“Good cheer does not usually inspire melancholy thoughts; gaiety shone upon all faces, and still more of it was concealed in each heart. The evening was cool, and the company were longing for a dance. In this disposition the king directed the company to a superb saloon where everything was ordered so regularly, where the ornaments were so natural and so gorgeous, and the place so vast and new, that it was easy to see that this must be the work of the architect of the Louvre—of a man, that is to say, accustomed to great designs and to the most noble ideas.”
After a description of the magnificent saloon in question, the correspondent adds: “I will not speak of the pomp of the ball, or the grace of the Majesties, nor of the beauty and personal ornament of those who danced; I will leave you to imagine the scene.
“You know, sir, that it is useless for pleasures to be natural unless art is employed to conduct them. Then instinct must not always be their rule; they would destroy themselves if one gave them full liberty—in a word, their votaries exhaust them far too rapidly. They should be quitted with regret and not with satiety. The king was aware of this when he closed the ball sooner than the assembly would have wished. People rose with His Majesty, and no one now thought of anything but departure and repose.
“But scarcely had the company emerged from the thick of the wood and arrived at the first flower-bed, where a moment before we had seen nothing but fountains and flowers, when our eyes were startled with the strangest and most prodigious illumination that could possibly be conceived. The order of nature seemed confounded; darkness seemed to have fallen from the heavens and daylight to have sprung out of the earth. A lurid, dazzling light illuminated the whole of the surrounding country, though there was not a trace of smoke in the air, and not a sound of flickering flames or of crackling sparks disturbed the silence of the night. Along the principal avenue of the garden motionless giants could be seen glowing internally with fire: at all the windows of the château great luminous phantoms appeared which, without consuming themselves, seemed penetrated with a fire more lively and more ardent than is the element of fire itself.... This terrible and surprising spectacle troubled and fascinated the sightseers. There are horrors which please, and the soul athirst for novelty feeds on what astonishes it. Whilst people were eagerly revelling in these visions, they were suddenly aroused by claps of thunder, often redoubled, accompanied by an infinitude of lightning flashes and fires which, darting towards the heavens like rockets or hovering in the air like stars, burst to pieces or fell into some lake where they rekindled themselves instead of being extinguished, or, finally, creeping along the ground like serpents, augmented the horrors of darkness by dissipating it, and seemed to threaten the universe with its last conflagration. Nevertheless, we soon recognised the ingenious imposture of these phantoms of light which had dazzled us, of this artificial thunder by which we had been so astonished.
“All present continued to enjoy the spectacle until the peep of dawn seemed to give the signal for the assembly to retreat. Such, sir, was the display that happily crowned the gallant and magnificent fête with which His Majesty regaled his subjects in order that they might have a taste of the peace which he had just established for them, and in order that they might see that he limited his ambition thenceforth to ensuring repose and spreading joy throughout the length and breadth of the land.”
The splendour of Versailles came to an end with the Great Monarch, the Roi Soleil as he was also called.
The Regent cared only for Paris, and neither lived at Versailles himself nor allowed the heir to the throne to live there. Occasionally he visited the place; and Peter the Great, on visiting Paris, was put up for a time at Trianon in the Versailles park. The Tsar of Muscovy arrived in Paris from Holland (he had not yet been recognised by Europe as Emperor of Russia) on the 8th of May, 1717, and remained partly in the capital, partly at Versailles, for upwards of six weeks.
Saint-Simon describes him as tall, well-made, rather thin, his face somewhat round, with a broad forehead, fine eyebrows, short nose, thick lips, reddish-brown complexion, and fine black eyes, large, bright, piercing, open. His look was majestic and graceful when he was on his guard; but, at other times, severe and fierce, with a nervous twitching which did not often[{344}] show itself, but at times quite changed the expression of his eyes and his physiognomy. For a moment his look was wild and terrible, but he at once recovered his habitual expression. His general air gave evidence of wit, reflection, greatness of mind, all marked by grace. He wore a round brown wig almost without powder; he was generally dressed in a brown suit with gold buttons, and with stockings of the same colour, without gloves or cuffs. When this prince visited St. Cyr, he was received like the king. He wished to see Madame de Maintenon, who, suspecting that his chief desire was to see how old she looked, determined to receive him in bed. Her conjecture proved correct. On entering the room, the Tsar drew aside the window-curtains, and then the curtains of the bed, which Madame de Maintenon had closed, with the exception of one which remained half-drawn, looked at her attentively without saying a word or going through any form of civility, and then went away just as he had come.
THE COLONNADE, VERSAILLES.