Versailles

Today's little trials were to test us. Over the night the weather changed, and this morning it was cold and rainy. A nasty wind kept coming up and making it more unpleasant than otherwise. We who have been hot and sweaty for the last two weeks did not dress as stoutly as we should have. And this for a day trip to Versailles.

To add to our vexation, the train that runs to Versailles Rive Gauche from a station close to us was not running this morning, so we had to connect in Montparnasse (always an ordeal) and walk from a station on the far side of the town of Versailles to the chateau. By the time we got there we were already cold and tired.

The palace is of course exquisite. Originally a hunting lodge, Louis XIV poured the treasure of France during the 17th and 18th centuries into making it the most splendid place on earth, kind of a Baroque Disneyland. In his youth the feudal barons of France staged a coup against him, called the Fronde, that came dangerously close to succeeding. Louis eliminated the possibility of future uprisings by building the Palace of Versailles and requiring all the nobles of France to come and live with him. There they lived in such splendor that they had no desire to engage in political intrigue. A master propagandist, he cast himself as the Roi du Soleil, the Sun King, the living personification of Apollo, God's representative on earth. Every morning the nobles would cluster around his bed to watch him get up—the rising of the sun—and jockey for the privilege of dressing him or holding the royal bedpan. The days were filled with hunts and feasts, and the nights with opera, theatre, ballet, and fireworks. Louis succeeded smashingly in replacing the noblemen's lust for political power with a hunger for court prestige.

But all this came at a terrible price. The royalty and nobility of France were so insulated from their subjects that they never noticed their people's hunger. Louis XIV outlived his son and grandson, and was succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis XV. Louis XV's tastes were less bombastic but just as indulgent. He was succeeded by Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. By their time the troubles of France had come to a head (no pun intended), and in 1789 the French Revolution was underway. At its climax Louis and Marie and hundreds of the nobles of France died on the guillotine.



And so Versailles is a ghostly place. In the 1830s, after a less violent revolution, Louis-Phillipe, the bourgeois monarch, moved into humbler quarters in the Tuileries and gave Versailles to the nation as a monument: "À toutes les gloires de France"—To all the glories of France. I'm glad he did that, and I'm glad the palace is there so that we can see what beauties mankind is capable of creating. I also believe that a beautiful object has an intrinsic beauty that is beautiful regardless of its purpose or value. Nevertheless, the light of Versailles's beauty is not absolutely pure.

We were nice and toasty warm in the palace, but outside again waiting for the train to take us into the gardens we almost decided to pack it in and go home. Everyone was glad we didn't. The gardens are the best part of the château. Stretching on for miles, most are in the classical French manner, perfectly geometrical and manicured. Marie Antoinette, however, wanted English gardens at her Petit Trianon, the little country house that was given to her by her father-in-law the king at her wedding.

She also wanted a little Normandy-style hamlet so she could pretend to be a shepherdess. Once again, her self-indulgence is our delight, and the English gardens and hameau are breathtakingly magical.

We almost forgot how cold we were, but not for long. On a better day we would have spent a few more hours in the gardens. But today we hopped the first shuttle we could get and retreated back to the town to find some warmth and a place to eat. We found McDonald's. It's such a happy place.