We then walked in the chestnut groves and deep solitudes of Montmorency, till we grew sentimental—till we could almost hear Heloise wail her unhappy lover. We saw a tree that had fallen to the earth, and the vine which had entwined it in its prosperity still clinging to it in its fall; it had refused to climb any other tree, but died with the trunk that had supported it. We thought of the perfidy and ingratitude of men, and we had serious thoughts of quitting their society and living altogether among trees. We visited the Hermitage and plucked each a leaf from the rose-bush, and sat upon Jean Jacques’s chair. We intended to visit Meudon on our return, to laugh at Rabelais, and to fly to the rocks of Vitry to kiss the footsteps of Madame de Sevigné, but did not. I have now given you my journey of a day.
I announced to you pompously, by the last boat, my departure for London, and you will be surprised to receive yet a letter from Paris. I stayed chiefly to see the waters “play” at Versailles. It is an amazing spectacle, and every body stays to see it. You must imagine a hundred little Cupids squirting away with all their might, and Diana, Amphitrite, and several other grown-up goddesses doing the same; and Apollo’s horses, which breathe the surge from their nostrils, and Neptune, astride of a whale, which vomits the ocean from its gills; with jets-d’eaux innumerable, spouting water, with fantastic figures along the main walks and vistas of the garden.
For the grand scene of all, you must imagine a wide avenue the fourth of a mile, and a row of watery trees at each side, and at the closed end a circular lake, with a liquid pillar rising from the centre, and several concentric circles jetting around at different heights, and scattering the drizzly vapour which makes rainbows as it descends. If you have imagined all this, with a temple, and Thetis and her nymphs seated in it, and plenty of cascades, waterspouts, and cataracts pouring down upon them—this is the “Play of the waters at Versailles.”
The multitude of the spectators was like a forest of the Mahonoy. The women were as thick as Catullus’s kisses. With one of them, whom I knew, I walked awhile, in the “Swiss Garden,” with its air of gentility and modesty. Here the Royal Family used to abdicate their greatness and play one week of the year a peasant’s life; and the royal girls romped about the garden in their linsey frocks, and check aprons, and coarse petticoats, and had bonny-clabber for supper. Louis XVI. was a miller, and Maria Antoinette was a dear little dairy-maid; but—
“More water glides by the mill
Than wots the miller of.”
The mill, and the dairy, and the cottages, and other monuments of these royal Saturnalia, are yet remaining. These were anciently the pastimes of monarchs, who had thirty millions of subjects; and they complain that the judgments of Heaven have overtaken them!
In strolling along a silent path through the woods, we came unexpectedly into a little retreat, which so lurked in a corner, that, after a week’s stay here, I had not observed it. They call it the ball-room. It is a circle, having an orchestra in the centre, and an area for dancing between it and the circumference; and here are two rows of columns of coloured marble, united by thirty arches, and beneath each, on the night of ceremony, is a jet-d’eau falling in fleur de lis, and seeming to sustain lighted lustres, which are suspended by an invisible thread from the arches. It is inclosed by a hedge, and overshaded by branches from the surrounding trees. It seems as if made for some king of the elves, or fairy queen, to play her midnight gambols in.
The great palace of Versailles is a long squat edifice, which inspires no great reverence. It has one magnificent room, two hundred feet by thirty, now converted into a National Museum of pictures. There are two smaller palaces half a mile distant, graceful and elegant, called the great and little Trianon. With the latter is connected, an English garden, in all the pretty disorder of nature, and in open contrast with the garden in general, which is tricked out in all the embellishments of art.
Nature has furnished the raw materials, and of a good quality; but a tree here is scarcely more like a tree in its natural shapes, than a paté de foie gras is like a goose. The sums expended upon this royal residence are reckoned at near forty millions sterling. The population of the town is twenty-eight thousand. I remained here a week last August, and then wrote you a detailed account of its garden and its palaces; Maria Antoinette's room, Josephine's room, and all the rooms, and the pictures and the beautiful Cathedral; and though I may presume from your silence this letter is lost, like so many others, I have no mind to return to the subject.
Apropos. I sent you more than three months ago, written by an amiable Parisienne, "the Literary Ladies of Paris;" I hope they are not miscarried. I am tired of consuming whole days for Louis Philippe's Post-office establishment.