When André returned to his château from that melancholy visit, Denise asked no questions, not even about the new ring he wore, with a crest she knew and the historic motto, “Discret et Fidèle.” Versailles and Fontenoy alike belonged to a buried past.
Still less had either reason or wish to witness the degradation of the Palace of Louis Quatorze by Madame du Barry, under the grandson for whose death the nation that had once called him “Louis the Well-Beloved” now prayed. With the accession of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette they both believed that the night of bankruptcy and shame had at last passed, and death in his mercy took them away before the belief could be shattered, before the silver trumpets of the nobles of the Chevau-légers de la Garde de la Maison du Roi, that had blown for the monarchy of France on so many stricken fields, were silenced by the tumbrils of the Conciergerie for ever. Perhaps they were happier in their ignorance than those whose footsteps to-day so inquisitively mock the proud silence of the Galerie des Glaces, whose voices scare the ghostly echoes in the loneliness of what was once the salon of Madame de Pompadour; for these are reminded at every turn that in the new France, Versailles, once the emblem of a nation’s greatness, is now only a museum of pictures; that if it has a history for the French children playing on the terrace it is because it is a tomb of bitter memories, of blood shed not only by the hand of an alien foe, of the disaster that cries out for a nation’s revenge, but is not blessed with the heritage of a people’s love, still less has the right to ask for a people’s tears.
Les chars, les royales merveilles
Des gardes les nocturnes vieilles,
Tout a fui! Des grandeurs tu n’es plus le séjour
Mais le sommeil, la solitude
Dieux jadis inconnus, et les arts et l’étude
Composent aujourd’hui ta cour!
A Selection from the
Catalogue of
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
