Royal Palaces and Parks of France Part 18

The empress left precipitately after the disaster of Woerth, and two months after the torch of arson made a ruin of all the splendour of the palace and its dependencies. The inhabitants of the little city, which had grown up around the confines of the palace, fled in refuge to Versailles during the armistice. Scarcely an old house was preserved in all the town.

Among the _chefs d'oeuvres_ of art which perished in the flames were the fine works of Mignard--above all, the magnificent Galerie d'Apollon--the paintings of LeMoyne, Nacret, Leloir, the marines of Joseph Vernet and innumerable objects of art which had been gathered together for the embellishment of Saint Cloud by the later monarchs.

Some few treasures were saved by the care of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and some vases, chairs and statues were appropriated and packed off across the Rhine as the plunder of war.

The park of Saint Cloud to-day contains nearly four hundred hectares, the public park and the "preserve." From it spreads out one of the loveliest panoramas in the neighbourhood of Paris, alleyed vistas leading seemingly to infinity, with a sprinkling of statues still flanking the Jardin du Trocadero.

From the town one enters the park through a great iron gate from the Place Royale, or by the Avenue du Chateau, which lands one on the terraces where once stood the royal palace.

From Ville d'Avray and from Sevres there are also entrances to the great park, while to the latter runs an avenue connecting the "preserve" of Saint Cloud with the wilder, more rugged Bois de Meudon.

Actually the surroundings of Saint Cloud's great park are the least bit tawdry. Here and there are booths and tents selling trashy souvenirs, and even more unpleasant-looking articles of food and drink, while fringing the river, and some of the princ.i.p.al avenues approaching the cascade, are more pretentious restaurants and eating houses which are royal in name and their prices if nothing else.

The cascades are for the ma.s.ses the chief sight of Saint Cloud to-day.

Historical souvenir plays little part in the minds of those who only visit a monumental shrine to be amused, and so the falling waters of Saint Cloud's cascade, like the gus.h.i.+ng torrents of Versailles'

fountains, are the chief incentives to a holiday for tens of thousands of small Paris shopkeepers who do not know that a royal palace was ever here, much less that it had a history.

There is an upper and a lower cascade, an artificial water ingeniously tumbled about according to the conception of one Lepaute, an architect of the time of the reign of Louis XIV.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Cascades at Saint Cloud_]

Mansart designed the architectural attributes of the lower cascade and scores considerably over his colleague. Circular basins and ca.n.a.ls finally lead the water off to a still larger basin lower down where it spouts up into the air to a height of some forty odd metres at a high pressure. This is the official description, but it is hard to get up any sympathy or enthusiasm over the thing, either considered as a work of art or as a diversion. Frankly, then, Saint Cloud's chief charm is its site and its dead and half-forgotten history. The "Tramp Abroad" and "Rollo" and "Uncle George" knew it better than we, because in those days the palace existed in the real, whereas we take it all on faith and regret (sometimes) that we did not live a couple of generations ago.

Bellevue, on the banks of the Seine, just before reaching Saint Cloud, owes its origin (a fact which the great restaurant of the Pavillon Bleu has made the most of in its advertis.e.m.e.nts), to a caprice of Madame de Pompadour. She liked the point of view (as do so many diners on the restaurant terrace to-day), and built a "_rendezvous-chateau_" on the hillside, a half-way house, as it were, where Louis XV might be at his ease on his journeyings to and from the capital.

The Pompadour was able to borrow a force of eight hundred workmen from the king for as long as was necessary to carry out her ambitious projects at Bellevue and on November 25, 1750, she had a house-warming in her modest villa (demolished in 1794) and _pendit la cremaillere_ with a ceremony whose chief entertainment was the dancing of a ballet significantly ent.i.tled "L'Amour Architect."

Neighbouring upon Saint Cloud is a whole battery of hallowed, historical spots a.s.sociated with the more or less royal dwellings of the French monarchs and their favourites. It was but a comparatively short distance to Versailles, to Saint Germain, to Maintenon and to Rambouillet, and the near-by Louveciennes was literally strewn with the most charming country-houses, which, in many cases, kings paid for and made free use of, though indeed the accounts for the same may not have appeared in the public budgets, at least not under their proper names.

At the summit of the hill which gives the town its name was a chateau belonging originally to Madame la Princesse de Conti, and opposite the railway station of to-day, with its prosaic and unlovely surroundings, was a magnificent property belonging to Marechal Magnan, and the Pavillon du Barry, built by the architect Ledoux to the orders of Louis XV, who would provide a convenient nest in the neighbourhood of Saint Cloud for his latest favourite. To-day the pavilion exists in name, somewhat disfigured to be sure, but still reminiscent of its former rather garish outlines, so on the whole it cannot be said to have suffered greatly from an esthetic point of view. The property came finally to be included as a part of the estate of Pierre Laffitte, though still known, as it always has been, as the Pavillon du Barry.

