The palace of Versailles has never been inhabited by royalty since the chain of carriages drove into this court on October 6, to convey Louis XVI. and his family to Paris.
From the Grande Cour the gardens may be reached by passages either from the Cour des Princes on the left, or from the Cour de la Chapelle on the right. This palace has had three chapels in turn. The first, built by Louis XIII., was close to the marble staircase. The second, built by Louis XIV., occupied the site of the existing Salon d’Hercule. The present chapel, built 1699–1710, is the last work of Mansart.
Here we may think of Bossuet, thundering before Louis XIV., “les royaumes meurent, sire, comme les rois,” and of the words of Massillon, “Si Jésus-Christ paraissait dans ce temple, au milieu de cette assemblée, la plus auguste de l’univers, pour vous juger, pour faire le terrible discernement,” etc. Here we may imagine Louis XIV. daily assisting at the Mass, and his courtiers, especially the ladies, attending also to flatter him, but gladly escaping, if they thought he would not be there....
All the furniture of Versailles was sold during the Revolution (in 1793), and, though a few pieces have been recovered, the palace is for the most part unfurnished, and little more than a vast picture-gallery. From the antechamber of the chapel open two galleries on the ground floor of the north wing. One is the Galerie des Sculptures; the other, divided by different rooms looking on the garden, is the Galerie de l’Histoire de France. The first six rooms of the latter formed the apartments of the Duc de Maine, the much indulged son of Louis XIV. and Mme. de Maintenon.
At the end of the gallery (but only to be entered now from the Rue des Réservoirs) is the Salle de l’Opéra. In spite of the passion of Louis XIV. for dramatic representations, no theatre was built in the palace during his reign. Some of the plays of Molière and Racine were acted in improvised theatres in the park; others, in the halls of the palace, without scenery or costumes; the Athalie of Racine, before the King and Mme. de Maintenon, by the young ladies of Saint-Cyr. The present Opera House was begun by Jacques Ange-Gabriel under Louis XV. for Mme. de Pompadour and finished for Mme. du Barry.
The Opera House was inaugurated on the marriage of the Dauphin with Marie Antoinette, and nineteen years after was the scene of that banquet, the incidents of which were represented in a manner so fatal to the monarchy, given by the body-guard of the king to the officers of a regiment which had arrived from Flanders....
The garden front of the palace has not yet experienced the soothing power of age: it looks almost new; two hundred years hence it will be magnificent. The long lines of the building, with its two vast wings, are only broken by the top of the chapel rising above the wing on the left.
The rich masses of green formed by the clipped yews at the sides of the gardens have the happiest effect, and contrast vividly with the dark background of chestnuts, of which the lower part is trimmed, but the upper falls in masses of heavy shade, above the brilliant gardens with their population of statues. These grounds are the masterpiece of Lenôtre, and of geometrical gardening, decorated with vases, fountains, and orange-trees. Lovers of the natural may find great fault with these artificial gardens, but there is much that is grandiose and noble in them; and, as Voltaire says: “Il est plus facile de critiquer Versailles que de le refaire.”
The gardens need the enlivenment of the figures, for which they were intended as a background, in the gay Courts of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. as represented in the pictures of Watteau; but the Memoirs of the time enable us to repeople them with a thousand forms which have long been dust, centring around the great king, “Se promenant dans ses jardins de Versailles, dans son fauteuil à roues.”
The sight of the magnificent terraces in front of the palace will recall the nocturnal promenades of the Court, so much misrepresented by the enemies of Marie Antoinette.