as much as for Buonaparte at St. Cloud;
for one cannot fancy any one living in those rooms or walking in those
gardens without hoops and Henri quatre plumes. If one could but people
them properly for a couple of hours, what a delightful recollection it
would be! Versailles ought to be seen last. It is so magnificent that
every other thing of the sort is quite lost in the comparison. I am glad
I saw Paris and the Tuilleries and St. Cloud first. We saw the Palace,
and then we dined, and then we set out for the Trianon, and then we met
with a guide who entertained us so much as to put Louis XIV. and all his
court out of my head. Buonaparte never went to Versailles but once to
look at it, but at the Trianon he and Josephine lived, and it is
impossible, in seeing those places, not to feel the principal interest
to be in the inquiry--where he lived? where he sat? where he walked?
where he slept?--so accordingly we asked our guide. "Monsieur, je ne
connais point ce coquin la" soon told us what we were to expect from
him, but his silence and his loyalty, and the combat between his hatred
of the English and his hatred of Buonaparte was so amusing that we
soon forgave him for not telling us anything about him. He said "Bony"
was only "fit to be hanged." "Why did you not hang him, then?" He could
only shrug his shoulders. "We should have hung him for you if he had
come to England." "Ma foi! Monsieur, je crois que non." He told us the
stories of the rooms and the pictures with all the vivacity and rapidity
of a Frenchman, and with pretty little turns of wit.... Donald asked him
if a cabinet in one of the rooms had not been given by the Empress of
Russia to Buonaparte? He instantly seized him by the button with an air
of triumph. "Tenez, Monsieur, quand l'Empereur de Russie etait ici, il a
vu ce Cabinet et a dit; otez cette Volaille la" (pointing to the
compartment in which the Imperial Eagles had been changed into Angels).
"Je l'ai donne aux Francais, et lui--il n'etait pas Francais."

[Illustration: The Great Green Coach.

_To face p. 306._]

In all the royal house the servants are equally impenetrable on the
subject of Buonaparte. But sometimes it seems put on, sometimes they
really do not know from having been only lately put there, but this man
was a genuine Bourbonist and a genuine Frenchman.

We just got to St. Germain in time to walk on the Terrace before evening
closed in over the beautiful view. The Palace and the Town