marshland, with its lonely windmill, meant
nothing then to the court nor to the busy fortune-hunting and
pleasure-seeking inhabitants of Paris. No one had reason to go to
Versailles, except perhaps the poor farmers and the owner of the
isolated mill--least of all the nobility and fashionable folk of the
glittering capital. No exercise of the imagination could then have
conjured up the picture of the splendor in store for the barren waste
of Versailles. The mention of the name in 1600 would have brought
nothing more from the lips of royalty and nobility than an indifferent
inquiry: "And what, pray, is Versailles and where may it be?" You, my
lord, who raise your eyebrows interrogatingly, and you, my lady, who
flick your fan so carelessly, will some day behold your grandchildren
paying humble and obsequious court to the reigning favorites at
Versailles--yes, out there on this very moorland where you see nothing
but marshy hollows and ruined walls, there will your lord and master,
your glorious Sun King, the Grand Monarch, Louis the Fourteenth, build
a palace home that Belshazzar might justly have envied: there will he
hold high court and set the whole world agape at his prodigal outlay
and magnificent festivities. And well may we inquire to-day: how came
this dreary waste to be the wondrous Versailles, the seat and scene of
so much in the making and the making-over of the world?

Ancient records of France indicate that in 1065 the priory of St.
Julien was established on the estates of the house of Versaliis--a
grant under royal protection. A poor farm community grew up about the
ecclesiastical retreat. Here, also, on the estates of the barony of
Versailles, was a repair of lepers, destroyed in the sixteenth century.

The origin of the name is said by some to be derived from the fact that
the plains thereabouts were exposed to such high winds that the grain
in the poor land was frequently overturned (_verses_). The lord of
these acres first named in history is Hugues (Hugo) de Versaliis, who
lived early in the eleventh century and was a contemporary of the first
kings of the Capet dynasty. A long line of nobles of this family
succeeded him. In 1561 Martial de Leomenie, Secretary of Finance under
Charles IX, became master of Versailles. The farming village being on
the route between Paris and Brittany, he obtained from the king
permission to establish here four annual fairs and a weekly market on
Thursdays. Mar