| "TEMPLE OF LOVE" | PETIT TRIANON |
The château of the Petit Trianon is an interesting building, architecturally, marking, as it does, the transition stage between the styles of Louis XV. and Louis XVI.—a return to purer classical traditions. The façade is ornamented by a portico with four detached Corinthian columns, and the whole is surmounted by a balustrade. The reception and billiard rooms occupied the first floor, while the second was occupied by the private apartments.
While Marie Antoinette was still the Dauphine, she had often expressed a desire to have a château, apart from the palace, for her own, where, free from the intolerable restraints of Court etiquette, she might amuse herself as she chose; and shortly after his accession to the throne, Louis XVI. is said to have presented her with the Trianons with the words, "They have always belonged to the King's favorites, and should therefore now be yours." The Queen answered laughingly that she would gladly accept the Little Trianon, but only upon the condition that it should be unreservedly her own, and that even the King should come there only upon her express invitation.
| PLATE XXIX | "QUEEN'S HOUSE" AND "BILLIARD HALL," PETIT TRIANON |
Marie Antoinette's first wish, after becoming mistress of her new domain, was to establish there a garden after the English style. The rage for the English garden had just then seized French society, for it was believed to be a return to Nature—Nature which Rousseau just then had made it the fashion to adore, and the nobility were all for playing at rusticity, and full of sentimental admiration for the country.
The King humored the whim, and gave orders that the gardens already existing at the Trianon should be remodelled, that the strip of land joining it should be added, and the whole surrounded with a wall, and the work pushed as rapidly as possible.