PARTERRE OF VERSAILLES.
At the extremity of the park is a beautiful palace called the Grand Trianon. It was built by Louis XIV. for Madame Maintenon. This edifice, spacious and aristocratic as it is in all its appliances, possesses the charm of beauty rather than that of grandeur. It seems constructed for an attractive home of opulence and taste. It was a favorite retreat of the Bourbons, from the pomp and ceremony of Versailles. This was also one of the favorite resorts of Napoleon when he sought a few hours of repose from the cares of empire. That he might reach it without loss of time, he constructed a direct road from thence to St. Cloud.
The Little Trianon, however, with its surroundings, constitutes to many minds the most attractive spot in this region of attractions. It is a beautiful house, about eighty feet square, erected by Louis XV. for the hapless Madame du Barri. It is constructed in the style of a Roman pavilion, and surrounded with gardens ornamented in the highest attainments of French and English art. Temples, cottages, groves, lawns, crags, fountains, lakes, cascades, embellish the grounds and present a scene of peaceful beauty which the garden of Eden could hardly have surpassed. This was the favorite abode of Maria Antoinette. She called it her home. In the quietude of this miniature palace, she loved to disembarrass herself of the restraints of regal life; and in the society of congenial friends, and in the privacy of her own rural walks to forget that she was an envied, hated queen. But even here the monotony of life wearied her, and deeply regretting that she had not formed in early youth intellectual tastes, she once sadly exclaimed to her companions, "What a resource, amidst the casualties of life, is to be found in a well cultivated mind. One can then be one's own companion, and find society in one's own thoughts." There is a beautiful sheet of water in the centre of the romantic, deeply wooded grounds of the Little Trianon, upon the green shores of which Maria, for pastime, erected a beautiful Swiss village, with its picturesque inn, its farm house and cow sheds, and its mill.
THE GRAND TRIANON.
Here the regal votaries of pleasure, satiated with the gayeties of Paris, weary of the splendors and the etiquette of the Tuileries and Versailles, endeavored to step from the palace to the cottage, and in the humble employments of the humblest life, to alleviate the monotony of an existence devoted only to pleasure. They played that they were peasants, put on the garb of peasants, and engaged heartily in the employments of peasants. King Louis was the inn-keeper, and Maria Antoinette, with her sleeves tucked up and her apron bound around her, the inn-keeper's pretty and energetic wife. She courtesied humbly to the guests, whom her husband received at the door, spread the table, for them, and placed before them the fresh butter which, in the dairy, she had churned with her own hands. A noble duke kept the shop and sold the groceries. A graceful, high-born duchess was Betty, the maid of the inn. A marquis, who proudly traced his lineage through many centuries, was the miller, grinding the wheat for the evening meal.
The sun was just sinking beneath the horizon, on a calm, warm, beautiful afternoon, when we sauntered through this picturesque, lovely, silent, deserted village. It was all in perfect repair! The green lawn was of velvet softness. The trees and shrubbery were in full leaf. Innumerable birds filled the air with their warblings, and the chirp of the insect, the rustling of the leaves, the sighing of the wind, the ripple of the streamlet, and the silence of all human voices, so deep, so solemn, left an impress upon the mind never to be forgotten. How terrible the fate of those who once made these scenes resound with the voice of gayety. Some were burned in their chateaux, or massacred in the streets. Some died miserably on pallets of straw in dungeons dark, and wet, and cold. Some were dragged by a deriding mob to the guillotine to bleed beneath its keen knife. And some, in beggary and wretchedness, wandered through weary years, in foreign lands, envying the fate of those who had found a more speedy death. The palace of Versailles! It is a monument of oppression and pride. It will be well for the rulers of Europe to heed its monitory voice. The thoughtful American will return from the inspection of its grandeur, admiring, more profoundly than ever before, the beautiful simplicity of his own land. He will more highly prize those noble institutions of freedom and of popular rights which open before every citizen an unobstructed avenue to wealth and power, encouraging every man to industry, and securing to every man the possession of what he earns. The glory of America consists not in the pride of palaces and the pomp of armies, but in the tasteful homes of a virtuous, intelligent, and happy people.