Versailles.--St. Cloud.
The Château de Versailles, that marvellous _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the
splendid taste and unbounded extravagance of Louis le Grand, is shut
up, and has been so for the last eighteen months. This is a great
disappointment to such of our party as have never seen its
interminable chambers and their gorgeous decorations. The reason
assigned for this unwonted exclusion of the public is, that the whole
of this enormous pile is filled with workmen; not, however, for the
purpose of restoring it as a palace for the king, but of preparing it
as a sort of universal museum for the nation. The buildings are in
fact too extensive for a palace; and splendid as it is, I can easily
believe no king of modern days would wish to inhabit it. I have
sometimes wondered that Napoleon did not take a fancy to its vastness;
but, I believe, he had no great taste in the upholstering line, and
preferred converting his millions into the sinews of war, to the
possession of all the carving and gilding in the world.
If this projected museum, however, should be _monté_ with science,
judgment and taste, and on the usual scale of French magnificence, it
will be turning the costly whim of _le Grand Monarque_ to excellent
account.
The works which are going on there, were mentioned at a party the
other evening, when some one stated that it was the intention of the
King to convert one portion of the building into a gallery of national
history, that should contain pictures of all the victories which
France had ever won.
The remark made in reply amused me much, it was so very French.--"Ma
foi!... Mais cette galerie-là doit être bien longue--et assez
ennuyeuse pour les étrangers."
Though the château was closed to us, we did not therefore give up our
purposed expedition to Versailles: every object there is interesting,
not only from its splendour, but from the recollections it revives of
scenes with whose history we are all familiar. Not only the horrors of
the last century, but all the regal glories of the preceding one, are
so well known to everybody, that there must have been a prodigious
deal of gossip handed down to us from France, or we never could feel
so much better acquainted with events which have passed at Versailles
than with any scenes that have occurred at an equal distance of time
at Windsor.
But so it is; and the English go there not merely as strangers
visiting a palace in a foreign land, but as pilgrims to the shrine of
the princes and poets who have left their memory there, and with whose
names and histories they are as familiar as if they belonged to us.
The day we passed among the royal spectres that never fail to haunt
one at this palace of recollections, was a mixture of sunshine and
showers, and our meditations seemed to partake of the vicissitude.
It is said that the great Louis reared this stupendous dwelling in
which to pass the gilded hours of his idleness, because from St.
Germain's he could see the plain of St. Denis, over which his funeral
array was to pass, and the spire that marked the spot where his too
precious dust was to be laid. Happy was it for him that the
scutcheoned sepulchre of St. Denis was the most distant and most
gloomy point to which his prophetic glance could reach! Could the
great king have looked a little farther, and dreamed of the scenes
which were destined to follow this dreaded passage to his royal tomb,
how would he have blessed the fate which permitted him to pass into it
so peacefully!
It is quite wonderful to see how much of the elaborate decoration and
fine finishing of this sumptuous place remains uninjured after being
visited by the most ferocious mob that ever collected together. Had
they been less intent on the savage object of their mission, it is
probable that they would have sated their insane rage in destroying
the palace itself, and the costly decorations of its singular gardens.
Though far inferior in all ways either to the gardens of the Elector
of Hesse Cassel at Wilhelmshöhe, or to those of the Grand Duke of
Baden at Schwetzingen, those of Versailles are still highly
interesting from many causes, and have so much of majesty and pomp
about them, that one cannot look upon them without feeling that only
the kings of the earth could ever have had a master's right to take
their pleasure therein.
Before we entered upon the orderly confusion of groves, statues,
temples, and water-works through which it is necessary to be led, we
made our grey-headed guide lead us round and about every part of the
building while we listened to his string of interesting old stories
about Louis Seize, and Marie Antoinette, and Monsieur, and le Comte
d'Artois, (for he seemed to have forgotten that they had borne any
other titles than those he remembered in his youth,) all of whom
seemed to retain exactly the same place in his imagination that they
had occupied some fifty years ago, when he was assistant to the keeper
of the _orangerie_. He boasted, with a vanity as fresh as if it had
been newly born, of the honours of that near approach to royalty which
he had formerly enjoyed; recounted how the Queen called one of the
orange-trees her own, because she fancied its blossoms sweeter than
all the rest; and how from such a broad-leafed double-blossoming
myrtle he had daily gathered a _bouquet_ for her majesty, which was
laid upon her toilet exactly at two o'clock. This old man knew every
orange-tree, its birth and history, as well as a shepherd knows his
flock. The venerable father of the band dates his existence from the
reign of François Premier, and truly he enjoys a green old age. The
one surnamed Louis le Grand, who was twin brother, as he said, to that
mighty monarch, looks like a youth beside it--and you are told that it
has not yet attained its full growth.
Oh! could those orange-trees but speak! could they recount to us the
scenes they have witnessed; could they describe to us all the beauties
over whom they have shed their fragrant flowers--all the heroes,
statesmen, poets, and princes who have stepped in courtly paces
beneath their shade; what a world of witty wickedness, of solemn
warning, and of sad reflection, we should have!
But though the orange-trees were mute, our old man talked enough for
them all. He was a faithful servant to the old _régime_: and indeed it
should seem that there is something in the air of Versailles
favourable alike to orange-trees and loyalty; for never did I hear,
while wandering amidst their aristocratic perfume, one word that was
not of sound orthodox legitimate loyalty to the race for whose
service they have for so many hundred years lived and bloomed. And
still they blossom on, unscathed by revolution, unblighted though an
usurper called them his;--happier in this than many of those who were
once privileged to parade their dignity beneath their royal shade. The
old servitors still move among these venerable vegetable grandees with
the ceremonious air of courtiers, offering obsequious service, if not
to the king himself, at least to his cousin-germans; and I am
persuaded there is not one of these old serving-men, who wander about
Versailles like ghosts revisiting the scenes of former happiness, who
would not more humbly pull off his hat to François Premier or Louis le
Grand in the greenhouse, than to any monarch of a younger race.
