In 1783 Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the court took up a brief residence here to assist at the aerostatic experiences of De Rosier, and in 1787, ceasing to be a royal residence, La Muette was offered for sale after first having been stripped of its precious wainscotings, its marbles and the artistic curiosities of all sorts with which it had been decorated. The chateau itself now became the property of Sebastian Erard, who bought it for the modest price of two hundred and sixty thousand francs.
Somewhat farther from Paris, crossing the peninsula formed by the first of the great bends of the Seine below the capital, is Chatou which has a royal reminder in its Pavilion Henri IV, or Pavillon Gabrielle, which the gallant, love-making monarch built for Gabrielle d'Estrées. Formerly it was surrounded by a vast park and must have been almost ideal, but to-day it is surrounded by stucco, doll-house villas, and unappealing apartments, until only a Gothic portal, jutting from a row of dull house fronts, suggests the once cosy little retreat of the lovely Gabrielle.
The height of Louveciennes, above Bougival, closes the neck of the peninsula and from it a vast panorama of the silvery Seine and its coteaux stretches out from the towers of Notre Dame on one hand to the dense forest of Saint Germain on the other.
The original Chateau de Louveciennes was the property of Madame la Princesse de Conti, but popular interest lies entirely with the Pavilion du Barry, built by the architect Ledoux under the orders of Louis XV.
Du Barry, having received the chateau as a gift from the king, sought to decorate it and reëmbellish it anew. Through the ministrations of a certain Drouais, Fragonard was commissioned to decorate a special pavilion outside the chateau proper, destined for the "collations du Roi."
The subject chosen was the "Progres de l'Amour dans le Cœur des Jeunes Filles." Just where these panels are to-day no one seems to know, but sooner or later they will doubtless be discovered.
Fragonard's famous "Escalade," or "Rendezvous," the first of the series of five proposed panels, depicted the passion of Louis XV for du Barry. The shepherdess had the form and features of that none too scrupulous feminine beauty, and the "berger gallant" was manifestly a portrait of the king.
Perhaps these decorations at Louveciennes were elaborations of these smaller canvases. It seems quite probable.
Sheltered snugly against the banked-up Forest of Saint Germain, on the banks of the Seine, is Maisons-Laffitte. Maisons is scarcely ever mentioned by Parisians save as they comment on the sporting columns of the newspapers, for horse-racing now gives its distinction to the neighbourhood, and the old Chateau de Maisons (with its later suffix of Laffitte) is all but forgotten.
François Mansart built the first Chateau de Maisons on a magnificent scale for René de Longueil, the Superintendent of Finance. In a later century it made a most effectual appeal to another financier, Laffitte, the banker, who parcelled out the park and stripped the chateau.