on the rich trappings lends such an air of occupation
to the chamber, that--forgetting how time has turned to grey the once
white ostrich plumes adorning the canopy of the bed, and that the
priceless lace coverlet would probably fall to pieces at a touch--one
almost expects the door to open for the entrance of Louis le Grand
himself.

To this room he came when he built the Palace wherein to hide from that
grim summons with which the tower of the Royal sepulture of St. Denis,
visible from his former residence, seemed to threaten him. And here it
was that Death, after long seeking, found him. We can see the little
great-grandson who was to succeed, lifted on to the bed of the dying
monarch.

[Illustration: The Bedchamber of Louis XIV]

"What is your name, my child?" asks the King.

"Louis XV;" replies the infant, taking brevet-rank. And nearly sixty
years later we see the child, his wasted life at an end, dying of
virulent smallpox under the same roof, deserted by all save his devoted
daughters.

To me the Palace of Versailles is peopled by the ghosts of many women. A
few of them are dowdy and good, but by far the greater number are
graceful and wicked. How infinitely easier it is to make a good bad
reputation than to achieve even a bad good one! "Tell us stories about
naughty children," we used to beseech our nurses. And as our years
increase we still yawn over the doings of the righteous, while our
interest in the ways of transgressors only strengthens.

We all know by heart the