We had seats on top of the steam tram which leaves every hour from the foot of the Place de la Concorde Bridge. We spent the entire day at Versailles, and came away after dark feeling that we had had the merest peep at the parks and gardens, vast with miles of marble terraces, miles of lime-tree bowers, fountains of gold, of silver and of bronze, green of all shades, flowers of all colors, staircases of onyx, paintings, sculptures and relics of untold value. We walked miles and had been driven tens of miles through the parks and gardens of the Grand and Petit Trianon. We had stood by the most stupendous series of fountains the world has ever known. And we crawled home weary, but happy at heart for all this beauty, to find that our poor little friends had been there but two hours,—that they had galloped from place to place, catching but little, if anything, of the foreign names pronounced so differently from the way we are taught.
Versailles is one of the places where there are official guides, and it pays to hire one by the hour.
Of the museums, see the Luxembourg first, because, while the gardens are beautiful, they are not so well kept nor to be compared with those of the Louvre or Versailles. The works of art are placed in the Luxembourg gallery during the lifetime of an artist, if his works merit that honor; if his fame lives for ten years after his death, they are transferred to the Louvre. Hence it is in the Luxembourg one will find the best works of living artists.
The Louvre Musée is a vast collection of classified art, and occupies the palace of that name, any room of which will repay one's effort to see it.
Just wander about alone until some work of art compels you to stop before it. Then look at your Baedeker and see if it is something noted. It tickles one's vanity to find one has selected a masterpiece without having it pointed out. Speaking of guide-books, Baedeker is by far the best, and rarely fails one excepting in galleries, where it is impossible to keep an accurate list of the works of art, as they are frequently moved from room to room, or are loaned to some world's exposition.
In the Louvre are many of the pictures which every boy or girl knows. Well-known masterpieces of Titian, Raphael, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Rubens, Murillo and Fra Angelico make one agree with Marie Corelli, that the old masters took their secret of colors away with them.
I astonished my English friends by announcing that I did not like Dickens, and now I'll shock my Holland friends by not liking Rubens.
One should get catalogues of both the Louvre and Luxembourg galleries.
If you can make time see Cluny, Guimet, the Musée des Religions, the Musée Gustave Moreau, the Musée Cernuski—almost wholly oriental,—the Musée Brignoli-Galliera, the magnificent display of stained glass in the Sainte-Chapelle—this on a bright, sunshiny day,—and that most wonderful of modern paintings on the wall of the large amphitheatre of the Sorbonne University done by Puvis de Chavannes.
The best manner to see the Bois de Boulogne is to take a boat on the Seine at the Pont Royal, stopping at St. Cloud and Sèvres, and, after an hour of exquisite rest amid the dreamland on either side, disembark at Suresnes, cross the bridge, and walk back to Paris through the forest. We took the earliest morning boat. As it chanced to be the day of the Bataille des Fleurs, we spent some time viewing this beautiful scene. We stopped frequently at little cafés for tea or rest, and six o'clock found us at the Arc de Triomphe hailing a cab to take us home. It was fatiguing, but in no other way could we have seen so well the splendid woods and the glimpses of family life among the haute bourgeoisie.