CHAPTER XV

VERSAILLES: THE GLORY OF FRANCE

"_Glorieuse, monumentale et monotone La facade de pierre effrite, au vent qui pa.s.se Son chapiteau friable et sa guirlande la.s.se En face du parc jaune ou s'accoude l'automne._ * * *

_Mais le soleil, aux vitres d'or qu'il incendie Y semble rallumer interieurement Le sursaut, chaque soir de la Gloire engourdi._"

These lines of Henri de Regnier explain the aspect of the Versailles of to-day better than any others ever written.

Versailles is a medley of verdure, a hierarchy of bronze and a forest of marble. This is an expression full of anomalies, but it is strictly applicable to Versailles. Its waters, jets and cascades, its monsters, its Tritons and Valhalla of marble statues set off the artificial background in a manner only to be compared to a stage setting--a magnificent stage setting, but still palpably unreal.

Yes, Versailles is sad and grim to-day; one hardly knows why, for its memories still live, and the tangible evidences of most of its great splendour still stand.

"_Voici tes ifs en cone et tes tritons joufflus Tes jardins composes ou Louis ne vient plus, Et ta pompe arborant les plumes et les casques._"

It is not possible to give here either an architectural review or a historical chronology of Versailles; either could be made the _raison d'etre_ for a weighty volume.

The writer has confined himself merely to a more or less correlated series of patent facts and incidents which, of itself, shows well the futility of any other treatment being given of a subject so vast within the single chapter of a book.

The history of Versailles is a story of the people and events that reflected the glory and grandeur of the Grand Monarque of the Bourbons and made his palace and its environs a more sublime expression of earthly pomp than anything which had gone before, or has come to pa.s.s since.

Versailles, after its completion, became the perfect expression of the decadence and demoralization of the old regime. It can only be compared to the relations between du Barry and the young Marie Antoinette, who was all that was contrary to all for which the former stood.

That the court of Louis XV was artificially brilliant there is no doubt.

It was this that made it stand out from the sombre background of the ma.s.ses of the time. It was a dazzling, human spectacle, and Versailles, with its extravagant, superficial charms, carried it very near to the brink of ruin, though even in its most ba.n.a.l vulgarities there was a certain sense of ambitious sincerity. The people of the peasant cla.s.s lived as animals, "black, livid and scorched by the sun." The sense of all this penetrated readily even to Versailles, so that La Pompadour or Louis, one or the other of them, or was it both together, cried out instinctively: "_Apres nous le deluge._"

The intricacies of the etiquette of the daily life of the king, his follies and fancies, made the history of Versailles the most brilliant of that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--certainly it was the most opulent. The manners of the time were better than the morals, and if good taste in art and architecture had somewhat fallen there is no doubt but that a charming fantasy often made up for a lack of estheticism.

The story of the palace, the park, the king and his court are so interwoven that no _resume_ of the story of one can ignore that of any of the others. The king and court present themselves against this background with an intimacy and a clearness which is remarkable for its appeal to one's curiosity. It is a long, long day of life which begins with the _pet.i.t lever_ and only ends with the _grand coucher_.

If there was ever a Castle of Indolence and Profligacy it was Versailles, though indeed it is regarded as the monarchy's brilliant zenith. The picture is an unforgetable one to any who have ever read its history or seen its stones.

In the year 1650, Martial de Lomenci, one of the ministers of Charles IX, was the Seigneur of Versailles, but at the will of Catherine de Medici he was summarily strangled that she might get possession of the property and make a present of it to her favourite, Albert de Gondi, Marechal de Retz.

About 1625 Louis XIII had caused a small hunting pavilion to be built near by and, by degrees, acquiring more land took it into his head to erect something more magnificent in the way of a country-house, though the real conception of a suburban Paris palace only came with Louis XIV.

Levau, the latter's architect, made the necessary alterations to the structure already existing, and little by little the more magnificent project known in its completed form to-day was evolved. War not being actually in progress, or imminent, great bodies of soldiery were set at work with pick and shovel, and at one time thirty thousand had laid aside their sabres and muskets for the more peaceful art of garden-making under the direction of Le Notre.

In three decades the sum total of the chief roll of expenses of the palace and its dependencies reached eighty-one million, one hundred and fifty-one thousand, four hundred and fourteen _livres_, nine _sols_ and two _deniers_. It is perhaps even more interesting to know that of this vast sum more than three millions went for marble, twenty-one millions for masonry, two and a half millions for the rougher woodwork and a like sum for marquetry. Other additional "trifling" embellishments of Versailles and the Trianon during the same period counted up another six million and a half.

