Versailles is a royal summer chateau, about twelve miles from Paris, with a demesne of twenty miles in circumference. Take that for the scale, and imagine a palace completed in proportion, in all its details of grounds, ornament, and architecture. It cost, says the guide book, two hundred and fifty millions of dollars; and, leaving your fancy to expend that trifle over a residence, which, remember, is but one out of some half dozen, occupied during the year by a single family, I commend the republican moral to your consideration, and proceed with the more particular description of my visit.
My friend, Dr. Howe, was my companion. We drove up the grand avenue on one of the loveliest mornings that ever surprised December with a bright sun and a warm south wind. Before us, at the distance of a mile, lay a vast mass of architecture, with the centre, falling back between the two projecting wings, the whole crowning a long and gradual ascent, of which the tri-colored flag waving against the sky from the central turrets was the highest point. As we approached, we noticed an occasional flash in the sun, and a stir of bright colors, through the broad deep court between the wings, which, as we advanced nearer, proved to be a body of about two or three thousand lancers and troops of the line under review. The effect was indescribably fine. The gay uniforms, the hundreds of tall lances, each with its red flag flying in the wind, the imposing crescent of architecture in which the array was embraced, the ringing echo of the grand military music from the towers—and all this intoxication for the positive senses fused with the historical atmosphere of the place, the recollection of the king and queen, whose favorite residence it had been (the unfortunate Louis and Marie Antoinette), or the celebrated women who had lived in their separate palaces within its grounds, of the genius and chivalry of Court after Court that had made it, in turn, the scene of their brilliant follies, and, over all, Napoleon, who must have rode through its gilded gates with the thought of pride that he was its imperial master by the royalty of his great nature alone—it was in truth, enough, the real and the ideal, to dazzle the eyes of a simple republican.
After gazing at the fascinating show for an hour, we took a guide and entered the palace. We were walked through suite after suite of cold apartments, desolately splendid with gold and marble, and crowded with costly pictures, till I was sick and weary of magnificence. The guide went before, saying over his rapid rigmarole of names and dates, giving us about three minutes to a room in which there were some twenty pictures, perhaps, of which he presumed he had told us all that was necessary to know. I fell behind, after a while; and, as a considerable English party had overtaken and joined us, I succeeded in keeping one room in the rear, and enjoying the remainder in my own way.
The little marble palace, called "Petit Trianon," built for Madame Pompadour in the garden grounds, is a beautiful affair, full of what somebody calls "affectionate-looking rooms;" and "Grand Trianon," built also on the grounds at the distance of half a mile, for Madame Maintenon, is a very lovely spot, made more interesting by the preference given to it over all other places by Marie Antoinette. Here she amused herself with her Swiss village. The cottages and artificial "mountains" (ten feet high, perhaps) are exceedingly pretty models in miniature, and probably illustrate very fairly the ideas of a palace-bred fancy upon natural scenery. There are glens and grottoes, and rocky beds for brooks that run at will ("les rivieres à volonté," the guide called them), and trees set out upon the crags at most uncomfortable angles, and every contrivance to make a lovely lawn as inconveniently like nature as possible. The Swiss families, however, must have been very amusing. Brought fresh from their wild country, and set down in these pretty mock cottages, with orders to live just as they did in their own mountains, they must have been charmingly puzzled. In the midst of the village stands an exquisite little Corinthian temple; and our guide informed us that the cottage which the Queen occupied at her Swiss tea-parties was furnished at an expense of sixty thousand francs—two not very Switzer-like circumstances.
It was in the little palace of Trianon that Napoleon signed his divorce from Josephine. The guide showed us the room, and the table on which he wrote. I have seen nothing that brought me so near Napoleon. There is no place in France that could have for me a greater interest. It is a little boudoir, adjoining the state sleeping-room, simply furnished, and made for familiar retirement, not for show. The single sofa—the small round table—the enclosing, tent-like curtains—the modest, unobtrusive elegance of ornaments, and furniture, give it rather the look of a retreat, fashioned by the tenderness and taste of private life, than any apartment in a royal palace. I felt unwilling to leave it. My thoughts were too busy. What was the strongest motive of that great man in this most affecting and disputed action of his life?
After having been thridded through the palaces, we had a few moments left for the grounds. They are magnificent beyond description. We know very little of this thing in America, as an art; but it is one, I have come to think, that, in its requisition of genius, is scarce inferior to architecture. Certainly the three palaces of Versailles together did not impress me so much as the single view from the upper terrace of the gardens. It stretches clear over the horizon. You stand on a natural eminence that commands the whole country, and the plan seems to you like some work of the Titans. The long sweep of the avenue, with a breadth of descent that at the first glance takes away your breath, stretching its two lines of gigantic statues and vases to the water level; the wide, slumbering canal at its foot, carrying on the eye to the horizon, like a river of an even flood lying straight through the bosom of the landscape; the side avenues almost as extensive; the palaces in the distant grounds, and the strange union altogether, to an American, of as much extent as the eye can reach, cultivated equally with the trim elegance of a garden—all these, combining together, form a spectacle which nothing but nature's royalty of genius could design, and (to descend ungracefully from the climax) which only the exactions of an unnatural royalty could pay for.
I think the most forcible lesson one learns at Paris is the value of time and money. I have always been told, erroneously, that it was a place to waste both. You could do so much with another hour, if you had it, and buy so much with another dollar, if you could afford it, that the reflected economy upon what you can command, is inevitable. As to the worth of time, for instance, there are some twelve or fourteen gratuitous lectures every day at the Sorbonne, the School of Medicine and the College of France, by men like Cuvier, Say, Spurzheim, and others, each, in his professed pursuit, the most eminent perhaps in the world; and there are the Louvre, and the Royal Library, and the Mazarin Library, and similar public institutions, all open to gratuitous use, with obsequious attendants, warm rooms, materials for writing, and perfect seclusion; to say nothing of the thousand interesting but less useful resorts with which Paris abounds, such as exhibitions of flowers, porcelains, mosaics, and curious handiwork of every description, and (more amusing and time-killing still) the never-ending changes of sights in the public places, from distinguished foreigners down to miracles of educated monkeys. Life seems most provokingly short as you look at it. Then, for money, you are more puzzled how to spend a poor pitiful franc in Paris (it will buy so many things you want) than you would be in America with the outlay of a month's income. Be as idle and extravagant as you will, your idle hours look you in the face as they pass, to know whether, in spite of the increase of their value, you really mean to waste them; and the money that slipped through your pocket you know not how at home, sticks embarrassed to your fingers, from the mere multiplicity of demands made for it. There are shops all over Paris called the "Vingt-cinq-sous," where every article is fixed at that price—twenty five cents! They contain everything you want, except a wife and fire-wood—the only two things difficult to be got in France. (The latter, with or without a pun, is much the dearer of the two.) I wonder that they are not bought out, and sent over to America on speculation. There is scarce an article in them that would not be held cheap with us at five times its purchase. There are bronze standishes for ink, sand, and wafers, pearl paper-cutters, spice-lamps, decanters, essence-bottles, sets of china, table-bells of all devices, mantel ornaments, vases of artificial flowers, kitchen utensils, dog-collars, canes, guard-chains, chessmen whips, hammers, brushes, and everything that is either convenient or pretty. You might freight a ship with them, and all good and well finished, at twenty-five cents the set or article! You would think the man were joking, to walk through his shop.