Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

“At length the king, tired of glitter and of the crowd, persuaded himself that he wanted occasional solitude: he accordingly set out for the environs. People pressed him to stay at Lucienne; he replied that this happy situation would ruin him, and that, as he wished for absolute rest, he must seek a situation which would permit him to do nothing.

“He found behind Lucienne a deep and narrow valley, with steep sides, inaccessible by its marshes, commanding no view, shut in by hills, and with a wretched village built on its sides. It was called Marly. This enclosure had its advantages; its narrowness kept a resident within bounds. It was an enormous task to dry up the sewers into which the surrounding parts poured their refuse; but at length the hermitage was prepared. Yet the king only slept there for three nights, from Wednesday to Saturday, two or three times a year, with a dozen courtiers at the most. By degrees the hermitage was enlarged. The hills were levelled to afford space for building-sites, and a large portion of the one at the extremity carried away to produce at least the glimpse of a landscape-view.

“Finally, what with buildings, gardens, lakes, aqueducts, parks, forests, statues, etc., Marly became what one sees it to-day, despoiled as it has been since the death of the king. Its vast woods and obscure avenues suddenly changed into immense stretches of water on whose surface people glided about in gondolas; I am speaking of what I have seen, within six weeks; basins changed a hundred times—cascades of ever-varying form.

“It is little to say that Versailles has not cost so much as Marly: and if one adds the expense of continual journeys, particularly towards the end of the king’s life, Marly cost billions. Such was the fortune of a repository of snakes and carrion, spiders and frogs, only chosen because the expense would be nothing!

“Such was the bad taste of the king in everything and his keen passion for forcing nature, which neither the most pressing war nor his devotion could blunt!

“The establishment of the Court at Versailles was another instance of the king’s policy. We all know how he derided, humiliated, confounded the very first grandees, gave pre-eminence to ministers, whom he promoted to equal authority and power with princes of the blood and to an importance exceeding that of the foremost noblemen in the land. It is necessary to show the progress in every direction of such policy on the part of the king. Several causes contributed to draw the court out of Paris, and to keep it incessantly in the country.

“The troubles of the minority, of which this city was the great theatre, had inspired the king with an aversion for it: and people had persuaded him that his stay there was dangerous, and that the residence of the court elsewhere would render cabals at Paris less easy through sheer distance, and more difficult to hide through the ease with which absences could be remarked.

“The number of his mistresses, and the danger of creating great scandals in the heart of a capital so populous and full of such turbulent spirits, now induced the king to remove farther away. At Paris he found himself importuned by the crowd every time he went out, came in, or showed himself in the streets.... A passion for exercise and the chase, much more easy to gratify in the country than at Paris, remote as it was from forests and sterile in places of promenade, and the love of buildings which came next and constantly grew, forbade to him the amusements of a town where he could not avoid being continually on view. The idea, moreover, of rendering himself more venerable by abstracting himself from the eyes of the multitude and from daily appearance in public, was one of the considerations which decided the king to fix upon Saint-Germain, soon after the death of the queen, his mother.

“It was there that he began to attract the world by his fêtes and his gallantries, and to make people feel that he wished to be often seen. The flirtation with Mme. de Vallière, which was at first a mystery, resulted in frequent walks[{340}] to Versailles—a little cardboard castle at that time, built by Louis XIII., himself disgusted, and his suite still more so, at having had to sleep in a vile inn frequented by waggoners, or in a windmill, after long, fatiguing hunts in the forest of Saint-Léger, or even beyond that, and reserved for his son at a period far distant, when roadways, the fleetness of trained dogs, and the skill of a large staff of keepers and huntsmen had rendered the chase easy and short. This monarch never slept at Versailles, or at least, very rarely, passing a night there only from necessity.

“The king, his son, in order to be more in private with his mistress, was there more often. Then its unknown pleasures, its little parties, caused the immense edifices to spring up which have been built there, with their accommodation for a numerous court, so different from the residences at Saint-Germain. Finally he transported his entire household to it, previously to the death of the queen, and built an infinitude of abodes there in compliance with the petitions made to him on the subject; whereas at Saint-Germain almost everyone was put to the inconvenience of staying in the town; those few who were lodged at the castle being terribly cramped for room there.