The expense of these works was enormous on all sides. Water being required for the purpose of supplying the fountains it was proposed that the waters of the Eure should be turned from their original bed and made to pa.s.s through Versailles, and the enterprise was actually begun.

Beyond the gardens was formed the Little Park, about four leagues around, and beyond this lay the Great Park, measuring twenty leagues around and enclosing several forest villages. The total expenses of these works may never have been exactly known, but they must have been immense, that is certain, and have even been estimated at as much as one billion francs. The works were so far completed in 1664 that the first Versailles fete was given to consecrate the palace. In honour of this event Moliere composed "La Princesse d'Elide."

The improvements, however, were continued, and in 1670, Levau, dying, was succeeded by his nephew, Jules Hardouin Mansart, who wished to destroy the chateau of Louis XIII and erect one uniform building. Louis XIV, out of respect to his father, would not allow Mansart's project to be carried out and therefore alterations were only made in the court by surrounding it on the western side with the magnificent buildings now forming the garden front. The southern wing was subsequently added for the accommodation of the younger members of the royal family. In 1685 the northern wing was erected to meet the requirements of the attaches of the court. The chapel was commenced in 1699 and finished in 1710.

Louis XIV took up his residence in the palace in 1681 with Madame de Montespan, and, thirty-five years afterwards, died there, the reigning favourite then being Madame de Maintenon. During this time Versailles was the theatre of many extraordinary scenes. Louis XV was born here but did not take up his residence here until after he was of age. Here it was that his favourites Madame de Chateauroux, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry found themselves most at home. It was under the direction of this monarch that the theatre was built in the northern wing, and was formally opened on the occasion of the marriage of the dauphin, Louis XVI, in 1770.

Towards the end of the reign of Louis XV a new wing and pavilion were added on the northern side of the princ.i.p.al court, and it was proposed to build across the court a new front in the same uniform style. The idea could not be carried out in consequence of the troublous times of Louis XVI and the enormous estimated expense. The Revolution intervened and Versailles remained closed until it was reopened by the first Napoleon, who, however, was unable to take up his residence in it on account of his frequent campaigns afield.

At the Restoration Louis XVIII, as the representative of the ancient monarchy, wished to make Versailles the seat of the court, but was deterred from doing so by the appalling previous expense. During the reigns of both Napoleon and Louis XVIII considerable sums were expended in its refurbis.h.i.+ng so that it was not wholly a bygone when finally the French authorities made of it, if not the chief, at least the most popular _monument historique_ of all France.

And yet the aspect of Versailles is sadly wearying. To-day Versailles is lonely; one is haunted by the silence and the bareness, if not actual emptiness. Only once in seven years does the old palace take on any air of the official life of the Republic, and that is when the two legislative bodies join forces and come to Versailles to vote for the new president. For the rest of the time it is deserted, save for the guardians and visitors, a memory only of the splendours imagined and ordained by Louis XIV.

For nearly a century the master craftsmen of a nation conspired to its beatification, and certainly for gorgeousness and extravagance Versailles has merited any encomiums which have ever been expended upon it. It was made and remade by five generations of the cleverest workers who ever lived, until it took supreme rank as the greatest storehouse of luxurious trifles in all the world.

One wearies though of the straight lines and long vistas of Versailles, the endless repet.i.tion of cla.s.sical motives, which, while excellent, each in its way, do pall upon one in an inexplicable fas.h.i.+on. It possesses, however, a certain dignity and grace in every line. This is a fact which one can not deny. It is expressive of--well, of nothing but Versailles, and the part it played in the life of its time.

The millions for Versailles were obtained in ways too devious and lengthy to follow up here. Even Louis XIV began to see before the end the condition into which he had led the nation, though he punished every one who so much as hinted at his follies. Vauban, "the hero of a hundred sieges," published a book on the relations between the king and court and the tax-paying ma.s.ses and was disgraced forever after, dying within a few months of a broken heart that he should have been so impotent in attempting to bring about a reform.

The life of the king at Versailles had little of privacy in it. From his rising to his going to bed he was constantly in the hands of his valets and courtiers, even receiving amba.s.sadors of state while he was still half hidden by the heavy curtains of his great four-poster. They had probably been waiting hours in the Salon de l'OEl de Boeuf before being admitted to the kingly presence.

It was at this period that Michael Chamillard, the Minister of War, introduced billiards into France by the way of Versailles. He played with Louis XIV and pleased him greatly, but Chamillard was no statesman, as history and the following lines from his epitaph point out.

"_Ci git le fameux Chamillard De son Roy le p.r.o.notaire Qui fut un heros au billard Un zero dans le Ministere._"