VERSAILLES: THE GLORY OF FRANCE
"Glorieuse, monumentale et monotone
La façade de pierre effrite, au vent qui passe
Son chapiteau friable et sa guirlande lasse
En face du parc jaune ou s'accoude l'automne.
* * * * * *
Mais le soleil, aux vitres d'or qu'il incendie
Y semble rallumer interieurement
Le sursaut, chaque soir de la Gloire engourdi."
These lines of Henri de Régnier explain the aspect of the Versailles of to-day better than any others ever written.
Versailles is a medley of verdure, a hierarchy of bronze and a forest of marble. This is an expression full of anomalies, but it is strictly applicable to Versailles. Its waters, jets and cascades, its monsters, its Tritons and Valhalla of marble statues set off the artificial background in a manner only to be compared to a stage setting—a magnificent stage setting, but still palpably unreal.
Yes, Versailles is sad and grim to-day; one hardly knows why, for its memories still live, and the tangible evidences of most of its great splendour still stand.
"Voici tes ifs en cone et tes tritons joufflus
Tes jardins composés où Louis ne vient plus,
Et ta pompe arborant les plumes et les casques."
It is not possible to give here either an architectural review or a historical chronology of Versailles; either could be made the raison d'être for a weighty volume.
The writer has confined himself merely to a more or less correlated series of patent facts and incidents which, of itself, shows well the futility of any other treatment being given of a subject so vast within the single chapter of a book.
The history of Versailles is a story of the people and events that reflected the glory and grandeur of the Grand Monarque of the Bourbons and made his palace and its environs a more sublime expression of earthly pomp than anything which had gone before, or has come to pass since.
Versailles, after its completion, became the perfect expression of the decadence and demoralization of the old régime. It can only be compared to the relations between du Barry and the young Marie Antoinette, who was all that was contrary to all for which the former stood.