ean, all jumbled together. His own
apartments and those of the Queen, are inconvenient to the last degree,
dull, close, stinking. The gardens astonish by their magnificence, but
cause regret by their bad taste. You are introduced to the freshness of
the shade only by a vast torrid zone, at the end of which there is
nothing for you but to mount or descend; and with the hill, which is very
short, terminate the gardens. The violence everywhere done to nature
repels and wearies us despite ourselves. The abundance of water, forced
up and gathered together from all parts, is rendered green, thick, muddy;
it disseminates humidity, unhealthy and evident; and an odour still more
so. I might never finish upon the monstrous defects of a palace so
immense and so immensely dear, with its accompaniments, which are still
more so.

But the supply of water for the fountains was all defective at all
moments, in spite of those seas of reservoirs which had cost so many
millions to establish and to form upon the shifting sand and marsh. Who
could have believed it? This defect became the ruin of the infantry
which was turned out to do the work. Madame de Maintenon reigned. M. de
Louvois was well with her, then. We were at peace. He conceived the
idea of turning the river Eure between Chartres and Maintenon, and of
making it come to Versailles. Who can say what gold and men this
obstinate attempt cost during several years, until it was prohibited by
the heaviest penalties, in the camp established there, and for a long
time kept up; not to speak of the sick,--above all, of the dead,--that
the hard labour and still more the much disturbed earth, caused? How
many men were years in recovering from the effects of the contagion! How
many never regained their health at all! And not only the sub-officers,
but the colonels, the brigadiers and general officers, were compelled to
be upon the spot, and were not at liberty to absent themselves a quarter
of an hour from the works. The war at last interrupted them in 1688, and
they have never since been undertaken; only unfinished portions of them
exist which will immortalise this cruel folly.

At last, the King, tired of the cost and bustle, persuaded himself that
he should like something little and solitary. He searched all around
Versailles for some place to satisfy this new taste. He examined several
neighbourhoods, he traversed the hills near Saint-Germain, and the vast
plain which is at the bottom, w