disposal. These pictures are all battle scenes, and only one solitary

little canvas among them all treats of anything but great French

victories. We wandered, also, through the Grand Trianon and the Petit

Trianon, those monuments of royal prodigality, and with histories so

mournful--filled, as it is, with souvenirs of Napoleon the First, and

three dead kings and as many queens. In one sumptuous bed they had all

slept in succession, but no one occupies it now. In a large dining room

stood the table at which Louis XIV and his mistress Madame Maintenon,

and

after them Louis XV, and Pompadour, had sat at their meals naked and

unattended--for the table stood upon a trapdoor, which descended with it

to regions below when it was necessary to replenish its dishes. In a

room of the Petit Trianon stood the furniture, just as poor Marie

Antoinette left it when the mob came and dragged her and the King to

Paris, never to return. Near at hand, in the stables, were prodigious

carriages that showed no color but gold--carriages used by former kings

of France on state occasions, and never used now save when a kingly head

is to be crowned or an imperial infant christened. And with them were

some curious sleighs, whose bodies were shaped like lions, swans, tigers,

etc.--vehicles that had once been handsome with pictured designs and

fine workmanship, but were dusty and decaying now. They had their

history. When Louis XIV had finished the Grand Trianon, he told

Maintenon he had created a Paradise for her, and asked if she could think

of anything now to wish for. He said he wished the Trianon to be

perfection--nothing less. She said she could think of but one thing--it

was summer, and it was balmy France--yet she would like well to sleigh

176

The Innocents Abroad