This apartment of the Œil de Bœuf was the ancient Cabi du Conseil. It is a wonderfully decorated apartment, and its furnishings, beyond those which are actually built into the fabric, are likewise of a splendour and good taste which it is to be regretted is not everywhere to be noted in the vast palace of Louis XIV. The garnishings of the chimney-piece alone would make any great room interesting and well furnished, and the great golden clock, finely chiselled and brilliantly burnished, is about the most satisfactory French clock one ever saw, marking, as it does, in its style, the transition between that of Louis XIV and Louis XV.
Versailles, in many respects, falls far short to-day of the ideal; its very bigness and bareness greatly detract from the value of the historic souvenir which has come down to us. Changes could undoubtedly be made to advantage, and to this point much agitation has lately been directed, particularly in cutting out some of the recently grown up trees which have spoiled the classic vistas of the park, and the removal of those ugly equestrian statues which the Monarchy of July erected.
Versailles only came under Napoleon's cursory regard for a brief moment. He hardly knew whether he would care to make his home here or not, but ordered his architects to make estimates for certain projects which he had conceived and when he got them was so staggered at their magnitude that he at once threw over any idea that he may have had of making it his dwelling.
The Revolution had stripped the palace quite bare; no wonder that the emperor balked at the cost of putting it in order. Napoleon may have had his regrets for he made various allusions to Versailles while exiled at Saint Helena, but then it was too late.
Louis Philippe took a matter-of-fact view of the possible service that the vast pile might render to his family and accordingly spent much money in a great expanse of gaudy wall decorations which are there to-day, thinking to make of it a show place over which might preside the genius of his sons.
These acres of meaningless battle-pieces, Algerian warfare and what not are characteristic of the "Citizen-King" whose fondness for red plush, green repp and horsehair sofas was notable. What he did at Versailles was almost as great a vandalism against art as that wrought by the Revolution.
Last scene of all:—Under Lebrun's magnificent canopied ceiling, where the effigy of Louis XIV is being crowned by the Goddess of Glory, and the German eagle sits on a denuded tree trunk screaming in agony and beating his wings in despair, William of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of United Germany. It was almost as great an indignity as France ever suffered; the only greater was when the Prussians marched through the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. That was, and is, the Frenchman's—the Parisian's, at all events—culminating grief.
The apartment referred to is the Grand Galerie des Glaces (or Galerie Louis XIV), which is accredited as one of the most magnificently appointed rooms of its class in all the world. It is nearly two hundred and fifty feet in length, nearly forty feet in width, and forty-three feet in height. It is lighted by seventeen large arched windows, which correspond with arched niches on the opposite wall filled with mirrors—hence the name.
Sixty Corinthian columns of red marble with bases and capitals of gilt bronze fill up the intervening wall spaces. The vaulted ceiling by Lebrun is divided into eighteen small compartments and nine of much larger dimensions, in which are allegorically represented the principal events in the history of Louis XIV, from the Peace of the Pyrenees to that of Nymeguen.
It was in this splendid apartment that Louis XIV displayed the grandeur of royalty in its highest phase and such was the luxury of the times, such the splendour of the court, that its immense size could hardly contain the crowd of courtiers that pressed around the monarch.