Napoleon has left less trace of himself and his giant power at
Versailles than anywhere else; and the naïads and hamadryads still
lift their sculptured heads with such an eternity of stately grace, as
makes one feel the evanescent nature of the interlude that was played
among them during the empire. It is of the old race of Bourbon that
the whole region is redolent. "There," said our old guide, "is the
range of chambers that was occupied by the Queen ... those were the
King's apartments ... there were the royal children ... there Monsieur
... and there the Comte d'Artois."
Then we were led round to the fatal balcony which overhangs the
entrance. It was there that the fallen Marie Antoinette stood, her
young son in her arms, and the doomed King her husband beside her,
when she looked down upon the demons drunk with blood, who sought her
life. I had heard all this hateful, but o'er-true history, more than
once before on the same spot, and shortening the frightful detail, I
hastened to leave it, though I believe the good old man would
willingly have spent hours in dwelling upon it.
The day had been named as one on which the great waters were to play.
But, little as Nature has to do with this pretty exhibition, she
interfered on this occasion to prevent it. There was no water. The dry
winter would, they told us, probably render it impossible to play them
during the whole summer.
Here was another disappointment; but we bore it heroically, and after
examining and much admiring the numberless allegories which people the
grounds, and to the creation of which, a poet must have been as
necessary as a sculptor, we adjourned to the Trianons, there to
meditate on all the ceaseless vicissitudes of female influence from
Maintenon to Josephine. It is but a sad review, but it may serve well
to reconcile the majority of womankind to the tranquil dreaminess of
obscurity.
The next thing to be done was dining--and most wretchedly done it was:
but we found something to laugh at, nevertheless; for when the wine
brought to us was found too bad to drink, and we ordered better, no
less than four bottles were presented to us in succession, each one
increasing in price, but being precisely of the same quality. When we
charged the black-eyed daughter of the house with the fact, she said
with perfect good-humour, but nowise denying it, that she was very
sorry they had no better. When the bill was brought, the same damsel
civilly hoped that we should not think ten sous (half-a-franc) too
much to pay for having opened so many bottles. Now, as three of them
were firmly corked, and carefully sealed besides, we paid our ten sous
without any complaining.
The looking at a fête at St. Cloud made part of the business of the
day; but in order to get there, we were obliged to mount into one of
those indescribable vehicles by which the gay _bourgeoisie_ of Paris
are conveyed from palace to palace, and from _guinguette_ to
_guinguette_. We had dismissed our comfortable _citadine_, being
assured that we should have no difficulty in finding another. In this,
however, we were disappointed, the proportion of company appearing
greatly to exceed that of the carriages which were to convey them, and
we considered ourselves fortunate in securing places in an equipage
which we should have scorned indignantly when we quitted Paris in the
morning.
The whimsical gaiety of the crowd, all hurrying one way, was very
amusing; all anxious to reach St. Cloud before the promised
half-hour's display of water-works were over; all testifying, by look,
gesture, voice, and words, that light effervescence of animal spirits
so essentially characteristic of the country, and all forming a moving
panorama so gay and so bright as almost to make one giddy by looking
at it.
Some among the capricious variety of vehicles were drawn by five or
six horses. These were in truth nothing but gaily-painted waggons,
hung on rude springs, with a flat awning over them. In several I
counted twenty persons; but there were some few among them in which
one or perhaps two seats were still vacant--and then the rapturous
glee of the party was excited to the utmost by the efforts of the
driver, as gay as themselves, to obtain customers to fill the
vacancies.
Every individual overtaken on the road was invited by the most
clamorous outcries to occupy the vacant seats. "St. Cloud! St. Cloud!
St. Cloud!" shouted by the driver and re-echoed by all his company,
rang in the startled ears of all they passed; and if a traveller
soberly journeying in the contrary direction was met, the invitation
was uttered with tenfold vehemence, accompanied by shouts of laughter;
which, far from offending the party who provoked it, was invariably
answered with equal frolic and fun. But when upon one occasion a
carriage posting almost at full gallop towards Versailles was
encountered, the ecstasy of mirth with which it was greeted exceeds
description. "St. Cloud! St. Cloud! St. Cloud!--Tournez donc,
messieurs--tournez à St. Cloud!" The shouts and vociferations were
enough to frighten all the horses in the world excepting French ones;
and they must be so thoroughly broken to the endurance of din, that
there is little danger of their starting at it. I could have almost
fancied that upon this occasion they took part in it; for they shook
their ropes and their tassels, snorted and tossed, very much as if
they enjoyed the fun.
After all, we, and many hundred others, arrived too late for the show,
the supply of water failing even before the promised half-hour had
elapsed. The gardens, however, were extremely full, and all the world
looked as gay and as well-pleased as if nothing had gone wrong.
I wonder if these people ever grow old,--that is, old as we do,
sitting in the chimney-corner, and dreaming no more of fêtes than of
playing at blind-man's-buff. I have certainly seen here, as elsewhere,
men, and women too, grey-headed, and wrinkled enough to be as solemn
as the most venerable judge upon the bench; but I never saw any that
did not seem ready to hop, skip, jump, waltz, and make love.